Affordable Books

Find quality used books at community-friendly prices.

Community Book Sales

Regular sales events bringing affordable reading to your neighborhood.

Wide Selection

Books, textbooks, CDs, DVDs, and other media available.

Support Local Literacy

Proceeds from sales support literacy programs in your community.

Donate for Future Sales

Schedule a free pickup - your donated books fuel future community sales.

Eco-Friendly

Keep books out of landfills and in the hands of readers.

Quick answer: Give My Books Network is not a used book store. It is the free pickup network that supplies them. Local Pick-Up Partners collect donated books from Minneapolis doorsteps at no cost, sort them offsite, and move part of what they gather into secondhand shops, community sales, and online listings.

How Does Give My Books Network Relate to a Used Book Store in Minneapolis?

Give My Books Network supplies used book stores rather than competing with them: Local Pick-Up Partners collect donated books free from Minneapolis homes, sort them offsite, and move the resalable portion into the secondhand market.

The independent shops around Uptown and Dinkytown live on a steady supply of good used books. Where does that supply come from? Estates, downsizings, moves, and the ordinary afternoon when a shelf finally runs out of room.

The pickup is how those books get collected without anybody driving down Hennepin Avenue with a trunk full of boxes and no parking spot.

Where Do Books From a Minneapolis Pickup End Up?

Books collected in Minneapolis go three places: onto secondhand shelves through resale, out to schools, libraries, and literacy programs through the Give ME Books program, or, when nothing can be done, recycled as a last resort.

The resale is not a footnote. It is the reason a Local Pick-Up Partner can drive to your porch, load four boxes, and charge you nothing. Books with market value pay for books without it.

What Used Book Shops in Minneapolis Can and Cannot Take

Used book shops in Minneapolis buy selectively, because shelf space is finite and a shop that takes everything stops being a shop.

• Usually welcome — clean hardcovers, current fiction, quality nonfiction, art and design titles, local history.
• Often declined — old textbooks, encyclopedia sets, book club editions, mass-market paperbacks in quantity.
• Never a fit — mold, water swelling, missing pages, a spine that comes apart in the hand.

That middle row is where most people get stuck. A shop says no, the branch says no, and the box goes back down to the basement for another humid August. Give My Books Network exists precisely for that box.

Should You Sell to a Shop or Schedule a Pickup?

Sell to a shop when you have a small, curated stack of desirable titles and the time to carry it there. Schedule a pickup when the pile is large, mixed, or heavier than the trip is worth.

Ten first editions? Take them to a shop. Sixty boxes out of a basement, or two boxes of children's books that have been read to pieces? A Local Pick-Up Partner will collect them from your step, free, between 8 AM and 8 PM. You do not need to be home.

What Kinds of Books Move Through the Resale Side

Give My Books Network partners resell books of every kind plus most physical media, because a used book store's buyer and a community sale's shopper want very different things.

Hardcovers, paperbacks, children's books, textbooks, encyclopedias, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, VHS tapes, vinyl records, audiobooks on disc, board games, puzzles, and video games all ride in the same box. No sorting required. Really.

Libraries do not have that freedom. The Book Donation Programs guide from the American Library Association explains why branches have to decline so much of what is offered, and why a resale-funded network catches the overflow.

Booking a Free Pickup Instead of a Trip Down Hennepin Avenue

Booking a free pickup takes about a minute: enter your ZIP code, pick a service day, pack your boxes, and set them out by 8 AM in a dry, covered spot.

A Local Pick-Up Partner is the locally owned family business that does the collecting, not a national carrier. If a partner already serves your ZIP code, you can schedule immediately. If none does yet, submit the request anyway. It enters the out-of-area pickup system, where a nearby partner may claim it.

One honest note: these are family businesses, not 501(c)(3) nonprofits, so no tax-deduction receipt is issued.

Pickup Request Form

Enter your ZIP code to begin your pickup request