Where Do Low-Cost Used Book Sales in St. Louis Get Their Books?

Most books at a low-cost sale in St. Louis were donated, not bought wholesale. Give My Books Network collects them free from doorsteps, and Local Pick-Up Partners resell part of what they collect.

The path is short and it is not glamorous. A family in Dutchtown finally carries thirty years of paperbacks up from the basement. A partner collects the boxes off the porch. The books get sorted offsite, and a week later some of them are on a folding table in a church hall off Grand Boulevard, priced at a dollar.

What You Can Expect to Find on the Tables

Expect a genuine mix: general fiction, cookbooks, children's picture books, textbooks, large-print titles, reference sets, DVDs, CDs, vinyl records, board games, and puzzles, most of it priced between a quarter and a few dollars.

• Paperback fiction — the deepest table at every sale, and the cheapest.
• Children's books — usually a quarter each, often a boxful for a couple of dollars.
• Cookbooks and manuals — picked over fast, so go early.
• Textbooks and reference — a fraction of the campus price.
• Media — DVDs, CDs, and vinyl, usually in a milk crate under the table.

How to Shop a Church Hall or School Gym Sale in St. Louis

Bring cash, bring your own bags, and come early if you want the good hardcovers or late if you want the bag price.

1. Show up in the first hour. The cookbooks and the art books do not last.
2. Carry cash in small bills. A folding table in a church hall in North City is not running a card reader.
3. Bring sturdy bags or a box. Nobody is handing you one.
4. Check the milk crates on the floor. That is where the vinyl and the DVDs hide.
5. Come back in the last hour for the fill-a-bag price, if you can stand the picked-over tables.

Who Actually Buys at Low-Cost Book Sales?

Teachers, homeschool parents, small church and community libraries, resellers, and readers on a budget make up most of the crowd at a low-cost used book sale in St. Louis.

Nine times out of ten, the person filling two bags at nine in the morning is building something. A classroom shelf. A reading list. A front-room library in a rented flat. Cheap books are not a small thing in a city where families stay put and shelves fill slowly.

How St. Louis Donors Keep the Supply Coming

Every low-cost sale depends on somebody upstream passing books forward, which in St. Louis usually means a full basement finally coming up the stairs.

Give My Books Network makes that part easy. A Local Pick-Up Partner, meaning the locally owned family business that does the collecting, comes to your door at no cost. You pack the boxes, set them out by 8 AM on your service day, and the partner collects between 8 AM and 8 PM. You do not need to be home. The partner does not bring boxes, so pack in advance. The American Library Association's overview of book donation programs is a good primer on why so many donated books need a route like this one.

Can Your Group Request Books Instead of Buying Them?

Schools, libraries, nonprofits, literacy programs, and community centers can request books at no cost through the Give ME Books program rather than paying for them at a sale.

A partner fills each request out of whatever came in that month. Nobody is promised a specific title, and nobody should be. But the books are real, they are free, and they came off a porch in this city.