Getting Rid of Books

I’m a hoarder and a reader so it’s rather inevitable that I end up with a large amount of books. But given that I live in a small house, and that we are planning on moving overseas at one point or another, my obsession, uh, habit, can quickly spiral out of control.

I get a lot of books from BookMooch, and send quite a few through them as well. But just because I’ve posted a book there doesn’t mean it will get mooched, and shipping can get very expensive, very quickly. I’ve spent €35 on shipping costs in February alone, and that’s not the sort of expense I can easily fold into my budget- certainly not every month.

I recently discovered two sites that buy books: Cash4Books and Book Emporium. The best part is they buy the books that people don’t want to mooch: text books, instruction books, law books… they even pay for shipping costs! The only caveat: they don’t buy internationally.

So my project this week is to go through my bookcases and see what books they’ll buy from me. I’m then setting those books aside, and I’ll take them with me to the US. After I sell them I’ll have lots of precious suitcase space to fill with all sorts of American treats!

PS. Lynnae at Being Frugal wrote another great post on this same subject. I’m going to have to try out Blue Rectangle.