Donating Old Books...

One of the things I don't want to carry to Japan with me is my collection of trashy mystery novels. I'm known for buying $1 books whenever the opportunity pops into my life. I always buy novels with tag lines like, "This is the case he never thought he'd solve.....until his heart was involved..."

I've tried using paperbackswap.com, a site where you can list your used books and someone can choose to "buy" it from you. The only problem is, you have to ship the books one by one as people request them. I don't have the level of time to make daily trips to the local shipping place, even if it's to drop off a single book. Plus, once you tell paperbackswap.com you're shipping a book, they send you nearly daily e-mails to remind you...or at least it feels that way. While I think it's a great service, it's just not a good way to unload a bunch of books at once.

I looked at other donation programs (prison donation programs, international programs, rural library programs, even local library) and they only accept specific types of books and that type is never "trashy mystery novel." Instead it's only textbooks or non-fiction books.

So now, I'm left with what to do. Do I just box them up and leave them in front of the dumpster? I don't want to do craigslist as there has been a string of people coming to see things you have listed on craigslist and then violently robbing you. While I understand this is paranoia on my part, I can never be too careful when John's away most of the time. I want to list on freecycle, but I feel like people will come over and pick through the books one by one when I need them ALL gone at once.

So, now I'm going to box all of these books up and then mull this over. I'm not a person who reads a book more than once and now that I have a Kindle, I might never read a real bound book again.

Hmmmm......