People donate books for many reasons. The owner could be moving and has to downsize. Someone could have passed away, and their family is clearing out their estate. It could be that the reader has outgrown those particular stories. Perhaps it is related to a deep clean or the de-cluttering of a home. For the most part, though, I feel as if what gets donated has a positive correlation with perceived low re-readability by the owner. Which is admittedly a subjective quality. To a point.
Donations can go to many places. Libraries, literacy programs, charities, second-hand shops, and schools are just some of the options where books may receive a chance at a second life. My personal favorite is the local Rotary Club, which collects donations throughout the year and then hosts a massive book sale biannually to support their various community projects.
Large-scale used book sales are beautiful chaos. You never know what you’re going to stumble across. It’s a full day of wading through tables covered in boxes overflowing with thousands of titles, sorted loosely by genre and first letter of the author’s last name.
It’s also a roller coaster of emotion. There are shouts of joy as a certain edition of an old favorite is unearthed. Strangers work together to look for the third book in a five-part series – books one, two, four, and five are already clutched tightly in a young adult’s arms. It’s a gathering of book lovers, for better or worse, in jealousy and triumph, in disappointment and discovery.
As I became familiar with the ins and outs of this particular flavour of sale, I expanded my interest from books and authors I was actively seeking to books that seemed worthwhile to add to my TBR pile. From there, I found myself becoming curious as to which books showed up repeatedly. And now, I spend a lot of time looking at books and authors who have been donated en masse.
To be clear, the books offered during each sale are a mix of titles that did not sell during previous sales, as well as newly donated items. So prolific authors, such as Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, Terry Goodkind, and Stephen King, may have many titles represented, but those are generally gone by the end of the sale.
I’m not talking about those.
I’m talking about the duplicate copies of a single title. Let me show you an example.
Check out how many copies of “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson and “Becoming” by Michelle Obama there are in these boxes. There were probably another three or four times that amount again on the upper tables in the biography section.
The city I live in is not particularly large. We’re talking 100,000 people. For there to be so many copies of a singular title, to me, means two things.
One. Either the marketing these books received was absolutely mind-blowing, the subjects these books were about are interesting to a wide and varied reader base, and/or the blurb on the back was spectacular.
Two. Once these books were actually purchased and read, people did not see them as re-readable novels. I could give it the benefit of the doubt and say that so many people bought it that these donated copies are all duplicates, but my suspenders of disbelief are not that strong. Fundamentally, a lot of people do not want to revisit these books.
Now, for biographies, that makes a little more sense than a fiction or fantasy title. The nature of the work is reflective and informative rather than woven and inventive. It is also usually more about the subject rather than the author. (Unless it’s particularly poorly written, but as “Becoming” has a 4.7 out of 5 on Amazon, 4.4 out of 5 on Goodreads, and 4.6 out of 5 on Indigo, while “Steve Jobs” has 4.7 out of 5 on Amazon and 4.2 out of 5 on Goodreads, I don’t think that’s the case here.)
What this comes down to for me is this: I never want to be that author with 200 copies of a singular title at a used book sale. I want to be the kind of author who makes people feel as though they’ve scored the jackpot if and when my work makes it into the used market.
And for that, I need re-readability. Secrets. Easter eggs. Clever full circle moments. Hints at different perspectives. I need depth.
This month’s round of edits and revisions will focus on just that.
Wish me luck.
Winters Writer 