Begin edit (2023-01-14 GMT)
Thank you to everyone who has answered this post. Your comments and feedback will help my mother decide how she wants to proceed and what’s best for her. And thank you to those of you who have messaged me.
Some people have messaged me about negative comments or things of that nature, which I haven’t seen yet (but I will look over every comment, I just didn’t expect this post to explode like this). But, in the interest of reassuring anyone who may have misunderstood my post, I wanted to clarify a bit…
My mother is not a hoarder, and I wasn’t in any way saying she is. Nor am I saying anything bad about her. I love my mother very much and support her in every way, just as she does for me and my siblings.
She’s the one who asked me to help her sell all of the books she has. And yes, when she showed me how much her collection has exploded, we both had a laugh about it, and I agreed to help her try and sell her books. Her choice. Her decision. Her rules. In no way am I forcing her to do anything.
I’ve (hopefully) sent her email to those of you who have asked for more information. She’ll be in touch, and if I can be of further help to anyone, please let me know and I’ll do my best.
Finally, as regards my mother, she’s one of the people who edits the books I write (hand edited notes and such, but I love her work and support). Many of the books she has and will be selling are also from my collection as a child (and I’m 49 years old now). We have a deep love of books (I’m the oldest of us six kids and bookworm of the family).
So I don’t like to see my mother sell her collection. I’d rather have some giant library like the one from Beauty and the Beast. But we both don’t think that’s realistic (still, it’s a fun dream).
However, the idea of cataloguing everything (even if it takes a year), and then selling the more valuable items and using that money to pay for shipping the books to needy libraries is a great idea. So we’re looking at that, and I’m doing my best to support her decisions.
Again, thank you all who helped with suggestions, comments, feedback, and personal stories. It’s great to see the support of this community and our shared love of books. ❤️
End edit (2023-01-14 GMT)
Does anyone know where to sell a bulk lot of books? My mother has been collecting them forever, but she’s agreed to sell them.
To explain, my mother has a collection of books and magazines in Virginia which numbers in the tens of thousands. To give you an idea, her two story farm house has so many books inside that the floor and supports broke. Other than the kitchen, there’s barely room to move in most of the house.
Outside she’s got a separate two room building, a 20 foot shipping container, and the entire back end of a tractor trailer (the trailer part) - all of which are full of books. Paperbacks, hardback, magazines, and periodicals of every sort and variety.
As I don’t have the time to put all of these books on eBay or somewhere similar, she’s decided to sell them books as one giant lot. Can anyone point us in the right direction or offer recommendations with who to contact about this?
Thank you!