[Lewisham]

I do this all the time with Amazon's Trade-In Program. A couple of times a year, I look at my book shelf and video games. If I haven't read/played them within the last 6 months, and have no compelling reason to hold onto them for the foreseeable 6 months, into the box they go.

Amazon then gives me a pre-paid shipping label.

I find the whole process enjoyable. "How much will Amazon give me for this?" is an exciting game. Then things go in the box, and you can visibly see the consumer weight you're lifting off your shoulders. Then you get to see the fruits of your labors with a newly empty bookshelf.

The money they give me for it is only a small part of the benefits I feel from doing it. I try to do the same with Goodwill donations of old clothes, but I have to admit some laziness in actually getting down to the Goodwill (which is essentially zero difference from driving the box to the UPS Store. Procrastination is a weird and wonderful thing.)

[benguild]

You can make a little bit more money by shipping them to Fulfilled By Amazon and selling them at a higher price with Amazon Prime. It's great for things that people don't buy enough to warrant their trade-in program, and there's the risk of the occasional return, but it gets it all out of your house with really cheap shipping.

[incision]

Good idea.

I make a point to check to see if any used, Fulfilled by Amazon copies are available when I'm about to buy a book.

It's used pricing and the weight of Amazon behind the purchase without the cost of shipping thanks to my Prime membership.

[mixedbit]

Nice approach. I personally can't force myself to get rid of books that I've read, which is not very rational, because I very rarely reread books. But other stuff I try to get rid of, or not buy at all.

[kryten]

Never get rid of books. I got rid of a lot of mine and thoroughly regret it. Why?

I now have children who want to read them.

[tomkarlo]

It doesn't make sense to stockpile books on the chance that your children might one day want to read them when a used copy is generally a click away. (Not to mention that you may prefer to re-buy them in digital form.) Every square inch of space in your home has a carrying cost (I used to calculate $4 per net square foot per month in New York).

Having one less book shelf is effectively saving enough per year that you could probably pay for buying back all the books you'd ever re-read on that shelf. And if you ever move, the cost and annoyance of keeping books just skyrockets.

I have a lot of books I love, but 90% of books are essentially disposable vehicles for information of transient value.

[salgernon]

My kids can't browse books that are no longer on my shelves. I encourage them to pick up a random book and explore it. It's kind of like having a hard copy of the web without distractions, and I can see them making their own connections from the words, rather than following links prepared by someone else.

[smackay]

I wouldn't under-estimate the value of this as an experience for kids. I discovered a copy of "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" by Alan Sillitoe in a pile of old books my parent had. It was like discovering a small nugget of gold.

[tomkarlo]

My parents were a book household too. But back then, there was no Internet, no e-books. The only place to wander onto a book was your shelf or the local bookstore. Times change.

[weichi]

So do you keep the books that are part of the 90%, or do you get rid of them?

[tomkarlo]

I get rid of them. My forcing function is that I won't buy any more shelves - I have two bookcases with about 4 shelves each, shared with my girlfriend, and if I want to keep a book I have to get rid of one. It's still probably 300 lbs of books but it keeps it bounded. (And a lot of those are hers, because she went to law school and still has many of her law books. Most of mine are design or cooking, since the color plates don't really have electronic equivalents yet and some are signed.)

Also, for text-only, transient stuff like business books and history books (that I'm unlikely to read twice), I buy a lot of Kindle stuff now.

[jf]

I highlight and leave marginalia in my books for the same reason.

[bliker]

I hope my kindle will still work

[kryten]

My bookshelf is 22 years old already :)

[hereonbusiness]

You can get a library subscription for next to nothing.

[dennisgorelik]

How do you know children want to read your old books?

[kryten]

They're my children and they have asked!

[joecurry]

Extremely interested in this idea - I've gotten to the point of pricing out FedEx-Kinko's to cut the bindings off ($1/ book actually) and then scanning them dual-sided into Evernote with searchable text (if you're a Pro member it scans inside PDFs).

Still can get past the cognitive dissonance of letting my bookshelf go.

[cpeterso]

Or you could sell the books and use the proceeds to buy an e-book PDF of the same book. :)

[abawany]

I have done that a lot. I have also used scanning services such as bookscan.us or 1dollarscan.com to convert older books to PDF.

[keithpeter]

I do re-read books, but only some. I've set myself a target of reducing the library in size by a factor of two over the next year, simply through space constraints.

The decision making is forcing valuable reflections!

[akristofcak]

Well, something good came out of this silly idea: I had no idea Amazon does this!! Thanks!

[tomkarlo]

I wish I could just bar code in media and books, accept / reject the prices en masse and then generate the shipping label to send it to Amazon. I'd be a lot more inclined to send in stuff if the process was a little more streamlined.

Update: apparently there's an Android app for that: http://www.amazon.com/Cash4Books-net-Cash4Books-Scan-Sell-Bo... ... wonder if it does games too.

[effbott]

Something like that already exists: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/05/one-click-selling/

[tomkarlo]

Things like books and games are fluid enough markets that the difference in the price I'm going to get between Amazon and other outlets is going to be fairly small. I just want a faster way to scan in ISBN codes so I don't have to enter them manually.

Sold seems like it might be good for hard-to-price items like antiques, but for media it just seems like a way to end up paying two companies' fees instead of just one.

[famousactress]

I've also used http://glyde.com/ to do the same.

[bliker]

do you know if they ship to EU?

[famousactress]

They do not :(

[cpeterso]

Thanks! I had no idea Amazon did this.

The FAQ says they buy textbooks, but the page shows recent non-textbook books I've purchased as items I could "get up to $10.98". Have you sold books before? I usually sell my books to my local Half Price Books, but they pay a pittance.

[bumbledraven]

I sold 50 or so of my books through Amazon when I moved. I usually got a great price through the trade-in program, which is nice because you get paid as soon as they receive the book from you, but if I didn't think the trade-in price was high enough, I just sold it through the Amazon seller program. This is a service where you ship your books to them, name the price you're willing to sell each one for, they warehouse them for you, and when someone buys one they ship it out and cut you a check. Pretty great.

[cpeterso]

Thanks for the Amazon Seller suggestion. I didn't know about that either. <:)

[specialist]

Given the insulting price offered by Half Price, I just started giving all my books to my local public library. They mostly auction them to raise money.

I may check out the Amazon Trade In option mentioned upthread.