Why We Take the Whole Collection, Not Just the Best Books

If you're clearing a large collection of books, there is an easier question to ask than “Which of these books are worth selling?”

The better question might be: “Do I really want to spend hours finding out?”

There are marketplaces with apps you can use to scan books individually, letting an algorithm decide whether they are wanted, and then for the few that meet its criteria you get from pennies to a few pounds. It can sound appealing, particularly when faced with hundreds of books.

But what happens to everything the algorithm doesn't want?

You are still left with the books that are too common, too old, too slow-selling or simply not considered valuable enough. You have spent time effectively working for the app owner identifying the books that can be sold, and then you are left with the difficult job of clearing away titles deemed worthless.

We don't cherry-pick

At The Sussex Book Collector, we take a different approach.

When we agree to take a collection, we don't simply select the most valuable titles and leave you with everything else. We take the ordinary books alongside the more desirable ones.

That's important because a book collection isn't just a pile of individual products. It is a mixture of books: some may be particularly interesting, some may sell quickly, while others may be worth only a few pence or take months – perhaps even a year – to find their next reader.

Our small price paid to you per book reflects that reality.

You could almost certainly make more money from some of the best individual books by finding buyers yourself. If you have the time, knowledge and patience, you may be able to sell the cream of a collection individually.

But that's not what we are offering.

We are offering a practical way to clear the whole collection.

The books that sell for pounds help us recycle the books that sell for pennies

This is where our small business model comes in.

The books worth £10 help make it possible for us to drive out to collect books worth pennies. The books that sell quickly help support the ones that might sit on a shelf for many months before finding their next reader.

It is a simple principle, but an important one.

Rather than deciding that a book isn't worth dealing with because it has little monetary value, we look at the collection as a whole. Some books will be easier to sell than others, but each one deserves the opportunity to find someone who wants to read it.

That is why we don't need every book to be valuable.

But we do need all the books in your collection to make the whole process viable.

Giving books a second life

For us, this is also about more than money.

Books are made to be read. A book that has been sitting unused on a shelf for years may still have plenty of life left in it. Someone else may be looking for that particular title, perhaps because it relates to their work, their hobby, their studies, their childhood or simply because they love books.

By taking collections in their entirety, we can sort, store and offer those books to new readers rather than seeing perfectly usable books become a disposal problem.

That is our small-business contribution to a more circular approach to books: keeping them in use for as long as possible.

Of course, not every book can be saved. Some simply have no realistic market. But where a book can be passed on, reused or sold to another reader, we'd much rather give it that opportunity than see it unnecessarily end up in recycling (we use professional recycling services when all other avenues fail).

So before you scan every book...

If you're faced with a large collection, ask yourself how much your time is worth.

Do you really want to scan hundreds of ISBNs, wait for algorithms to tell you which books they might accept, pack and post individual orders, deal with returns and enquiries – and then still have to work out what to do with everything that was rejected?

Or would you rather have someone take responsibility for the collection as a whole?

At The Sussex Book Collector, we believe there is value in making book clearance straightforward.

We take the good books with the ordinary ones. We take the quick sellers with the slow sellers. And, where possible, we work to give the whole collection a second life.

So before you start scanning every book in the house, why not let us take on the difficult job of finding the next person who wants to read them?

Your books may not all be worth a fortune. But that doesn't mean they aren't worth saving.