No matter how much you love reading, in all likelihood, just like many other modern people, you are gradually switching to electronic books.
Undeniably, electronic books are a great alternative to traditional ones. They are ecologically-friendly and very compact allowing you to keep an entire library in one device. Of course, electronic books will not give you an amazing feeling of holding a traditional paper book in your hands. For that reason, there are still many people who are not ready to resign from traditional books altogether. Still, even such people usually have books in their libraries which they are not going to use.
Certainly, if you have such books at home, there is no need to keep them wasting space for such possessions. Yet, only rare people feel free to just throw books away or give them to the recycling points. What are other options for beating farewell to unwanted books?
Sort your books
First of all, you should understand the quality and value of the books in your home library. There might be books which you really love and use. Some people are happy to be owners of exclusive editions and rather old books.
Certainly, many of us just have very good books which are no longer used but someone else might find them useful.
Finally, there are also rather damaged books which cannot be used any more. These books can be recycled without any second thoughts.
Private collectors
Even though paper books are becoming less and less popular nowadays, the number of people collecting rare copies of books is growing. Just like in the case of any other collectors, the people who are collecting books are well-acquainted with their history and quality.
Of course, they will be interested only in really valuable books, yet, it does not mean you do not own such. Generally, the books older than 50 years already have some potential for being highly valued by book experts. That is why you should first offer such books to book collectors as they might interest them. Use special websites for finding book specialists.
Second-hand bookstores
Many second-hand bookstores are ready to purchase various types of old books, however, usually they require high quality from the copies.
Such bookstores will pay particularly high prices for signed copies or the books with illustrations of famous artists. In addition to it, censored books are particularly valuable to the owners of second-hand bookstores. Yet, they might also be willing to purchase less rare books under the condition of being of a high quality.
You can use special websites of these stores to get an approximate price for your books.
Libraries
You can also try giving your old books to libraries. The libraries located in small towns and villages might be particularly interested in receiving such donations as they are usually suffering from a deficit of modern literature.
Such libraries usually need encyclopaedias, classical literature as well as books for children. You can also try to give books of such types to educational organisations.
Cafes and restaurants
Today more and more cafes and restaurants using books to attract visitors. If you enjoy visiting cafes alone, you will enjoy the time there even more if you have a chance to read an interesting book while having a cup of delicious coffee.
Of course, such places also have their preferences for books. In their cases, their owners will be particularly eager to get captivating modern fiction, especially of the fantasy genre as well as books on psychology and productivity.
Bookcrossing
A relatively new way to give your old books a new life is known as bookscrossing. As you can guess from the name of this practice bookcrossing is based on exchanging books.
Bookcrossing is usually organised by libraries, however, you can find many other places engaged into this popular practice for instance, at the entrances of restaurants, large bookstores and even on the streets.
The idea of bookcrossing is simple. You can just take any book you like and leave the onme which can interest other people. You can also register your books on a special website for book crossing where you will need to give a special number to your book. You can leave the information about this book online so that people who really need it will be able to find it more easily.
As you can see, there is nothing difficult in such a book exchange while it can really help people find books they will love.
Other ways of utilising old books
If you have books which are suitable only for recycling, they can be used for different purposes before you decide to completely destroy them. Some people are using old books for art installations whereas others are creating very original pieces of furniture from books.
Probably, the most sophisticated way of using old books is book-carving which is a term used for describing creating small and precise sculptures out of old books which usually can be illustrations to the content of the book used for creation.