How should I best get rid of books?
I hope this is a decent place to post this, I am not too active on Reddit except for when I really can't find a good answer to a question.
Hello! I am a person who has amassed a large collection of books throughout my life. Mostly through gifts, family, friends, sales that caught my eye a bit too much, and just through the general collection from my early childhood to now. Many of these books are genres/authors I dislike or just generally things I doubt I will ever read/re-read. I hate having this excess of good-quality books when I know so many of them could be in the hands of people who actually like them.
While I am open to selling them for cheap prices on perhaps eBay or bookscouter or some other website, I think I would rather find a way to get these books to people in free/accessible manners. I have considered donating them to my local library, but I have seen librarians on subreddits complaining about too many books being donated at once or books being in too poor quality. I really believe that reading is a very undervalued and necessary part of life that oftentimes is restricted for people due to inaccessibility and price, and I just want to know if there is anywhere I could be giving my unloved books to best get them in the hands of people who would genuinely enjoy them?
I am also open to doing different things with different books (e.g. I could give some to my library, perhaps sell a few as I do not have a job, give some to other places, etc etc), but I just am not certain how best to go about getting rid of these books in a manner which is not wasteful or harmful.
So sorry if this makes little sense, I am a bit exhausted at the moment.
Posted Feb 15, 2026, 8:29 PM UTC