Please Don't Raid Little Free Libraries
First, a reminder that tomorrow is the last day to enter our pre-vacation drawing to win a $50 gift card. We’ll choose the winner in a random drawing at close of business on the 12th, and the card will be here for pick up when we re-open on Wednesday, the 29th.
This morning, something happened that we want to talk to you about. A friend of Kate’s came into the store with a bag of books to donate, and she stage-whispered to another friend that they mostly came from Little Free Libraries. Another customer overheard and got very upset, explaining that she and others work hard to curate their free libraries—emphasis on free.
We lost a sale and, presumably, a customer. While that’s an inevitability in retail, you hope the customers you lose are at least people you’re genuinely at odds with. This wasn’t that.
Talking about it later, we agreed on two things:
We don’t feel great about people taking books from Little Free Libraries and selling them to us.
In fact, we should make it a policy and announce it.
So here we are, announcing it.
The used book ecosystem is weird. It’s hard to be fully transparent about how we source books, because there are many different answers: Customers, library sales, estate sales, our own shelves, and more. When someone brings books to trade or donate, we don’t ask where they got them—and we’re not going to start asking. But we are going to say here, in writing: Please don’t raid Little Free Libraries on our behalf!
Please do, however, make an appointment (by emailing used@jarvissquarebooks.com) to bring us any books you actually own that you’d like to trade for store credit. We always need more, and we’re so excited to see what you’ve got.