The information diet continues. After deleting most of the feeds from my RSS reader, I started to look around the house to see if there wasn’t anything material I could purge. The logical target was my book shelf. After 17 years of living in Japan, I’ve accumulated a lot of books. I have Amazon to blame for that. Readers of this blog have probably come to the conclusion that I buy lots of computers and keitais and cars etc. Well, the truth is I spend more money on books than anything else. I buy books like there’s no tomorrow. I read all my books but I never finish any of them. Most of the books I read are non-fiction and after years of reading so many non-fiction books I’ve come to the conclusion that only about 10% of any book is worth reading, the rest is just filler. I usually only read the information that I need and then the book gets shelved. Over the years I’ve been more careful about my book purchases but that hasn’t really kept me from accumulating a fairly large library.
When I moved house a couple years ago I got rid of half my books, about 200 or so, by just dumping them in the trash. I put out 5 boxes of books one night and in the morning the boxes were torn open and half my books had been liberated. It was a bit surprising since all of them were English books on boring subjects like javascript and English teaching methodology. This time I decided to try and sell them at one of the used English book stores in Tokyo. Shari has a good post about trading your unwanted books which is what motivated me to get off my butt and sell my books. I could have (should have) done this year’s ago but I’m lazy and have too much space in my house.
Anyways, since the last time I junked my book collection I managed to accumulate 3 times as many books in only a few years. To prevent this from happening again I decided that I would limit my book collection to 100 books and for every new book I purchased I had to get rid of an old one. The criteria for which books to keep were based mostly on subjects which I am currently interested in and or refer to on a regular basis. These include finance, trading, health, business, marketing, some science and sociology and a couple new age books (don’t laugh). I used to read lots of fiction and literature in the past but since I hardly ever read a novel these days I decided to get rid of all of them. I did kept 2 of my favorite literary novels though, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. I reread these every other year. I also kept all books related to Japanese language study. If I got rid of these books I’d be subsconsciously saying to myself that I’ve given up on studying Japanese and I can’t be doing that. I’m still in denial.
After a few hours of sorting out my books, I discovered that 100 proved an impossible limit for me, so I extended it to 150 books. Of the remaining 400+ books, about a third were computer related and were already out of date. These went into the trash along with some books in poor condition. The rest I threw into 3 big boxes, loaded them into my roadster, and took them to Blue Parrot Books in Takadanobaba. I’ve never been to this book shop but it’s a lot smaller than Good Day Books. The owner was very nice though and we chatted about a bunch of stuff as she went through my books. In the end, they didn’t want half of my books and offered me ¥15,000 in credit or ¥6,400 cash. Not much considering the amount I must have spent to buy all those books in the first place. Since the whole point of the exercise was to reduce books I took the cash instead of the credit. I told them they could have the rest of the books to do whatever they wanted with. I was happy just to be free of the baggage.
Next I’ll be targeting my closet and dresser!
lol! I see you are using the RSS limiting rule for everything, I’m scared ;) For me, getting rid off books is VERY difficult.
Btw, next time try selling your books using Amazon Japan. I don’t know why but foreign books sell pretty well on Amazon Japan.
Last thing, I recommend you watching this talk http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200&hl=en
it just says that having many options, many things, many information is not always good.
The video is based on a book called Paradox of Choice. And it’s one of the books which I sold!! Is that ironic or what?
Good book but it was one of those books which is 90% filler.
hahaha! I was going to tell you that just watching 10% (or less) of the speech is enough to get the message ;)
I have found from selling used books and LPs (geez, that dates me know) that taking in smaller lots will make you more money. They never give you a big return on a large stack. It’s more work to keep going back every week or so but it does work in my experience. I know it wasn’t the point to make money but it’s an interesting observation. I once took back a stack of albums the store didn’t want then went back after a few weeks and they took about half of the remainders.
And don’t just give them the leftovers. Take them to a charity organization and get a tax deduction. In the US anyway. Actually you would get more in deduction then the stores will usually give you anyway.
Interesting! I will have to remember that next time. This time, however, I just wanted to unload the whole lot and be free of “stuff” so I wasn’t expecting much. Having to go back several times would be alright if the shop was on the way to work but both shops are out of the way for me.
Coincidentally my student today told me that she brought a 100 books into Book-Off and made 7600yen. Mostly comics and some novels. I know the condition of the books and their popularity is a huge factor but maybe Robbie is on to something.
Try eBay. You can get a lot for them on there - especially if you have grouped collections of computer books on the same subject. Computer books go out of data fast so it’s better to read them all and then sell them ASAP before they become worthless. Better to just gain the knowledge and then keep it in your head.
I have such a hard time letting go off books as well. If I hadn’t moved so frequently for a few years I won’t have reduced my collection.
I understand all to well, once I start cleaning I just keep going. Right now I’m on a cleaning crusade myself.
I think foreign books sell well on Amazon Japan because the retailer may be buying large lots of reduced price books. My fiancee often buys cooking books we have here in the U.S. for ridiculously low prices on Amazon Japan. Possible because of this Amazon Japan has earned a reputation for cheap foreign books.
Bravo for you, Roy! I bet you feel liberated getting rid of them.
I disagree that you should have sold them via Amazon or eBay because those methods are more cumbersome and time-consuming. For your goal of just getting them out without just tossing them in the trash (which is wasteful), I think ditching them at a used book store is ideal.
Once you’ve pared things down a lot and are getting rid of books bit by bit, then that’s the time to consider more profitable methods though personally, I’ve found that books aren’t the sort of thing which move or make much money unless they are rarer or highly-sought after volumes.
BTW, I agree that most “self-help” books aren’t worth completing. Most of them get pretty repetitive pretty fast.
I’ve been buying many graphic and illustration books but I fear the day I have to return home to Singapore - the freight cost for those books is going kill me I think…