Betsy Knight and Shirley Starke were nearly swept off their feet by romance novels in the Palatine Public Library.
As organizers of romance novel sales for the library, the two Palatine residents have been so inundated with used books that they’ve had to stack them in tall, wobbly towers of boxes that tend to topple over.
“Shirley and I (each) have been under avalanches,” Knight said. “I jumped” out of the way, she added.
“I didn’t,” said Starke, a retired teacher, “and I felt it.”
The book sales, a fundraiser by the Friends of the Palatine Public Library, are also popular at many other suburban libraries. The fact that such groups have so many volumes to sell is evidence not only that book sales are thriving, but also that book reading, collecting and recycling through donations have never been more in vogue, volunteers say.
Twenty years ago, such sales could be counted on to raise only a few hundred dollars. Now many used-book sales ring up $10,000 or more. Arlington Heights’ Friends group, for example, rakes in more than $65,000 a year from its four book sales. The group’s next sale is April 29 and 30.
While some of the books are library-shelf castoffs, most come from donations from the public.
Library and Friends officials attribute the rise in revenues to more interest by aging Baby Boomers in searching for out-of-print books from their childhood, and book collectors looking for hidden treasures.
The organizers also acknowledge that they’ve become a lot more savvy about how to run and market the sales.
“Most groups find that they can sell more if people can find more books,” said Jane Rutledge, editor of the newsletter for Friends of the Library USA, the national organization of library fundraising groups. “We are sorting more, putting them in categories; that is how real bookstores do it.”
Sales are more successful if organizers have a knack for judging a book by its cover–hardcover books are usually priced at $1 and paperbacks are 50 cents. Some newer-edition best-sellers are priced a couple bucks higher. And it helps to organize the books by category, loosely along the lines of the Dewey Decimal System.
Volunteers also have grown more sophisticated at spotting rarer books and pricing them for a few dollars more, or even putting them up for auction. And readers are growing hungrier for unusual books or out-of-print titles that will complete their own collections.
The auctions started after the Arlington Heights group discovered a gem. Fifteen years ago, Margaret Gray, one of four book sale organizers, found a signed copy of the autobiography of Amelia Earhart. In the back of the book was a recording of one of Earhart’s speeches.
Gray knew the book was worth more than a dollar, but she did not know how much more. The group ended up contacting a book dealer who bought it for $75, she said.
“I always felt guilty because we didn’t offer it to our Friends,” Gray said. So after that, any unusual books are put up for auction at the sales.
Another big force driving the success of the book sales are Baby Boomers reminiscing about their past, said Sarah Long, director of the Wheeling-based North Suburban Library System and president of the American Library Association. And they are not necessarily looking for rare editions, she said.
“I bet you that for almost every person there are books in their past they would want to read again,” Long said. “We want to gather around us things that have been meaningful in the past.”
At Palatine’s Friends group, Knight, who is 56, has spent decades collecting a series of books she remembers reading when she was in 5th and 6th grade and living in Japan, where her father was stationed in the Army. The books, about a badger and his friends, have long been out of print, so she is always on the lookout for books she doesn’t own.
“I re-read them every year,” Knight said. “They are very calming.”
And it’s not just Baby Boomers looking for books, said Laura Luteri, a trustee of the Mt. Prospect Library and a member of its Friends group. Sometimes high school students are looking for their English class assignments.
Several years ago, for example, copies of “Diary of Anne Frank,” “Lord of the Flies” and “Fahrenheit 451” became hard to find, but the local high school had assigned the books for class, said Laura Luteri, a trustee of the Mt. Prospect Library and a member of its Friends group. The Friends were bombarded with requests from parents of students desperately searching for copies, she said.
Then there are the women who devour romance novels. “Bodice-rippers” are so popular, and some Friends groups collect so many, that they hold a separate sale.
Ernestine Scott, who is in her 70s, sent her husband, James, to the Palatine library’s romance novel sale earlier this month–just before Valentine’s Day–to buy some Harlequin Romances. He paid $10 and went home with 200 books in his trunk, packed in white paper bags decorated with hearts and big, red kisses.
“All she does is read all day,” James Scott said.
Ernestine Scott said she reads about a book a day, and this supply should last her until this summer.
“They are very entertaining,” she said, “They keep your mind off your troubles.”
