Do you see yourselves as competition to local college bookstores by selling donated books online?
No. Better World Books seeks to collect no-value/non-resale books that campus bookstores are not buying back. Because of the nature of our organization, the majority of the books that we sell online are old editions. For the most part, these are not the books that students are requested to purchase by their professors. Moreover, many of our customers are outside of the U.S. college market. Approximately one-quarter of our sales come from international markets.
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What is your relationship to your non-profit literacy partners?
We run book drives to benefit our non-profit literacy and education partners. We act as their exclusive agent to collect book donations on their behalf. The books that we collect are passed on to our partners or sold to create a sustainable stream of funding that enables these organizations to further their mission.
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Why doesn’t Better World Books send all of the books that it collects to the non-profit literacy partners? Why does Better World Books sell any of the books?
As of September 2006, we have collected more than three million books from campus book drives and programs with libraries and thrift stores. Of that number, 450,000 books were provided to Books For Africa and the National Center for Family Literacy.
Our literacy and non-profit organizations need not only books, but also cash. For example, the cost of shipping books is the single biggest hurdle that Books For Africa faces in its supply chain. Every book sold online on their behalf generates enough funding to ship seven books to the African continent.
For their programs in India, Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, and Sri Lanka, Room to Read publishes in-language educational materials. Our newest partner, the World Education & Development Fund, works with impoverished children in Latin America, requiring Spanish and Portuguese materials.
For additional information on how our non-profit literacy partners may use the funding generated by book sales, see What Can Your Qualifying Books Do?
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Why should my college bookstore work with Better World Books?
Students’ two top complaints with the college textbook purchasing process are sticker shock, followed by frustration when books are not repurchased during buyback. Collecting non-buyback books for a cause-related program positively resolves the latter. What is more, ours is an environmentally sustainable program. Better World Books recycles any books that lack after-market value, ensuring that none of the books collected end up in landfills.
Participating bookstores tell us that they benefit from increased store traffic and book drive publicity. They also say that they enjoy building relationships with the student service organizations and honor societies that they work with during the campus textbook drives. Moreover, bookstores gain storage by sending us non-resale/no-value books that take up space but do not generate revenue.
Best of all, working with Better World Books costs your store nothing. We provide all the materials, right down to the packing tape to seal the shipping boxes. Speaking of shipping, it’s free and our online UPS portal makes that final step easy, efficient, and fast.
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