“You have so many books you can’t put them all out,” adds the owner of Motte & Bailey Booksellers. “I have some books on my sale table for two or three dollars that, a couple of years ago, might have been six or seven and on a shelf.”
Africa Schaumann, owner of the Dawn Treader Book Shop, says a lot of her stock “comes from those probably in the Boomer generation. Most of the Civil War stuff I’m buying is from Boomers, also a lot of the classical studies.” She’s currently looking to replenish her Middle East section. | Photo: Mark Bialek
Nonprofits have observed the same phenomenon. “We certainly see an increase in people donating a lot of books at a time,” says Rachel Pastiva, director of the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library and its bookshop, “huge collections that you could tell people saved for decades.”
Alloway believes the trend started with the easing of Covid-related restrictions, as do Pastiva and Pam Ehrhart, 2023 cochair of the Ann Arbor chapter of the American Association of University Women’s annual sale. “Over Covid, they saved their books for us,” Pastiva says. “People are returning to their prepandemic habits.”
But the fundamental driver of the surge seems to be Baby Boomers growing old. People who need to downsize for one reason or another have long been a steady source of inventory for the trade, and with even the youngest boomers approaching sixty, many are shedding the books they’ve acquired over a lifetime.
“Thank goodness,” says Africa Schaumann, owner of the Dawn Treader Book Shop. “A lot of our stock comes from those probably in the Boomer generation. Most of the Civil War stuff I’m buying is from Boomers, also a lot of the classical studies. As you can imagine, our Middle East section is popular right now. I hope some professor who is interested [in the region] is going to be downsizing, so we can replenish it.”
But however they choose to shed their surplus, “book lovers are the same all over,” says Ehrhart. “They want their books to go to a home rather than get tossed.”