More than 10,000 Books for Sale at Annual "Friends" Sale

There’s no shortage of readers and academics in Princeton so the hot ticket in town this weekend may just be be the 2012 Friends of the Princeton Public Library Book Sale.

More than 10,000 books will be for sale, most priced between $1 and $3. Art book and special selections are priced higher.

The sale begins on Friday Oct. 12 and continues through Sunday in the library’s Community Room and in a tent on Hinds Plaza. Cash and checks will be accepted.

All of the money raised (minus expenses) will go to the library to purchase new materials. Despite municipal funding, the library receives its entire budget to buy materials from the Friends of the Princeton Public Library, said Eve Niedergang, co-chair of this year’s sale. Last year, the sale netted a little over $30,000, she said.

Book will be organized into many different categories, so whether you’re looking for children’s books, sheet music, history books, CDs, DVDs (including popular TV series), fiction or non-fiction, the sale should have something for everyone.

Of particular note this year are:

• books from the collection of Peter and Wendy Benchley, including books on sharks and other aquatic life, many inscribed. Peter Benchley directed the movie "Jaws."
• a large collection donated by Anne-Marie Slaughter (Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University)
• scholarly books on Asian history and politics, international economics and African-American studies
• modern first editions including F. Scott Fitzgerald's “Beautiful and the Damned,” William Faulkner's “Big Woods,” and “Ulysses”
• Books signed or inscribed by Athol Fugard, Randall Jarrell, Paul Theroux, Norman Rockwell, Bill Moyers, Paul Fussell, Paul Muldoon, and Paul Krugman
• a set of works by Charles Darwin published in the late 1800s
• Princeton University Press edition of the works of Samuel Johnson
• rare two-volume numbered edition of Mushrooms, Russia and History
• signed, limited boxed set of Hugh Moss's study of Chinese Imperial porcelain

The sale opens with a preview on Friday from 10 a.m. to noon. Admission is $10, but free for Friends of the Library. Numbered tickets will be available at the door starting at 9 a.m., and customers will enter the sale in numerical order. Book dealers often start lining up around 6:30 a.m. on Friday, Niedergang said.

After the Preview Sale, admission to the book sale is free for the remainder of the weekend. Free admission hours wil be from noon to 8:30 p.m. on Friday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday and 1-5:30 p.m.  onSunday.

On Sunday, books 
will be sold at half price all afternoon in the Community Room and from 1-3 p.m. 
in the tent on Hinds Plaza. From 3-5:30 p.m., books in the tent will be sold for $5 a bag (bags provided).

The book sale is run entirely by volunteers, with close to 100 participating in this year’s event.

Sherri Garber, who is co-chairing this year’s sale with Niedergang remembers finding “The Boys of Summer” a book by Roger Kahn about the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers. The book, inscribed by baseball great and member of that Dodgers team Jackie Robinson, was in a box of mostly nondescript sports books. Curious if it was an authentic autograph, Garber had the book autenticated and appraised for $950-$1200.

But there’s more than valuable finds that make the annual book sale a success.

“It’s a great community activity and a wonderful way to recycle books,” Garber said. ”People will come up to you and say 'I found this book!' and they’re so excited.”

She grins as she remembers the man who bought hundreds of records at the sale one year and then announced, “Now I’ve got to get a record player.”

Items unsold at the end of the book sale will be collected by a company which will try to sell the books online or recycle them for pulp. Any profits will be spit between the company and Friends of the Princeton Public Library, the same thing that happens with donations that don’t make it into the book sale.

So what typically doesn’t sell?

“Celebrity bios are left,” Garber said. “Even for $5 a bag, no one wants them. ”