I’m in the middle of pruning my overgrown book collection. So far, so good. The first books to get “voted off the island” were:

• Duplicate copies
• Japanese-language versions of books I had since bought in English-format
• Books available in electronic format, like the Sony Reader, PDF, or web
• Books available through the Burbank or Los Angeles libraries

I did not want to dump these troubles on my local library. I once read that if a library cannot use or sell a donated book, it throws the book away. I wanted to make sure my books found new homes and new readers.

Several books went to Powell’s Books in exchange for store credit. Powell’s Books paid for the cost of Media Mail shipping. All I had to do was provide the box in which to ship the books.

However, some books I could not sell to Powell’s. Either Powell’s did not want those specific titles, or a given book did not meet “Good” condition. I gave some books to Goodwill, but Goodwill only wants “child and adult novels.” Goodwill could accept my fiction books, but not my Japanese-language editions of Graphic-sha’s How to Draw Manga books.

Enter BookMooch, the online book-trading system. Books I could not sell to Powell’s or donate to Goodwill wound up on BookMooch. Three-quarters of the books I listed on BookMooch found homes almost immediately. I even found interested parties for the Japanese-language How to Draw Manga books, though no takers just yet for my Japanese-language 8Man manga.

Bit by bit, my book collection’s becoming more reasonable. I still have some ways to go, but I’m getting there.