We hope to increase the breadth and depth of our shelves by adding your gently loved books to the mix. We encourage you to come down to the store & trade in your used books in exchange for store credit so you can buy even more books to enjoy!

Bring in up to two (2) boxes/bags of your books on Wednesdays from 12–8pm. Do you have more than 2 boxes/bags of books? Or maybe Wednesdays aren’t convenient for you. Call John at 978-475-0143 to make an appointment.

How Our Used Book Program Works:

• Bring in your books to the Andover Bookstore during used book buying hours (12–8pm on Wednesdays). We’ll sign you up for an account if you don’t already have on and let you know how long it will take to evaluate your books (typically 10–20 minutes). During this time, feel free to browse in the store!
• We’ll sort through your books — checking their condition, our stock levels, the sales history of the titles and special orders. Books we can use will be priced and stickered for shelving. You will receive $1 for every paperback and $2 for every hardcover in store credit, which is redeemable for half of the cost of anything in the store.*
• Your credit will be waiting on our cash registers under your account. You can shop the same day or whenever you make it back to the store. Unused credit from used books expires one year from the date issued.
• Pick up your books. After we have evaluated the books that have potential to sell in the Andover Bookstore or on our website, we ask you to take home the books we could not accept. If you do not want them, and would rather donate them, just leave them behind and we will donate, recycle or put them in super-bargain bins.

*Using Your Credit When using your store credit, half of the cost of any item can be covered by the store credit that you have from used books.

For example, if you bring in 5 hardcover books and we accept all of them, you would receive $10 in used book store credit. If you wish to purchase a new paperback from $15, you would pay $7.50 out of your allotted store credit and $7.50 in cash. The other $2.50 in credit remains in your account until the next time you make a purchase.

General Buying Guidelines and What We Do Not Accept:

• We do not accept trade books with underlining or highlighting. If you have textbooks, light highlighting, underlining, and notes may be acceptable.
• We do not accept books that smell strongly of smoke, pets, mold, have water damage, or are dirty. Hardcover books that come with a dust jacket must have the jacket in good condition. Paperbacks should not have broken spines or be missing any pages.
• Many books become dated quickly or are just not part of the market at the Andover Bookstore — such books include, but are not limited to, travel guides, test preparation books, college guides, and computer or business books. Unless there books have been published in the current calendar year we are not likely to accept them.
• We do not accept book club editions, magazines, encyclopedias, Readers Digest condensed books, cassettes, VHS, CDs, DVDs or National Geographics.
• Hardcover vs. Paperback? Generally, our customers buying used books are looking for value in a used book; they are not looking to collect first editions. With that in mind, if the hardcover you want to sell has already been published in paperback we normally will not buy it. If the hardcover you have is not yet out in paperback, it is likely something we will definitely want.

Children’s Books? At present, we are only accepting children’s hardcover picture books in very good condition.