T HE F RIEND S N EWSLETTER

GOLIBRARYFRIENDS.ORG
SUPPORTING
AND

ADVOCATING

FOR THE

FOTL

VOLUME I

GoLibraryFriends.org, 840 E. Main Street, Santa Paula, CA 93060 Email: GoLibraryFriends@Gmail.com, (800) 799-8604, Direct: (661) 388-1900

September 2013

Presidents Message
By John Freeland The Friends Newsletter is a Newsletter for members of the executive board of FOTL and Librarians. The Friends Newsletter is published each month by GoLibraryFriends.org, the non-profit and charitable arm of GoGetterBooks.com, to provide information and insight for FOTL executive boards so they can make informed decisions when managing the Friends organization. The main objective for GoLibraryFriends.org (GLF) is to support and advocate for Friends organizations nationwide. Moreover, it is GLFs goal to assist FOTL to manage their operations efficiently and effectively by providing insight, advisory and consulting services and seminars and workshops. Each issue will contain one or two articles. We recommend that recipients save the articles for future reference by printing and placing in a three ring binder. At the end of the year you will have twelve articles that can be passed on to further generations of FOTL executive boards. The Fall Fundraising Book Sale season is upon us. In this issue of The Friends Newsletter we will discuss how FOTL can maximize the return on book sales. Plus, Go-Getter Books & Co. and its affiliates are growing and has recently opened its retail used book store to find homes for unwanted library books and raise needed funds for worthwhile charities. Go-Getter Books retail program can be adopted by other online and retail operations and we have the scoop with an interview with the President

Inside This Issue of The Friends Newsletter Presidents Message Maximizing Your Public Book Sale Returns Making a Difference - Interview with Mitch Freeland, President of Go-Getter Books On its Charitable Mandate About GoLibraryFriends.org 1 1

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of Go-Getter Books, Mitch Freeland, yes my brother, how libraries can fund charities with their unwanted books with little to no effort.

Maximizing Your Public Book Sale Returns

Fall is upon us and FOTL Books Sales are here. September, October and November are the big months for sales. Are you doing all the right things to maximize your return from Book Sales? And then what do you do after the sale with the unwanted books? Do they go to Misfit Island with the unwanted Christmas toys or even worst trashed? In this article you will learn how to maximize your return on equity (books) and time which is ever fleeing. A majority of libraries rely on FOTL book sales for their fundraising needs. This is why it is important that FOTL do not take for granted the flow of monthly book donations. What would happen if those donations stop? Its happened before and it is happening right now. A shift in the economy, public policy and subpar business practices can contribute to libraries receiving less donated books. There has been private enterprise placing thousands
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of book bins in various communities resulting in more book donations to private charities and less to local libraries. Some FOTL have taken action and appealed to the public to get these companies to stop placing Book Donation Bins in close proximity to libraries. Some have been successful in their efforts and some not. We have a solution for this and will discuss this later as a win-win tool to maximize your book sale revenues. When you sit down with your Friends Board and discuss how you will maximize your return from your sales, it is smart only to focus on those items you have control over and not the items you have no control over. For example, you have no control over the economy or new government policy, so dont waste your time thinking about these issues. Here is a checklist for you to follow to maximize the revenue from your book sale event. 1. Plan sales that dont conflict with other FOTL sales. You can check sales on www.booksalefinder.com and www.booksalemanager.com. The larger check writers are the book dealers and they can only go to one sale at a time. 2. Allow scanners. This issue is very important and has become controversial and thats why its at the top of the list. There is a case for and a case against scanners. Book dealers use scanners and do most of the purchasing. The large checks you receive come from dealer dealers. The only negative is that a few book dealers are rude, crude and aggressive and have given the other 99% good guys a bad name. Book dealers do this for a living and the last four years have not been very kind for anybody especially book dealers. Many have gone out of business. Nevertheless, it is bad policy and hurts profits when 1% of the bad behavior punishes the 99%. It is better to embrace the dealers and their scanners and enforce good behavior rules. 3. Offer member preview sales. Mostly book dealers will come to these sales. If you are not having preview sales you need

to start. Your preview sales should always be strictly enforced meaning if you are not a member, no admittance. I have seen FOTL relax their policies and the preview sale is flooded with non-members. This is a good way to anger paying members who pay for the privilege to shop early. 4. Dont over-price books. People are accustomed to pay between $.25 and $2.00. Once you get over $2.00 on a book most people will put their brakes on and deliberate. How many books could you have sold for $2.00 that were listed for $3.00 and ended up going in the bag sale on the last day? Youll never know. Also, the last thing you want is a customer thinking the books are too expensive and they never return again. As a dealer there are sales that we do not attend because the books are priced too high. Go Getter Books typically purchases between a 100 and 200 books at the preview sale then we come back to your bag sale and sometimes purchase over 1,000. 5. Post your sale on your website, Craigs List, BookSaleFinder.com, BookSaleManger.com, Facebook, Google plus and other social networks. Get help if you dont know how to do this. 6. Have a bag sale the last 1 hours of the sale. Here you will blow out much of the unwanted books that you will have to donate or recycle later. At the end of the sale you can always call www.GoLibraryFriends.org for a donation pickup. What we cant find homes for we recycle. 7. Contrary to #6 above, to maximize your revenues, do not have a bag sale and instead call Go-Getter Book for a Free Pickup and get on their 50/50 Consignment Program. They do all the work and send you a monthly check when items sell.

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8. Encourage the disabled community. Advertise to the disabled community that your sale is equipped for easy accessibility for wheelchairs. Disabled people have lots of money to spend and as a group read more than the average person. You can post on many disabled persons forums such as the www.ChristopherReevefoundation.org or www.carecure.com. There are dozens of websites you can post your sale for free. 9. Dont place books on the floor. Stack the shelves and place the books properly on tables. During the sale when room becomes available place more books on the tables. Try to keep the books off the floor. Boxes of books on the floor get pushed in the aisles and create problems. Dont wait for someone to trip and get hurt. 10. Have volunteers or students deliver flyers of your sale. Flyers should be delivered to the community that announce the book sales and encourage citizens to donate for the sale. 11. Have a raffle 2 hours after the start of the sale. Have various prizes that may include: free membership, free book from the sale, free tote book bag, etc. Get creative and have fun. Be sure to advertise the raffle on all flyers and websites. 12. Solicit Book Dealers and Book Stores. If you are a FOTL that doesnt get a lot of book donations solicit the local book dealers and used book stores. They usually recycle their inventory every few months. You can put these books back in circulation at your sale one more time before the recycle bin gets them. 13. Donation Book Bin. Earlier we talked about libraries losing book donations to certain companies invading their community with donation book bins. GoGetter Books has a solution that benefits the library and the entire community. They publicize on the Bin that proceeds from

Book donations go to the participating library. The bins are placed in high traffic areas such as outside Post Office, Supermarket parking lot or even at the library parking lot itself. Go-Getter Books does all the work, placing the bin, collecting the books when the bin fills, shipping, listing on 35 websites, selling and packaging. In the end, the FOTL/library get a monthly check of 50% of the proceeds from the sale without lifting a finger. The property owner is pleased to Host the bin because it shows that he/she cares about the community, the library, sustainability to thousands of customers that notice the bin. This is one of the best solutions I have seen that is a win-win for everybody involved and this is one way for the library to capture more donations and make more money from the sale of its books. 14. Buy-Back Website plus a Free Scanner. This is another Go-Getter Books Free Program for FOTL/Librarians. The last thing you want to do at public sale is give-away a book for $1.00 that is worth $50.00 or more. Our advice to you is to pre-screen your books on the buy-back website www.GoGetterBuysBooks.com. Type or scan your ISBN and get a price. When you are finished you simply print the Free mailing label and ship your books. If you have 50 or more books, please call for a pick-up (800) 799-8604. If you want to make things easy for yourself ask for a scanner and they you will be sent one for Free, providing you sell books through GoGetter Books. Call to get details. 15. Pre-Screen Consignment Program. Go-Getter Books will pre-screen your books prior to your public book sale so you do not give-a-way a book valued at $100 for $.50. Why put all that profit in the hands of a dealer or somebody who doesnt have any ideas the real value of the book. These items will be placed on Go-Getters Consignment Program and offered on over
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35 online marketplaces, to maximize a quick sale. 16. Pre-Sale Premium Purchase. If you dont want to take any risk of having a poor sale, Go-Getter Books has a program to purchase a small portion of your books, about 5% for 150% of your normal public sales prices. This gets your organization a fat check quickly. All of Go-Getters programs are designed to maximize returns to the FOTL/Library. Your FOTL organization should always try to maximize book sales, because it could happen to you no more donations. If donors thought their donated books were being thrown in the trash or even being sold for $1 a bag, do you think they would continue to donate? To me a book is sacred and should never be abused throwing a good book away is book abuse. Maybe Im going too far here, but I like books! To learn more about how to grow your book sales contact John Freeland, John@GoGetterBooks.com or toll free (800) 799-8604.

TFN: When did you open? And, where are you located? Mr. Freeland: July 11 was the grand opening for the store. We are located at 840 E. Main Street, Santa Paula, Ca. TFN: Why did you choose Santa Paula? Mr. Freeland: It was a combination of a lot of things including lease terms, location, size and that Santa Paula had no bookstore. Every community needs a bookstore. We have approximately 10,000 combined sq. ft. of which 1,500 sq. ft. is used for the retail store and the balance for our online sales warehouse. TFN: Earlier you mentioned fundraising for your causes how does that work? Mr. Freeland: At our grand opening event we raised $1,030 for the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Paula and Fillmore. As of now, every three months we have a big 3-day sale and 25% of sale proceeds go to our charities. TFN: Where do you get your books and how do you price them? Mr. Freeland: Most of our books are from local library. We pick up after the public book sales and we also receive by freight. After screening the books we place the more valuable ones on our Consignment Program. Those with little to no online value will be displayed in the store. We try to find a home for all our books. We have 20,000-50,000 books in the store at any one time. Most of the books have little online value, yet they have value in the store. Over 95% of the books are priced $3.00 and below. We also offer DVDs, CDs and VHS Tapes. TFN: What causes do you support? Mr. Freeland: We are just beginning to support the local Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Make4|Page

Making a Difference An Interview with Mitch Freeland, President of Go-Getter Books

I was thinking that this would be awkward interviewing my brother, but I told him we can get through it quickly if he didnt argue with me, so we started. TFN: When there seems to be bookstore closures everywhere, what influenced you to open retail used bookstore? Mr. Freeland: We are primarily an online book dealer with a strong social mandate to fund causes that are dear to us. We dont look at the retail store as a profit center, but as a way to promote awareness and raise funds for our causes.

a-Wish Foundation, Magic Johnston Foundation, Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, Toys-for-Tots, John of God, Armenian General Benevolent Union Orphans, The Humane Society and we have our own Go-Getter Books Scholarship Program that we are funding for 2014. TFN: It seems you have a lot of childrens causes, why so many? Mr. Freeland: We have many causes focused on children because we believe libraries benefit children the most. Children are our future. I have very fond memories of spending long hours in the library with you. Mama would drop us off after school and we would usually close the place. There were no computers in those days, so we would study and do our research at the library. TFN: When is your next big sale? Mr. Freeland: Our next big sale is October 24-26 and we will have over 50,000 books. 25% of the sales proceeds will be split between the Magic Johnson Foundation and Make-AWish Foundation of Ventura. After that its our Christmas Party, Fundraiser and Toy Drive on December 12-14 that will benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Paula and Fillmore and Toys-for-Tots. TFN: Explain your Go-Getter Books Scholarship Program. Mr. Freeland: We are giving out $500 and $1,000 scholarships to Junior College Transfers and incoming freshman to four year colleges and universities. The students need to show merit as well as need and cannot be the recipient of any other major financial rewards. We are hoping to give out 10 scholarships in 2014 funded by a portion of the revenues from the retail store. TFN: We have talked a lot about the retail store and fundraising, next time we will discuss the various fundraising programs you have

for FOTL organizations. Before we close is there anything you want to leave us with? Mr. Freeland: Yes, I want to thank you for the time and I hope your readers enjoy reading about what we are doing. In a way, our retail store, or what I call our Fundraising Experiment, is just that, an experiment in fundraising. If it pays for itself over the next 12 months we will consider rolling it out in other communities and continue funding local charities. Thank you and I will see you for dinner. TFN: We will do this again in about a month there are so many good things happening theres no reason to keep them a secret. See you at dinner. To learn more about Go-Getter Books and its charitable mandate go to www.GoGetterBooks.com or contact John Freeland at John@GoGetterBooks.com or call (800) 799-8604.

About GoLibraryFriends.org
Go Library Friends is the non-profit arm of www.GoGetterBooks.com and designed to provide funding solutions for Libraries and Friends of the Library. Our mission is to support and advocate for FOTL by providing funding solutions through advisory and consulting services To learn more about our programs or to answer any questions pertaining to the content of the newsletter please contact John Freeland, President at (800) 799-8604 or at GoLibraryFriends@gmail.com. Visit our website at www.GoLibraryFriends.org or www.GoGetterBooks.com, the largest Free book inventory on the web thousands of free books.

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