How do I sell two large-ish book collections?

Former academic librarian here... I don't think cold-calling is *tacky* but I don't know that it's going to do you much good. With the librarian at your own institution, you should go actually talk to the person if at all possible. No library I've worked at would pay money for a lot of books that they didn't choose, but I suppose it's not impossible. At the libraries I've worked at a large percentage of donated books end up on the book sale shelf. A good place to approach would be a library at an institution that has recently begun offering a program in the subject of your collection, because they will be morivated to build a broad and deep collection quickly. You will almost definitely get more money for the books if you sell them individually or in small lots. But of course it will be much more work.

To expand on what I was saying earlier, and to hopefully make librarians sound less like book-hating ogres, kmennie's explanation of the labor cost of a used book applies to libraries too - that's why most libraries don't catalog and shelve a lot of donated books and won't buy books just because someone offers them. 400 books at a minimum of 5-10 minutes of processing and cataloging time a piece is a full work week of moderately skilled work. Then you have to find some place to put them - as you know, 400 books is something like 25 feet of shelf space if each book is around 3/4 of an inch thick. The $1000 that you want them to pay you for the books is actually a very small part of the cost of the books to the library. To maximize your chances of a library accepting your books (even as a donation), make sure you have a list (preferably sortable, at least a spreadsheet or something) of the books, authors, and ISBNs, and if there's any kind of official/well-respected bibliography of "core books" in this subject area you could show how these books correspond to that list (like, an extra column with a star if they're on the "Big List of Foo Books"). I still think your chance of finding a library to take the books is low, but then if you decide to sell them individually instead you'd at least have that information handy.

They like donations, but they're not idiots. Tell them you're selling and that out of loyalty want to give them right of first refusal. Come up with a number, or several numbers. The worst they can do is say no. I know a guy who collects odd paper and he does this all the time. Failing that, pitch used book stores, near and far. Some are more catholic than others, and depending on what the subject matter is and their clientele, they maybe more or less interested in what you have. Perhaps email subject matter experts in the field in question directly? If not for them, then for people they know? Failing that, maybe you could donate and work the tax write off angle.

I don't think it would be *too* tacky to send a brief email to the collections person at your institution saying "hey, I'm a student here in the D department, and I've got a really good collection of books in field X (including for example A, B, and C, along with many other works you don't already have), but unfortunately I'm not really in a position to simply give them away. Is it possible your library would be interested in purchasing such a collection (or part of it), and if not, do you have any recommendations as to how I should deal with it? Thanks for your time etc." Bring up questions of price only in the case of a positive response. Even in the case of a donation, a library would need to check the collection against what they already have and make a decision about whether they want to devote extra space (space = money) to works in that field. So you're talking about work + a policy decision (+ more work to catalog and process the books if the decision is yes) in any case. If you're right that it *would* be a good collection for your institution, I suspect an extra $1000 dollars would not be a deal-breaker for them. If not, librarians live to serve, and you might get some good suggestions beyond what you get from this thread. (You might also do better by going there in person, as suggested above; I think *calling* is kind of a bad idea.)

My librarian SO agrees 100% with mskyle above.

In your shoes, my first step would be to check the website for the http://www.abaa.org/. This is the trade association, not an ad hoc consortium of mom & pop stores, which is what ABEBooks is. Members of the ABAA are held to high professional & ethical standards. Then I would search the members of ABAA to find (a) someone near me, and (b) someone who specializes in the books I own. I would hope to find one member who fits both criteria. As a collector and not a dealer, I should tell you that I've watched dealer friends assist libraries in their review of collections on offer to them, and I would recommend that you keep your expectations low. As a collector, the single most important thing is that we collect books that we love. Books aren't as valuable as we think they should be. I once watched/helped a dealer friend review a very large collection of first editions of mystery/detective novels that were in pristine condition. And not a single one was the first book (or even a second book) of the writer -- those are hard to find and you have to really be on top of your genre to know when a new writer is coming up. The collection was more or less worth a dollar a book (less than transport). Also speaking as a collector, I can't tell exactly from your picture but it doesn't look like your Grove Press books are pristine. Paperback originals are tough ones because spines crack so easily and they can get roughed up and bruised. But in order for those books to be worth a lot, they would need to be first printings, pristine, and my best guess is that if the collection isn't complete, your value will drop steeply. So, you might not end up selling to or with the dealer(s) you find on ABAA, but you are very likely to be able to get a good informal appraisal that will give you a ballpark idea of their worth and with respect to the academic collection, you may be able to find a dealer who regularly works with one or more libraries that collect your subject.

I'm in the process of shilling my major book collection (a lot of academic press and otherwise unusual books on unusual topics). Thus far, I've been arranging appointments with local used bookstores. Tell them what you're looking for, but keep in mind that if you're selling to a bookstore, they have to take into consideration all of their other overhead costs (rent, employee dollars spent on processing and selling the books, etc) before they even get to their profit. So, you aren't going to get "used bookstore" retail prices for these books - you're going to get about half that, maybe.

If you go the secondhand route, some of the bigger stores, like Powell's, will http://www.powells.com/sell/ and pay you the price of shipping (they might be interested in the Groves, at least). I'd also check with any local secondhand dealers specifically catering to the academic crowd, as they're more likely to be interested in a collection like this. (That being said, as nightrecordings notes, they're also going to give you less $.)

I am not a special collections librarian but I am a collections librarian at an academic institution and myskle is so very right about the list part. I'm not sure that libraries are going to be the way to go for you but if you want to try this approach first I actually think that you'd have better luck with libraries that have existing collections in the area--to me it seems much more likely to that they would be interested in getting a number of the titles that they don't already have than that a library without a collection in this area would suddenly want 400 titles in this area.