Anchorage, Alaska runs its used-book trade out of one very large room and a short tail behind it. Title Wave Books has held a corner of Spenard since 1991 and now fills 27,000 square feet with stock that is 95% customer-traded; every other name below orbits it. The Loussac Library hosts what its Friends group bills as a semi-annual sale, the city's only real one; a homeschool store on the south side keeps the second buy-back desk; a Fairview thrift floor run for the Archdiocese prices on colored tags; and two Value Village floors bracket the bowl east and south. Six honest stops, and that is the whole city.
Selling here is a two-counter problem. Title Wave publishes its intake rules in full — what it takes, how much you may bring, what the wait is, cash versus a larger credit line — and Roundabout Books publishes a buy-back policy that pays in store credit at half of expected resale value. Nobody else quotes a price. The Friends of the Library, Bishop's Attic and the two thrift floors all live on donations, which means the flow of good paper into this city is basically a donation flow, and the sale calendar is where it surfaces.
Two Anchorage habits will cost you a morning if you trust an old directory. C & M Used Books, the downtown shop on East Fourth Avenue that called itself the state's oldest used bookstore, painted "Going out of business" across its front window in February 2019 and has been a dead pin ever since. And the good shops that keep coming up in searches — The Book Shelf, Black Birch Books, Fireside Books — are in Eagle River, Wasilla and Palmer, which are day trips from the bowl rather than stops on a circuit; they get a mention below and no map pin.
Used bookstoresTitle Wave Books
1360 W Northern Lights Blvd, Anchorage, AK 99503
Spenard, on West Northern Lights Boulevard, and the reason this page exists at all: Julie Drake and Steve Lloyd opened the shop in 1991, and its history page walks four addresses down to a floor it now puts at 27,000 square feet and over 350,000 books. One line on that page tells you everything about how the stock moves — new titles and gifts are roughly 5% of what is carried, and the other 95% arrives across the Intake Counter from the people who shop there. The building trades 10am to 7pm every day of the year, but the buy desk keeps a separate clock, Thursday through Tuesday until 6pm, dark on Wednesdays while the aisles stay open. The events page, verified September 2, 2026, showed a single item queued up next — a September 12 signing with Doug Capra for The Last Homesteaders.
Hours : Daily 10am–7pm; Intake Counter Thu–Tue until 6pm, closed WedWebsite Friends of the Library saleLoussac Library Book Sale, Anchorage Friends of the Library
Z. J. Loussac Public Library, 3600 Denali St, Anchorage, AK 99503
The Anchorage Friends of the Library fill the Loussac twice a year and post the whole price ladder in advance: admission free, paperbacks from $0.50, hardcovers from $1.00, every copy either donated by a patron or withdrawn from the library's own shelves. The fall 2026 edition belongs to members on Friday, November 6 from 6 to 8pm, with a membership buyable at the desk that evening; the public gets Saturday, November 7, 10am to 4pm, then a half-price Sunday, November 8, 1 to 4pm. Spring 2027 is already up on the same schedule page for May 2 to 4 in the identical Friday-to-Sunday shape. Teachers get their own door, an Educator Book Day priced at $10 a bag with the bag supplied, held in the sale room the volunteers call the Dungeon; the events list gives it as August 23, 1 to 4pm, and prints no year beside that, so confirm before planning around it.
Homeschool bookstore with a buy-back deskRoundabout Books
1101 E 76th Ave, Ste A, Anchorage, AK 99518
South Anchorage, off East 76th Avenue, a Christian homeschool store that carries new and used curriculum beside general reading and runs the only other published buy-back desk in the city. Its Buy Backs page sets the terms flatly: gently used curriculum, books and learning materials taken Monday through Thursday from 10am to noon, first come first served, one banker box per family per day, nothing at all on Friday. Payment is store credit instead of cash, pegged at half of what a title is expected to fetch, and that credit can cover no more than half the price of any used item you spend it on. Read the feed before loading the car — the store told followers in 2026 that buy-backs were paused through its heaviest ordering weeks and would restart in September, then announced a first-Friday fill-a-bag morning for September 4 with doors at 9am.
Where can I find cheap used books in Anchorage?
Twice a year the floor of this market drops to $0.50 a paperback and $1.00 a hardcover at the Loussac Library, and the closing Sunday halves that again — nothing else in the city competes. Between those weekends, the two Value Village floors are the volume option, priced as secondhand retail with the rotating markdowns reserved for the chain's Super Savers Club members, while Bishop's Attic prices on colored tags that have run 3 for $1.00 on orange and half off on green. Title Wave is not the cheap stop, but it is the deep one: over 350,000 books by the store's own count, with 95% of them traded in at the counter instead of ordered from a distributor.
Where do I sell used books in Anchorage?
In practice at Title Wave, and the rules are posted so you can sort at home first. Bring one container — a banker's box, a medium bag or one of the store's gray tubs — to the Intake Counter any day except Wednesday and before 6pm; the evaluation runs half an hour to an hour, and you pick cash immediately or a larger sum as credit that stays valid for two years. Damaged or moldy copies, VHS and cassette tapes, ex-rental discs, magazines, encyclopedia sets, dated textbooks and whatever the store already holds in depth all come back across the counter. Roundabout Books is the fallback, restricted to weekday mornings, paying credit worth half the anticipated shelf price, and happiest with curriculum and learning materials. Price the pile before it goes anywhere: photograph a loaded shelf, push the image through BiblioScan, and every spine in frame returns with an open-market number attached, which splits the copies worth an account of your own from the ones destined for the container.
Which day is best for book hunting in Anchorage?
Saturday, though the margin is thinner here than in most cities. It is the one day every address here with a published Saturday is trading at once — Title Wave from 10am, the Gambell Street thrift floor from 9:30am, both Value Village stores from 9am, and the Loussac sale itself whenever a November or May weekend lands — which also makes it the day shelves get picked over first, so go early. Roundabout is the exception, since it posts nothing about weekends at all. Thursday is the underrated alternative if you are buying and selling on the same trip, since the Title Wave buy desk is live and Roundabout takes its last box of the week that morning. Avoid Wednesday for anything you want to sell: the aisles stay open but the intake counter closes.
When is the big library book sale in Anchorage?
November and May, at the Z. J. Loussac Public Library on Denali Street, run by the Anchorage Friends of the Library. The fall 2026 edition opens Friday, November 6 from 6 to 8pm for members only, and you can join on your way through the door, then goes public Saturday, November 7 from 10am to 4pm, and finishes Sunday, November 8 from 1 to 4pm with everything marked down by half. The spring 2027 dates are already on the same page, May 2 to 4, in the same three-day shape. Admission costs nothing either way, and the group says the stock is donated by community members and library patrons, which is why the prices start where they do.