Where to buy used books in Boston

Updated 9/1/2026

Downtown Boston keeps its two heavyweights a five-minute walk apart. The Brattle Book Shop has been on West Street since the Gloss family took it over in 1949, three floors deep with an outdoor sale lot beside it; Commonwealth Books sits a block northeast in Spring Lane, an alley that turns up on Boston maps as far back as the 1630s. After that the trail leaves the city entirely. Cambridge, Brookline, Arlington, Medford and Stoneham are separate municipalities with their own town halls, and eight of the fifteen stops below are in one of them — each says so in its first line.

Plan around the buy counters, because this is a metro where they publish their terms. The Brattle states a cash-versus-credit formula on its own FAQ page. Brookline Booksmith runs its cellar on a flat percentage of cover price, three days a week, walk-ins only. The Book Rack in Arlington and the Book Oasis in Stoneham both settle in store credit and post what each format is worth. Harvard Book Store belongs in that group and is the one to check first, because its used desk stays shut through October 5, 2026.

Three recent changes catch out older guides. Raven Used Books, the scholarly used room of Harvard Square for eighteen years, closed there in the summer of 2023 and reopened a hundred miles west in Shelburne Falls; Rodney's Bookstore, without a storefront since it left Central Square in 2020, took over the same Church Street address weeks later and added a Providence branch in August 2026. More Than Words rebranded its South End bookstore as Boomerangs by More Than Words in November 2025, keeping the books and adding thrift around them. And the Ars Libri art-book house, still listed at a South End address in plenty of directories, has moved to Charlestown and no longer opens to browsers at all.

Spot map

The best spots

Used bookstores

Brattle Book Shop

9 West St, Boston, MA 02111

Three floors on West Street plus the outdoor sale lot next door, where The Boston Globe's bookstore roundup of June 4, 2026 found $1 and $3 shelves and opened its list of the twelve best bookstores in the city with this one. The Brattle dates itself to 1825, has been in the Gloss family since 1949, and puts its holding at over 250,000 books, maps, prints and ephemera with the rare room on the third floor. What a reseller needs is on the FAQ page, stated without euphemism: it pays about a quarter of what it expects to sell a book for in cash, or a third in store credit, and keeps an experienced buyer on the floor from 9am to 5pm. The reject list is equally blunt — textbooks, condensed Reader's Digest, romance, ex-library copies, stripped or annotated books, anything musty — and it buys neither records nor comics.

Hours : Mon–Sat 9am–5:30pm; closed SunWebsite

Youth-run nonprofit

More Than Words (Boomerangs, South End)

242 E Berkeley St, Boston, MA 02118

A South End warehouse in the old garment district, near Chinatown, where young people aging out of foster care, out of the court system or out of school run the whole business — inventory, pricing, merchandising, shipping, the register. In November 2025 the operator folded thrift into the model and rebranded this storefront Boomerangs by More Than Words, and its announcement was explicit that book sales continue, with racks of secondhand clothing, home goods and small furniture added around them. The Globe's June 2026 write-up describes the shape of the room: leather-bound finds at the back, carts of $1 used paperbacks outside, new releases everywhere else. Donations go in during open store hours, Tuesday through Sunday.

Hours : Tue–Fri 11am–7pm, Sat–Sun 10am–6pm; closed MonWebsite

Used bookstores

Brookline Booksmith Used Book Cellar

279 Harvard St, Brookline, MA 02446

Over the line in Brookline, at Coolidge Corner, the basement under the main shop has been running since 2004 and holds more than 25,000 used books by the operator's own count; the Globe's June 4, 2026 list folded it into a store total above 50,000. The buying terms are posted in full and are the most precise in the region: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 10am to 4pm, no appointment, photo ID, and either 15% of the books' original price in cash (a check above $50) or 20% in store credit that never expires. Read the exclusions before you load the car — no donations, no hardcovers already out in paperback, no textbooks or test prep, no travel or computer guides, nothing bought back off their own $1 racks, and no rare or antiquarian material, which they will not appraise. One sales slip per customer per day, and they will not split a payment between cash and credit.

Website

Used bookstores

Harvard Book Store Used Book Basement

1256 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138

In Cambridge, at Mass Ave and Plympton Street in Harvard Square, the downstairs room carries thousands of used titles across literature, children's, foreign languages, history, art, architecture, religion and science, and the shelf ends are papered with whatever staff find inside the books they buy — bookmarks from everywhere, a ticket stub from the 1948 Republican Convention, hotel stationery reading "I cannot contain my loathing for Kant." Two things to settle before the trip: the store has paused used-book buying from August 16 through October 5, 2026, a notice it repeats on both its used-books page and its hours page, and it takes no donations at all, pointing donors at the More Than Words drop-off bins instead. The shop, which the Globe put at 94 years old in June 2026, is not affiliated with the university across the street, whatever the name suggests. It also keeps the longest hours on this page by a wide margin, trading until 10pm six nights a week.

Hours : Mon–Sat 9am–10pm, Sun 10am–9pmWebsite

Friends of the Library sale

City-Wide Friends Book Sale

Boston Public Library, 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116

Six sales a year at the Central Library in Copley Square, on the first Saturday of each even-numbered month, 10am to 4pm, run by the City-Wide Friends. Their published 2026 dates are February 7, April 4, June 6, August 1, October 3 and December 5; the February edition had to move up into the Commonwealth Salon of the Johnson Building because of renovation work in the McKim basement, and the later locations are still marked to be determined, so confirm before you climb the steps. Thousands of donated books sorted by genre, many at just $1, discs at $1 apiece, plus a shelf of individually priced sets and rare or collectible items. Cash, Apple Pay and cards all work, and the volunteers ask you to bring a bag.

Hours : October 3 and December 5, 2026, 10am–4pmWebsite

Rare and antiquarian book fair

Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair

Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02115

The 48th edition returns to the Hynes Convention Center in Back Bay on November 6, 7 and 8, 2026, sanctioned by the ABAA and by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers. Fine Books & Collections put the exhibitor count at 110 in a preview dated August 28, 2026, listing dealers traveling in from the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Serbia among others, with rare books, maps, photographs, manuscripts and ephemera on the tables. Walk the Discovery booths first if margin is what brought you: that is where the material priced at $100 and under sits, and where you learn what a condition grade is actually worth. Tickets go through Eventbrite via the fair's producer, Capricorn Event Management.

Hours : November 6–8, 2026Website

All spots by type

Used bookstores

Commonwealth Books

9 Spring Ln, Boston, MA 02109

Down an alley off Washington Street that has carried the same name since about 1630, a minute from the Old South Meeting House: 40,000-plus select titles on the shop's own reckoning, strongest in art monographs, decorative arts, poetry, history and literature, with bins of prints and engravings running from the 1600s to the 1940s and a genuinely deep antiquarian section. It has traded in Boston since 1995 and shuts exactly two days a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas. One trap before you set out: commonwealthbooks.com now serves a registrar's placeholder page, and the real site lives on a Black Widow Press subdomain that the Internet Archive last captured on August 24, 2026, still carrying the schedule below. That site is a relic in every other respect, so treat the hours as indicative and phone ahead if the trip is a long one.

Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 11am–4:30pmWebsite

Used bookstores

Rodney's Bookstore

23 Church St, Cambridge, MA 02138

Also in Cambridge, a minute off Brattle Street, this is the shop that filled the Harvard Square hole Raven left behind: used and rare across every genre, plus vintage posters, art and prints, shelved with a cheerful disregard for tidiness. Cambridge Day covered the handover in August 2023, days before the store reopened on Church Street after three years without a storefront; its own site, timestamped September 1, 2026 when checked, publishes a flat seven-day week from noon to seven. Owner Shaw Taylor named the place after his dog. The Providence Journal reported on August 28, 2026 that he and partner Edward Bordas had opened a second Rodney's on Thayer Street in Providence, which is worth knowing if you work the corridor south.

Hours : Daily noon–7pmWebsite

Volunteer-run nonprofit

Bryn Mawr Book Store

373 Huron Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138

Out in Huron Village, west Cambridge, near Fresh Pond: a volunteer-staffed nonprofit that has held the same building since September 29, 1971 and shelves more than 30,000 used and rare books, with the takings funding Bryn Mawr College scholarships for New England students. It also lists on AbeBooks, which matters if you are scanning — anything already up online is excluded from the monthly half-price sale, along with window books, new arrivals, sets and holds. That sale is the reason to time a visit: one or more subject categories drop to half of already-low prices each month, posted inside the store rather than on the site. Donations are capped at two or three boxes and need a phone call first, and the guidelines rule out textbooks, condensed books, romance, magazines, encyclopedias and anything in a non-Roman alphabet.

Hours : Wed noon–5pm, Thu–Fri noon–7pm, Sat noon–5pm; closed Sun–TueWebsite

Used bookstores

The Book Rack

13 Medford St, Arlington, MA 02474

Up in Arlington Center, a general shop that opened in Lexington in 1975 and moved to Medford Street in 1999, selling thousands of used books at a flat half of cover price alongside a shelf of current releases. Trades run on points rather than cash: bring in gently used books and the credit comes off the price of used stock. Its contact page carries a full seven-day grid with two quirks worth noting — Tuesday is a short noon-to-five day, Thursday runs an hour later than the rest — and was still flagging its Independent Bookstore Day notice for April 25 and 26 when read on September 1, 2026. A single half-cover rule across the whole used floor makes the arithmetic fast if you are working with a scanner.

Hours : Mon, Wed, Fri–Sun 10am–6pm, Tue noon–5pm, Thu 10am–7pmWebsite

Used bookstores

The Book Oasis

311 Main St, Stoneham, MA 02180

Twelve miles north of downtown in Stoneham, an independent general bookstore with a stated inventory of 30,000 new and gently read books, pointing customers at the 2025–26 Massachusetts Children's Book Award list from its own homepage. The trade desk is store credit only — it says flatly that it pays no cash — and the desk will look through as many as two grocery bags or cartons from any one customer during opening hours, no appointment needed, against a published grid: $1 to $2 for adult hardcovers, $1 for trade paper, 50 cents to $1 for mass market, 25 cents to $1 for most children's and YA. Its want list is unusually specific and worth reading before you sort a box: anything published in the last twelve months, horror, trade paperback fiction, school-list classics, Newbery and Caldecott winners, and graphic novels, comics and manga. Whatever it turns down has to be collected within 24 hours or it gets donated.

Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–5pmWebsite

Thrift stores & charity shops

Nonprofit thrift store

Boomerangs by More Than Words

563 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139

In Central Square, Cambridge, the first of the rebooted Boomerangs: when Fenway Health wound the thrift brand down, More Than Words took it over and reopened this storefront in 2024, staffing it entirely with graduates of its youth job-training program. Books share the floor with secondhand fashion, housewares and records, so the selection is shallow but it turns over on thrift pricing rather than bookseller pricing. Donations here need an appointment because floor space is tight, and the same operator page was advertising a third Boomerangs opening in Waltham on October 9 when read in September 2026. Paid parking behind the building runs $2 an hour, which in Cambridge is reason enough to come by car.

Hours : Tue–Sun 10am–5pm; closed MonWebsite

Library book sales

Permanent Friends shelf

Friends of the North End Branch Library

25 Parmenter St, Boston, MA 02113

The Friends group at the North End branch keeps a permanent sale at the back of the library and runs it on trust: take what you want, put the money in the red box beside the shelves. It is a small rotating stack rather than an event, and the same corner takes donations — good condition only, no textbooks — in a bin next to the sale. The Friends' site, which was carrying a winter 2026 chair yoga schedule and a spring 2026 author talk alongside the sale notice, also lists monthly meetings at 5:30pm on the second Wednesday from September through June. Come for cheap paperbacks and the Palazzo Ducale diorama at the rear, not for volume.

Website

Friends of the Library sale

Friends of the Medford Public Library Sale

Medford Public Library, 111 High St, Medford, MA 02155

Out in Medford, the Friends run three sales a year — April, September and December — and the fall edition takes September 25, 26 and 27, 2026 across three rooms on the second floor of the library. Tens of thousands of donated books sorted into categories, most priced at $1.50 or less, plus DVDs, CDs, games, puzzles, audiobooks and sheet music. The Friday evening session, 6:30 to 8:30, is open to members only, and the organizers say in as many words that book dealers and other bulk shoppers are welcome to join at the door to get in; card, Venmo and PayPal all carry a $10 minimum. Saturday and Sunday are open to everyone, with a bake sale all day Saturday and limited Sunday markdowns on mass-market paperbacks.

Hours : September 25–27, 2026Website

French-language book sale

French Library Book Sale

French Library, 53 Marlborough St, Boston, MA 02116

The French Library in Back Bay holds what it calls a biannual sale of new and used books in French, with prices starting at $1; the most recent edition ran on Saturday, May 16, 2026, from 10am to 4pm in its Marlborough Street townhouse. The stock is donations the library cannot keep plus duplicates already in its collections — classics, translations, cookbooks, art books, children's titles — and the organizers warn that the children's tables empty early. Purchases can be held at the desk until the 4pm close, but everything has to leave the same day. Nothing else in this metro moves French-language stock at that volume, which is the entire reason to put it on a calendar.

Website

Scan before you buy

At every one of these spots, snap the shelf with BiblioScan: the AI identifies each book and shows its real resale price. Walk out with profitable books, not random boxes.

Try BiblioScan for free

Local sourcing tips

Four counters in this metro publish what they pay, and the numbers are nowhere near each other. The Brattle states its formula on the FAQ page — roughly a quarter of expected retail in cash, a third in store credit — and staffs the desk between 9am and 5pm. Brookline Booksmith works the opposite way, on a flat 15% of a book's original price in cash or 20% in credit, walk-ins Thursday through Saturday between 10am and 4pm, one slip per person per day, no split payments. The Book Rack converts trades into points against its half-cover used stock, and the Book Oasis posts a per-format grid and pays no cash whatsoever. Harvard Book Store would be the fifth, but its used desk is dark from August 16 to October 5, 2026.
The autumn run is unusually tight, and four weekends carry all of it. Medford opens it over the weekend of September 25, 2026, upstairs at the town library, with the Friday evening restricted to Friends members who can sign up on the spot. Copley Square follows on October 3, one of the six even-month Saturdays the City-Wide Friends hold, 10am to 4pm. The Hynes Convention Center then takes November 6 to 8 for the 48th antiquarian fair, and Copley comes round again on December 5. Everything else on this page trades year-round, so those are the only dates worth blocking out.
Mondays are thin and Tuesdays are worse than they look. More Than Words and the Cambridge Boomerangs both shut on Monday, and Bryn Mawr is closed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday outright — its whole week is Wednesday to Saturday. The Book Rack drops to a short noon-to-five Tuesday. What holds up any day: Commonwealth Books, which closes only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, Rodney's at a flat noon to seven, and Harvard Book Store, trading to 10pm Monday through Saturday. The Brattle is the one to build a day around, since it is shut on Sundays and its outdoor lot only really works in daylight.
The Red Line does most of the work, and two stops do most of the Red Line's. Harvard Square puts the Harvard Book Store basement and Rodney's within three minutes of the same station; Central Square, one stop earlier, adds the Boomerangs thrift floor. Bryn Mawr is the Cambridge outlier — Huron Village, out past Fresh Pond, no subway within reach — and Brookline Booksmith needs the Green Line C branch to Coolidge Corner. Arlington and Stoneham are car trips, and the Brattle stamps parking tickets for the Lafayette Garage at $2 an hour off for the first two hours, which is worth knowing before you gamble on the small lot past the store that charges $10 per half hour for a sedan and $40 for a pickup.
Four names in older Boston roundups will cost you an afternoon, and one web address will too. Raven Used Books now trades at 49 Conway Street in Shelburne Falls, at the far western end of the state, not on Church Street. Ars Libri states on its own site that after moving to Charlestown it is no longer open to the public for browsing. Frugal Bookstore in Roxbury and Papercuts in Jamaica Plain are both fine shops and both sell new stock, which is exactly how the Globe describes them. And do not trust commonwealthbooks.com: the domain now serves a registrar placeholder, while the shop itself carries on from Spring Lane as it has since 1995.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I find cheap used books in Boston?

The floor is a dollar, and the library sales set it rather than the shops. The City-Wide Friends sell many of the books they lay out at Copley Square for a single dollar, discs included; Medford tags the bulk of three roomfuls at $1.50 or under; the French Library starts its French-language sale at $1; and the Friends at the North End branch leave a permanent shelf against the rear wall with an honor box on it. Among the year-round shops, the Brattle's outdoor lot is the cheapest thing downtown — the Globe found $1 and $3 shelves out there in June 2026 — and The Book Rack in Arlington sells its whole used floor at half of cover price. Bryn Mawr is the sleeper: a rotating set of subject shelves goes to half price every month, though anything the volunteers have already put up on AbeBooks is left out of it.

Where do I sell used books in Boston?

Three different deals, and the spread between them is wide. The Brattle Book Shop settles in cash at around a quarter of the price it reckons a title will fetch, or a third of that price in credit, and will look at anything from one volume up to a whole estate. Brookline Booksmith's cellar pays on cover price instead — 15% cash, 20% credit — which is generous on recent trade paperbacks and poor on anything old or scarce, and it will not handle rare or antiquarian material at all. Arlington and Stoneham are credit-only. Do the triage before you drive anywhere: photograph a full shelf, let BiblioScan read the spines, and each title comes back with a current resale figure attached, which separates the few you should list under your own seller account from the bulk you are better off trading at a desk.

Which day is best for book hunting in Boston?

Saturday, and it is not close. Every buy counter on this page takes walk-ins on a Saturday — the Brattle from 9am, the Brookline Booksmith cellar 10am to 4pm, the Book Oasis to 5pm, The Book Rack to 6pm — and it is the one day Bryn Mawr, the Copley Square sale and the Medford sale can all fall together. Friday is a strong second: the cellar buys, Bryn Mawr stays open to 7pm, and Medford's members-only preview starts at 6:30pm. Sunday loses the Brattle, Bryn Mawr and the cellar's buy window, but keeps Commonwealth Books, Rodney's and Harvard Book Store until late. Monday is the day to stay home and list.

When is the big library book sale in Boston?

Two answers, depending on how much you intend to carry. Copley Square is the regular fixture: the City-Wide Friends take over a room at the Boston Public Library six Saturdays a year, always 10am to 4pm, with October 3 and December 5 left on the 2026 calendar — though building work has been shuffling them between floors, and the group still lists those two venues as undecided. Medford is the bigger haul, three roomfuls of donated stock across the Friday, Saturday and Sunday that close September 2026, priced mostly under $2. Its Friday-night preview is members-only, and the organizers state plainly that dealers are welcome at the door and that scanners are allowed.

Do you run a store here?

Bookstore, thrift store or consignment shop in Boston: get listed in this guide for free, or tell us what to fix.

Nearby cities

Providence Manchester New Haven

← Used books by city The guide: how to source books for resale →