Start with the state, because two capitals answer to this name, and the Kanawha runs past only one. This page covers Charleston, West Virginia, the state capital on the Kanawha and Elk, not the South Carolina port that fills the first page of every search. The secondhand trade here is small enough to walk in a morning and scattered enough that half of it sits in three other municipalities, so each entry below opens by naming which town it belongs to. Downtown holds one address worth the walk; the rest is out along the river in South Charleston and Dunbar.
The pattern is shop-in-shop. Nobody in this valley runs a standalone secondhand storefront on the model of a Half Price Books, and the two dedicated used sellers both trade inside somebody else's building: Homeward Bound Books handles the secondhand shelving at the back of Taylor Books on Capitol Street, and Scapegoat Books occupies a stall deep inside a Dunbar antique market. That has one practical consequence you should plan around, which is that the opening grid you find published almost always belongs to the host rather than to the bookseller, and the second is that stock turns over on a scale measured in shelves, not aisles.
What makes up the volume instead is the library calendar. Kanawha County Public Library empties a run of shelves into an upstairs meeting room once a year, the South Charleston branch library keeps a permanent secondhand corner in its lobby, the Dunbar branch sets up alongside its town festival, and the West Virginia Book Festival sets a used book sale down in the convention center hall on Civic Center Drive every October. Four of the seven entries below run on library stock, which is unusual density for a metro this size, and it is why one Saturday here is worth more than any two weekdays.
Used room inside a bookstore-cafeHomeward Bound Books, in the back of Taylor Books
226 Capitol St, Charleston, WV 25301
Downtown on Capitol Street, the room Ann Saville opened in 1995 works as bookstore, coffee counter and gallery at once, and the secondhand half of it is not hers: Homeward Bound Books runs what its own Facebook page calls the Used Book Room at the back. Lisa Sammons put both new and used stock under this roof in the West Virginia bookstore route she wrote for OnlyInYourState on December 2, 2024, which is the short version of the arrangement — Taylor sells new, Homeward Bound trades used. The grid below is the host's, published on the hours page of taylorbooks.com, and the cafe stays busy long after anyone is browsing the back; the same site's calendar was billing live music for Friday, September 4 and Saturday, September 5, 2026. Homeward Bound keeps its main trading counter somewhere else in town, so ask at the till before hauling a box up Capitol Street.
Hours : Mon–Thu 7am–8pm, Fri 7am–10pm, Sat 8am–10pm, Sun 8am–8pmWebsite Used bookstoresPlot Twist Books
209 D St, South Charleston, WV 25303
Over in South Charleston, on the D Street run a couple of blocks below the public library, the shop bills itself on its own storefront site as an independent bookseller with a curated selection of new and used books and bookish gifts, with a Bookshop Bungalow rented through Airbnb for anyone who wants to sleep among the shelves. Sammons routed the December 2, 2024 OnlyInYourState itinerary through here too and singled out the attention paid to local authors. The shop announced Independent Bookstore Day on its own page for Saturday, April 25, 2026, 10am to 6pm, and had put Gilmore Girls actor John Cabrera on stage with author Matt Browning at the LaBelle Theatre on March 7, 2026. New and used share the same shelving, so this is a spine-reading stop rather than a table-skimming one.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pm; Sun closedWebsite Used stall inside an antique marketScapegoat Books
1401 Charles Ave, Dunbar, WV 25064
Out in Dunbar, about six miles west of downtown Charleston, this one sits — in its own wording — in the depths of the Eclectic Goods Market, a vintage and artisan mall behind a big blue steeple, and the schedule below is the market's published one rather than the bookseller's. What arrives is why a reseller drives out: the shop's Instagram posted a first edition and first printing on November 20, 2025, an Amok Press vagabond classic with a Joe Coleman cover on November 26, and a clean, unclipped first printing of Grove Press's 1953 Sade selections on November 30. The same feed pointed at a shelf of music titles across from the market checkout on May 15, 2026, so the stall is still being worked. Literature, history, poetry, Appalachian writing and art are the strengths the Indie BookSellers directory lists for it, and the feed backs that up.
Hours : Wed–Thu and Sun 11am–6pm, Fri–Sat 11am–7pm; closed Mon–TueWebsite Permanent library bookshopThe Corner Bookstore, South Charleston Public Library
312 4th Ave, South Charleston, WV 25303
Still in South Charleston, a couple of blocks up from Plot Twist near City Hall, the municipal library runs a standing secondhand corner in its own lobby, and its About page counts takings from that corner as a revenue line beside the city, the state and local levies. The library's page on the shop sets the range from 50 cents in the bargain bin to $2 and up for current best sellers, across adult fiction and nonfiction, audiobooks, music, movies, video, computer games, puzzles, young adult, juvenile chapter books, picture and board books, homeschooling material and collectibles. A display case is kept for signed first editions and vintage volumes, priced individually, with themed tables rotating through the year — vintage, holiday, romance, science fiction. The events calendar was still filling in September 2026, with a TV trivia night set for Monday the 14th, so the grid below is live rather than archived.
Hours : Library hours: Mon–Tue 10am–8pm, Wed–Fri 10am–6pm; Saturdays 10am–4pm, closed SunWebsite Festival used book saleWest Virginia Book Festival Used Book Sale
Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center, 200 Civic Center Dr, Charleston, WV 25301
This is the single date worth building a trip around. The festival's Info page describes a free event held since 2001 that pairs author programs with a Used Book Sale, a children's Word Play area and a marketplace, all inside the Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center; the organizers' own Facebook event fixes the 2026 edition on Saturday, October 24, 8am to 5pm, at 200 Civic Center Drive. Kanawha County Public Library is a charter presenter and takes the festival's mail at 123 Capitol Street, which tells you exactly where the donated stock is coming from. Entry costs nothing, the 2026 author list runs from R.L. Stine to Kate Quinn, Craig Johnson and Margot Lee Shetterly, and the used tables, not the signing queue, are where a scanner should spend the morning.
Hours : October 24, 2026, 8am–5pmWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Charleston?
The floor sits with the libraries, not the shops. The Corner Bookstore in the lobby of the South Charleston Public Library starts at 50 cents in its bargain bin and tops out around $2 for recent best sellers, and the counter is staffed six days out of seven, two of those evenings running through to 8pm. The two annual clear-outs go cheaper on sheer weight of donated stock — the county library sale of May 30, 2026 upstairs on Capitol Street, plus the festival tables at the Coliseum on October 24, 2026, the latter free to walk into. Of the week-in week-out addresses, the Dunbar market stall and the back room at Taylor Books are where an underpriced spine occasionally surfaces, since neither one publishes a price list and both are restocked by hand.
Where do I sell used books in Charleston?
One name handles it, and its trading counter sits at none of the seven addresses listed here. Homeward Bound Books, which runs the used room at Taylor Books on Capitol Street, points people to Sullivan's Records on Lee Street East as its main trading spot and asks for books to be brought in there for trade credit. Nobody in the valley advertises cash rates, so ring ahead and sort the box before you carry it anywhere. Photograph the whole shelf and run that frame through BiblioScan; each spine it manages to read comes back carrying a current resale figure, which is enough to tell what deserves a listing of your own from what is simply weight to swap for credit. Anything genuinely scarce is better off going to a marketplace than to a shelf in a record shop.
Which day is best for book hunting in Charleston?
Saturday, by a wide margin, and the sale calendar is what decides it. Every dated event on this page lands on one: May 30, September 19 and October 24 in 2026. All four standing addresses do open together from Wednesday through Saturday, so within that window the choice comes down to which sale is running, and Friday adds the Dunbar market until 7pm plus, on September 18, the opening day of the branch fundraiser. Monday and Tuesday cost you the Dunbar stall outright, because the Charles Avenue market stays shut, and that removes one of only two dedicated secondhand rooms in the metro.
Are there any used book fairs in Charleston?
One, and it alone justifies an October trip. The West Virginia Book Festival has run since 2001 at the Coliseum on Civic Center Drive, costs nothing to walk into, and sets a used book sale beside its author programs, its Word Play room for children and a vendor marketplace; the organizers have pinned the 2026 edition to Saturday the 24th, doors from 8am and out by 5pm. The county library sits among the charter presenters, which is where the donated boxes come from, and R.L. Stine heads the 2026 speaker bill. Nothing else in this valley comes close to that scale, so the fallbacks are the spring clear-out upstairs on Capitol Street and the branch fundraiser out in Dunbar in September.