Chattanooga puts almost nothing secondhand in walking range and then spreads the rest along three roads out of the center. The compact part is real but small: Pennington’s on East Main, the BookNook tucked into the Downtown Library on Broad Street and Winder Binder across the river on Frazier Avenue fall within two miles of one another, the walking bridge doing most of the work. After that you drive. East on Lee Highway toward the airport for the SkyLib shelf and McKay’s at number 7734; north up Highway 153 and Hixson Pike for Infinity Flux, Rêve Coffee & Books, the Goodwill sharing its parking and 2nd & Charles; southeast on Brainerd Road for The Reading Room, then past the city line to Goodwill in East Ridge and over the state line to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Where a stop sits outside Chattanooga proper, its first line says so.
Work out how each counter buys before the trunk is full, because the Chattanooga shops that take stock behave nothing alike. McKay’s wants no appointment at all: totes from the lobby, a number from the Greeter, then cash or Trade on a paper slip that cannot be replaced. 2nd & Charles in Hixson caps you at three totes and quotes one lump figure; take that as money, or swap it for store credit, advertised by the chain as reaching 150 percent above the cash figure. Pennington’s reserves open selling for people who have bought a membership, leaving everyone else with buybacks on books the shop itself sold them. Infinity Flux on Hixson Pike is the specialist — back-issue comics, secondhand role-playing manuals, video games, unbuilt models and vinyl, appraised at the counter for nothing.
Three things date an older Chattanooga list. The first is McKay’s: the chain’s own closure page puts the Knoxville branch’s final day of trading at Sunday, May 3, 2026 and redirects that traffic to two remaining Tennessee stores and two in North Carolina, so anything written before that spring describes a different regional map. The second is a wave of openings that Jessie Weaver finally caught up with for Chattanooga Moms on September 2, 2026, adding Pennington’s, The Reading Room and Rêve to a scene that used to mean McKay’s and Winder Binder. The third is a domain: starlinebooks.com, the address the downtown indie once used, now serves casino filler and belongs to no bookstore at all.
Used bookstoresMcKay's Chattanooga
7734 Lee Hwy, Chattanooga, TN 37421
Ten miles east of the center on Lee Highway, one of the four stores left in the McKay's chain, taking books, discs, games, instruments and collectibles over the counter with no booking, no reservation and no quote by phone. Its locations page flags the Knoxville branch as permanently closed, and the closure page it links to dates the last day of business to Sunday, May 3, 2026 before pointing those customers to Chattanooga, Nashville, Winston-Salem or Mebane, while the FAQ puts the target for an ordinary incoming order at under 45 minutes. Payment comes two ways — a percentage, in cash, of the price the shop reckons it can resell at, or a larger percentage as Trade, which prints on a physical slip that cannot be replaced, cannot be photographed for redemption and cannot be converted back into money. Anything too bulky to handle while you wait becomes a Large Order — sign a release, leave the load, accept whatever the buyers decide, and the rejects go to the free bin or to recycling instead of back to you — and the tote-limits page reserves the right to cap incoming quantity from dealers.
Hours : Mon–Thu 9am–9pm, Fri–Sat 9am–10pm, Sun 10am–7pmWebsite Used bookstoresPennington's Books
400 E Main St, Suite 150, Chattanooga, TN 37408
Southside, 0.9 miles out of the center, with new books, used books, local art and a coffee counter sharing one room — and a front door that is actually around the corner on Washington Street, the accessible entrance being the one on Main. Chattanoogan.com called it the brand new downtown bookstore and coffee shop on March 26, 2026, quoting owner Spencer Pennington ahead of the Independent Bookstore Day crawl on April 25; the shop’s own calendar was carrying a Labor Day sale from September 4 to 7, 2026 and a ceramic bookend workshop on September 18. Selling here is gated, which catches people out: buybacks are open to anyone returning a book in excellent condition with proof it was bought in the shop, and everybody else waits for what the store calls occasional used book buying days. The way past that is a membership — $35 solo, $60 household, $95 gold — which lets you bring used books in whenever you like, though the join page was selling those memberships in the store rather than online, and the shop says flatly that a membership guarantees no purchase.
Hours : Mon–Thu 10am–6pm, Fri–Sat 10am–8pm, Sun 11am–5pmWebsite Books, art and recordsWinder Binder
40 Frazier Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37405
A little over a mile north of the center on Frazier Avenue, the North Shore end of the walking bridge, where a bookstore, an art gallery and a record counter occupy the same eclectic floor alongside folk art, tin toys and Chattanooga apparel. The About page counts over 32 years in business and describes new and used books shelved beside new and used vinyl records; Jessie Weaver’s bookstore guide for Chattanooga Moms, dated September 2, 2026, dates the opening to 1994 and sends sellers here or to McKay’s. One warning before you set out: the shop publishes no timetable anywhere on its site, so the grids floating around the directories are unverified; check with the shop on its Instagram before you drive over. The event feed is livelier than the storefront suggests — an audiobook walk around Coolidge Park was set to leave from the door at 9:30 on September 27, 2026, with a latte station at the start and early shopping at the finish.
Used bookstores2nd & Charles
5756 Highway 153, Suite 112, Chattanooga, TN 37343
Eight miles north-northeast in Hixson, in a strip off Highway 153, the local outpost of the used-media chain: books and manga, vinyl, movies, video games, Funko and the odd guitar. Its own Instagram account posted on June 15, 2026 that you never know what you will find because the inventory keeps turning, which is a fair warning that two visits two weeks apart look nothing alike. The buyback follows a published script — load no more than three of the chain’s totes, hand the lot over to the buyback desk, pick a text or an email alert, then decide between the cash figure and a credit option that tops out 150 percent over the cash number. Offers arrive as a single total rather than line by line, some items come back to you, and the refusal list runs to textbooks, advance reading copies, PC games, phones and VHS.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–8pm, Sun 11am–7pmWebsite Library Foundation honor bookstoreBookNook
Downtown Library, 1001 Broad St, Chattanooga, TN 37402
A permanent room of donated stock on the Broad Street floor of the Downtown Library, run by the Chattanooga Public Library Foundation and stocked with gently used books, DVDs, puzzles and more. Nobody works a register: you pick what you want and pay in cash or through the QR code posted on the wall, and the room keeps the library’s clock, which runs Monday to Saturday until six and stays dark on Sunday. When the Foundation fills the building with a full sale, the room joins in — its Facebook video on July 11, 2026 advertised a $5 bag sale inside the BookNook while the tables outside ran on $3, $2 and $1 tiers. The Foundation put 12,400 books donated against its 2025 figures, which is the pipeline feeding this shelf and the airport one.
Hours : Mon–Sat 9am–6pm; closed SunWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Chattanooga?
Start with the honor shelves rather than the shops. The Chattanooga Public Library Foundation runs the BookNook in the Downtown Library at 1001 Broad Street and SkyLib out at Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport, neither of them staffed, both paid by cash or the QR code stuck on the wall; American Libraries priced the airport donations in its March 2, 2026 write-up at three dollars for a hardcover, two for a paperback and one for anything smaller. A full Foundation sale downtown goes cheaper still — July 11, 2026 brought $5 bags inside the BookNook against $3, $2 and $1 tiers outside it — and a WDEF report dated August 27, 2026 said the following weekend was handing books over for nothing between 10am and noon, provided you brought a bag. After that comes the thrift route: Goodwill East Ridge on Ringgold Road, whose store page names books and whose posted markdowns knock half off everything in the current color of the week and drop last week’s color to $1.29 on Mondays.
Where do I sell used books in Chattanooga?
Four places publish their rules, and no two match. McKay’s on Lee Highway needs no appointment: grab the totes waiting in the lobby, collect a number, wait out an evaluation the shop aims to finish in under 45 minutes, then choose a percentage in cash or a bigger percentage as Trade, issued on a physical slip with no replacement and no route back to money. 2nd & Charles up in Hixson stops at three totes and gives one figure for the lot, settled in money or in store credit pegged as high as 150 percent over that cash offer, and turns away textbooks, advance reading copies and VHS on principle. Pennington’s on East Main keeps open selling for members only — the tiers run $35 solo, $60 household and $95 gold — while Infinity Flux on Hixson Pike deals in comics, used role-playing books, games and records instead of general stock; Winder Binder makes a fifth, on terms it never puts in writing. Do the thinning at home first: photograph one shelf, let BiblioScan put a price on every spine it can read, and the keepers separate themselves from the trade box in about a minute.
When is the big library book sale in Chattanooga?
No single date owns the year here, and the organizer is the Chattanooga Public Library Foundation rather than a branch committee. The three editions dated below all filled the Downtown Library building on Broad Street. Summer 2025 ran four days, Wednesday, June 18 through Saturday, June 21, opening with a preview evening at 5pm where Friends and book-club members walked in for nothing and everybody else could buy a $15 membership at the door, and closing with everything halved and $5 a bag once noon passed; the fall edition took Thursday, November 20 through Saturday, November 22, 2025, 9am to 5pm, with tables reserved for science, mystery, reference and Christmas books; a further sale on July 11, 2026 ran 9am to 3pm, tiered at $3, $2 and $1, with $5 bags in the honor room. As of early September 2026 the Foundation had listed no further sale on its events page, which carried a Northgate Mall visioning session on August 30 and an author evening with Chris Bohjalian on October 15 — but its own social accounts had already said the remaining sidewalk sales were being put off to make room for a bigger, longer sale marking the Downtown Library's 50th anniversary this fall. Between dates the BookNook does the same job all year round, open whenever the Downtown Library is.
Which day is best for book hunting in Chattanooga?
Saturday, by a distance. Each stop above that posts a timetable opens on it: McKay’s to ten at night, 2nd & Charles and all three Goodwills to eight, Infinity Flux and Pennington’s likewise to eight, The Reading Room through to midnight and Rêve until four in the afternoon, and the Downtown Library, honor room included, running to six. Sunday is the trap, because the library shuts and the BookNook goes dark with it. Monday and Tuesday are worse again, since The Reading Room and Rêve both close, stripping the Brainerd Road and Hixson legs of their best rooms. If a weekday is all you have, take one between Wednesday and Friday, when nothing here with posted hours is closed and the library still runs to six.