Fargo is a small secondhand market with a hard edge running through the middle of it. The Red River is a state line, so Moorhead sits in Minnesota while West Fargo is its own North Dakota city with its own library and its own Friends group, and three of the nine entries below are outside the Fargo city limits — each one names its town and state in its first line. Downtown holds most of what a scanner would want, with BDS Books, Overbooked, Mind Virus and the library shop inside a few blocks of one another; everything else is a drive.
The real depth here belongs to the three library Friends groups rather than to the storefronts. Fargo's runs a standing shop, Second Editions, inside the downtown Main Library and adds the two clear-outs it bills as its spring and fall book sales; Moorhead's and West Fargo's each clear a hall at least once a season. In April 2026 the three ran a joint metro-wide Used Book Sale Crawl for National Library Week, April 23 to 25, with a punch card that only filled if you visited a Fargo branch, the Moorhead library and the West Fargo library.
Three changes in this metro will send an older guide to a locked door. Zandbroz Variety, the Broadway store that anchored downtown book buying for 33 years, closed in June 2024 — its Sioux Falls sibling is still trading, which is why the name keeps surfacing. Ferguson Books & More left 214 Roberts Alley in October 2025, reopened inside Daily's Market as Fergie's Bookshops, and closed the doors for the last time on January 30, 2026, its shelving and stock sold on to Overbooked. And the Librarium Lounge, the used-book and tea room going into the old Zandbroz malt shop at 417 Roberts St N, had not opened its doors as of its own August 20, 2026 post announcing permit approval and the start of demolition.
Used bookstoresBDS Books
1200 1st Ave N, Ste B, Fargo, ND 58102
A floor-to-ceiling general secondhand room on 1st Avenue North, a block off the west end of downtown, trading since 1995; the shop's own Yelp blurb claims it as the Fargo-Moorhead area's only fully stocked general used bookstore, thousands of paperbacks and hardcovers deep across adult and children's stock. Fargo Mom's January 12, 2026 guide to bookstores across Fargo and Moorhead puts it downtown, locally owned since 1995, and known for its deals and the sheer size of the collection. There is no operator website and no schedule posted anywhere the owner controls, so what follows is simply the week two business listings happen to agree on — worth a call to (701) 232-4551 before a long drive. Thursday is the single evening it holds the doors open past six.
Hours : Mon–Wed 10am–6pm, Thu 10am–8pm, Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 10am–5pm
Used bookstoresBooks at a Fifth
4101 13th Ave S, Fargo, ND 58103
In the Village West Shopping Center on 13th Avenue South, across from West Acres Mall and beside Hornbacher's, where pricing is a rule rather than a judgment call: everything goes at one fifth of the publisher's price, so a $29.95 hardcover is $6 and a $9.95 paperback is $2. Rachel Guderjahn has owned it since February 2, 2016, and stock is sorted by category, then by author surname, then by title, which makes it an unusually quick floor to work through spine by spine. Trade-ins are walk-in whenever the door is unlocked and settle in shop credit pegged at half the price the counter thinks your book will fetch — never cash — and the published refusals are Reader's Digest condensed volumes, marked-up or outdated textbooks and most encyclopedias. The same January 12, 2026 Fargo Mom roundup restates that rule as 80 percent off the cover price.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pmWebsite Used bookstoresOverbooked
619 2nd Ave N, Fargo, ND 58102
Michelle Forness left 25 years of teaching English to open this downtown room, and she furnished it out of a closure: Dane Ferguson approached her about buying his shelving and inventory when he decided to wind up a shop he had run for fifteen years. The Study, a North Dakota books newsletter written by former Minot bookseller Val Stadick, ran an interview with her on August 12, 2026 that sets out the mix plainly — new and used books, gifts and sidelines, and audiobooks through Libro.fm. Secondhand copies are shelved among the new rather than penned into their own section, so treat this as a fifteen-minute skim on a downtown loop rather than a destination hunt. Her own site confirms full-time trading five days a week.
Hours : Tue–Sat 10am–6pmWebsite Permanent Friends bookstoreSecond Editions, Friends of the Fargo Public Library
Main Library, 101 4th St N, Fargo, ND 58102
The Friends have kept a small shop on the first level of the Main Library since 2009, stocked with what the library weeds out plus whatever the public carries in, run entirely by volunteers and taking cash or check only. It posts its own grid, closing half an hour before the library itself does, and Perry Bekkerus has managed the floor since July 2024. The set-pieces are worth timing a trip around: Fargo Underground reported on October 8, 2025 that what the Friends bill as their annual fall sale ran October 23 to 25 across the Main Library breezeway and the Carlson and Northport branches, buy-four-get-one-free on everything but collectible titles for the first two days, then a $10 grocery bag from 9am to 3pm on the Saturday. Donations go in at the shop counter, and the refusal list is published: mass-market paperbacks, textbooks, magazines, encyclopedias older than a year, VHS tapes, cassettes, and anything damaged, smoke-filled or moldy.
Hours : Bookstore hours: Mon–Thu 10am–7:30pm, Fri 11am–5:30pm, Sat 9am–5:30pmWebsite Used bookstoresWords To Live By Bookstore
819 Center Ave, Moorhead, MN 56560
Over the Red River in Moorhead, Minnesota, ten minutes from downtown Fargo, a secondhand room on Center Avenue where books are shelved by genre and the fixtures carry price tags too — the Fargo-Moorhead visitors bureau listing mentions a suit of armor and mid-century furniture standing among the music and the knickknacks. The family running it states on its own Yelp page that one half of the couple does the buying, a self-described book snob who takes only the best-condition used copies she can find, and prices them to move. Fargo Mom named it among the metro's bookstores on January 12, 2026. Two directories agree on a Wednesday-to-Sunday week, which makes Monday and Tuesday wasted river crossings.
Hours : Wed–Sun 10am–6pm
Where can I find cheap used books in Fargo?
The floor is set by volunteers, not by booksellers. The Friends outlet on the main floor at 101 4th St N sells discards and public donations at whatever its volunteers have pencilled on them, cash or check only, and trades six days a week instead of one weekend a season. On sale weekends the same group drops to a $10 grocery bag on the Saturday, as it did on October 25, 2025, and the Moorhead Friends do the same at $10 a bag on October 24, 2026. Among the commercial floors, Books at a Fifth is the one you can budget for in advance: a flat fifth of whatever the publisher charged, so a $29.95 hardcover costs $6. Savers on 38th Street SW is the volume option, with books listed among the categories it stocks and doors open from 9am to 9pm six days a week.
Where do I sell used books in Fargo?
Honestly, you mostly do not — this metro has no walk-in cash desk for books. The closest thing is Books at a Fifth in the Village West Shopping Center, which accepts trade-ins whenever its door is open, no booking and no limit on how much you haul in, and hands over credit rather than money, set at half the shelf price it forecasts for each title; it says plainly that a small business does not have the capital to pay cash. Everything else on this page takes donations instead: the Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo Friends all feed their receipts back into their own libraries, and each publishes what it will refuse. So the triage belongs at home and well ahead of the drive: stand your cartons somewhere with decent light, photograph an entire shelf in one frame through BiblioScan, and each spine comes back carrying today's resale value — which separates the handful you list yourself from the crate you trade away for credit.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Fargo?
Three of them operate inside this metro, and they stagger rather than collide. Fargo's is the only one with a year-round outlet, the volunteer-run room just inside the Main Library, and it also mounts the larger seasonal clear-outs — Fargo Underground put the autumn 2025 edition at three days from the 23rd of October, spread over the downtown breezeway and both branch buildings, ending in $10 bag pricing on the Saturday morning. Moorhead has posted further ahead than anyone: one short Saturday, September 19, 2026, then a three-day run from Thursday the 22nd of October with bags on the last afternoon. West Fargo held its own on the 11th of October 2025 at prices the city compared to a garage sale and pushes announcements through Facebook rather than a published calendar, and all three linked arms for National Library Week between April 23 and 25, 2026, handing out a card you could only complete by taking in a Fargo branch plus both neighbors.
Which day is best for book hunting in Fargo?
Thursday, and it is not close. BDS Books is the only shop downtown that pushes past six on any day of the week, and Thursday is the day it does, to 8pm; Second Editions runs to 7:30pm; Books at a Fifth and Overbooked are both trading; Words To Live By is open across the river in Moorhead; and Savers holds until 9pm out by West Acres. Saturday is the alternative, and the one that matters on a sale weekend, since every Friends date on this page falls on or includes one — but BDS Books closes at 5pm and the Moorhead shop shuts at six. Monday is the thin day rather than a dead one: Overbooked stays shut, Words To Live By stays shut across the river, and the walkable downtown drops to BDS Books plus the library shop, so it is the morning to spend listing at home. Tuesday puts everything back except Moorhead.