Three forces carry the secondhand trade on this island and none of them is a general used bookstore of the mainland kind. A Japanese chain runs two branches here and pays cash across the counter. One Chinatown shop belongs to the family that owns The Last Bookstore in Los Angeles. The third force is the Friends of the Library of Hawaiʻi, an 1879 nonprofit running a network of year-round rooms — one commercial storefront in Kakaʻako plus volunteer shops inside four public libraries — that is far denser than a city of this size normally supports.
Distances decide the day. The commercial stops cluster in a band from Chinatown through Iwilei, Kakaʻako and out to Waikīkī, all of it drivable in twenty minutes. After that the map splits: one run over the Pali to Kāneʻohe and on to Kailua, where two of the best rooms on this page sit five minutes apart, and one leeward errand up the H-1 to Pearlridge in Aiea. Kailua, Kāneʻohe and Aiea are separate towns on Oʻahu, and any listing here that sits beyond city limits names its town before anything else.
Four names in older Honolulu round-ups will cost you a drive. Idea's Music and Books, the Kakaʻako successor to the legendary Jelly's, shut for good on Sunday, September 21, 2025 after nearly a decade — Hawaii News Now covered the closing three days out. BOOKS @ Mark's, the Friends' Chinatown shop, has been closed since July 22, 2021 by its own page, and their Aliʻi Place pop-up is marked permanently closed alongside it. Vintage Books on Waialae Avenue is not a bookstore at all but a speakeasy restaurant hiding behind a bookshop facade, by its own description. And folh.org, the short address that turns up in directories for the Friends, is not theirs: it answers with an error page pointing visitors at a British hospital charity. The real site is friendsofthelibraryofhawaii.org.
Used bookstoresBOOKOFF Kakaʻako
716-A Cooke St, Honolulu, HI 96813
Japan's secondhand giant keeps two Hawaiʻi branches, and the Cooke Street one is the branch with its own clock rather than a landlord's. BOOKOFF USA's page for it posts 10am to 8pm seven days and spells out what moves in both directions: books, CDs, vinyl, cassette tapes, DVDs, Blu-rays, video games, consoles and collectibles, with trading card games accepted for sale only. The same page carries a notice dated September 30, 2025 — the desk here stopped buying Japanese books, though it still sells them and now imports pre-owned Japanese stock from BOOKOFF branches back in Japan. Nothing on the chain locator flags this address as non-buying, so a scout can arrive with a box and walk out with cash the same afternoon.
Hours : Daily 10am–8pmWebsite Used bookstoresSkull-Face Books & Vinyl
1148 Bethel St, Honolulu, HI 96813
Under the ARTS at Marks Garage on Bethel Street, this is the Hawaiʻi outpost of Josh Spencer's Last Bookstore group, and its parent describes the room as new and used books and vinyl curated hard toward horror, science fiction, punk and counterculture. That parent site opens the room at 11am on five days, closing at 6pm from Tuesday through Thursday and at 10pm on Friday and Saturday, with Sunday and Monday dark; the Chinatown merchants' guide hiChinatown published the identical grid in a listing dated July 13, 2026. Selling is not a walk-in here — the group's sell page asks for an emailed list with photographs, calls back if it likes what it sees, and settles in cash or trade. Those 10pm closes make this the only used shelf in the guide you can still work after dinner.
Hours : Tue–Thu 11am–6pm, Fri–Sat 11am–10pm; closed Sun–MonWebsite Friends of the Library storeFriends' Books & Music
610 Ward Ave, Honolulu, HI 96814
Hawaiʻi Public Radio broadcast State Librarian Stacey Aldrich from inside this room on August 4, 2026, three weeks after it opened on July 15 in the building at Ward Avenue and Kapiʻolani Boulevard that everyone knows for its Barack Obama mural. It is the same operation that traded as Village Books & Music in Ward Village from February 2021, renamed when the Ward Centre Mall shut on June 30, 2026, per the organization's fundraisers page. Books share the floor with CDs, DVDs, vinyl, games and artwork, the shelves are restocked daily and rotated, prices sit on a barcode sticker on the back or in the upper right corner of the first blank page, and customer parking comes off Waimanu Street. Friends members and Hawaiʻi State FCU members take 10% off on Sundays with proof.
Hours : Tue–Sat 9am–6pm, Sun 9am–4pm; closed MonWebsite Used bookstoresBookEnds
600 Kailua Rd #126, Kailua, HI 96734
Over the Pali in Kailua, a windward town of its own, Pat Banning has kept this shop in the Kailua Shopping Center since 1998, shelving new and secondhand together. Her site and the Kailua Town tenant directory published by Alexander & Baldwin, which carries a 2026 copyright, agree on the same week — 9am to 8pm Monday through Saturday, 9am to 5pm on Sunday — which is the widest opening of anything mapped here. The Mānoa Mirror, interviewing staff about the shop's history, records that Banning learned the trade buying and selling for another Honolulu bookshop before that store closed in 1997, and that customers can bring books in to sell across the counter. Very few private desks on Oʻahu do that at all, which is reason enough to make the drive with a box in the trunk.
Hours : Mon–Sat 9am–8pm, Sun 9am–5pmWebsite Annual Friends of the Library saleFLH Annual Booksale
Ward Centre, 1200 Ala Moana Blvd, Honolulu, HI 96814
The 77th edition took ten days, June 13 to 21, 2026, in the old Roger Dunn and Famous Footwear space at the ʻEwa end of Ward Centre Mall, on the corner of Ala Moana Boulevard and Kamakeʻe Street. The Friends of the Library of Hawaiʻi put the floor at over 125,000 books in every category, trace the event to 1947, and add CDs, DVDs, comics and manga to the tables; members of the Friends and of Hawaiʻi State FCU got a preview evening on Friday, June 12 from 4pm to 8pm, with a free tote bag for the first 500 through the door. Parking across Ward Centre and Ward Village garages was free. Settle one thing before you plan the next one: the organization's fundraisers page records Ward Centre Mall closing on June 30, 2026, nine days after this sale packed up, which leaves the venue for the 78th an open question.
Where can I find cheap used books in Honolulu?
A quarter is the floor on this island, and you pay it in Kāneʻohe rather than in town. The Friends who run the basement under Kāneʻohe Public Library publish 25 cents or five for a dollar on fiction and nonfiction, 10 cents on children's books and comics and 5 cents on magazines, with a free overstock cart alongside. In Kaimukī the Book Cellar puts most items at a dollar during its Friday afternoon slot, and the Hawaiʻi State Library shelves run on an honor box with prices penciled onto the first blank page. Hawaiʻi Kai discounts a different section by 50% each month — cookbooks, music CDs and adult fiction in July 2026, crafts and children's in June — and ran full storewide half-price weeks in March and May 2026. Under those numbers only the Friends' annual sale moves comparable volume, and it put over 125,000 books on the floor in June 2026.
Where do I sell used books in Honolulu?
Start with BOOKOFF on Cooke Street, the one desk on Oʻahu that will take an unannounced box: photo ID, a single offer covering the whole lot, cash before you leave, and no interest in damaged or moldy copies. Note the September 30, 2025 change on its own page — Japanese books are no longer bought at that branch. Mangamon will take manga in either language but pays by PayPal, Mad Platter wants a phone call to book a slot, and Skull-Face works through The Last Bookstore's process of an emailed list plus photographs, answered with cash or trade. BookEnds in Kailua still buys across the counter. Do the triage before the drive: point a phone down a loaded shelf and BiblioScan works along it, pricing each title against what the thing actually resells for — which is how a listing gets told apart from a trade-in.
Which day is best for book hunting in Honolulu?
Friday, and it is the Kaimukī Book Cellar that decides it — two hours from 1pm, the only window it opens all week. Everything else is trading that day, and Skull-Face in Chinatown stays open until 10pm, which no other used shelf here does. Saturday is the close second and costs you only Kaimukī, with the Kailua library bookstore open 10am to 2pm and both BOOKOFF branches running until 8pm. Avoid building a Sunday around this list: Skull-Face, Mangamon, the Hawaiʻi State Library shelves and the Kailua and Kaimukī rooms are all shut, leaving the two chain stores, Mad Platter, BookEnds and the Ward Avenue store.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Honolulu?
Two big ones a year, and the same organization runs both. The 77th Annual Booksale held ten days from June 13 to 21, 2026, with a members' preview on Friday, June 12 from 4pm to 8pm and a free tote for the first 500 in; the fifteenth Music & Book Sale ran two weekends in January 2026, the 17th to the 19th and the 23rd to the 25th, carrying a floor the organizer counted at 25,000-plus records, as many CDs and 15,000 books. Both took the ʻEwa end of Ward Centre Mall, which closed on June 30, 2026 — so treat the venue, not the season, as the thing to verify with the Friends before the next one. Between sales the same organization keeps its Ward Avenue store open six days a week and volunteer rooms inside four libraries.