Macon-Bibb County is a single consolidated government spread across a lot of ground, and its secondhand books sit in pockets rather than on one walkable strip. Downtown holds Golden Bough on Cotton Avenue, with the Round Building a mile southeast of it in Carolyn Crayton Park, which the Friends of the Library take over for the spring fundraiser both they and The Macon Melody describe as annual. West of there you need a car: Gottwals out on Riverside Drive, the Rescue Mission's Bargain Center over on Napier Avenue, plus the Friends of the Library shop seven miles out Forsyth Road. Three entries on this page sit well beyond Bibb County altogether — a pair fifteen miles south in Warner Robins, and one a dozen miles up into Jones County at Gray — and each spells out its own town in its first clause.
Exactly one business in this guide will quote you for a box, and it does so from two storefronts of the same chain. Gottwals Books issues store credit against used books you bring in and pays cash for textbooks, and any copy it has ever sold, new or secondhand, comes back across the counter at half its price in credit whenever the sticker has survived on the back cover. Shane Gottwals described that guarantee to Livability in a profile published July 29, 2026, calling it the thing that keeps people loyal to the stores. Everything else on this list runs on donated stock, which means low, published prices and no selling: you hand over the box and you leave without a check.
Three details will age an older Macon list fast. The Friends of the Library store gained a neighbor in the fall of 2025, when WGXA reported on September 24 that the Cathy Ivey Community Library would open at 5494 Forsyth Road on Monday, October 13, named for a four-time Friends president who had died that April. Golden Bough, meanwhile, has no working website at all, since goldenboughbooks.com now resolves to a GoDaddy page offering the domain for $249, which leaves its Facebook page as the only live schedule it publishes. And the chain names that dominate these searches are no help in Middle Georgia: the Half Price Books site puts just two Georgia branches on its Georgia page, in Decatur and in Marietta, while the 2nd & Charles Georgia page carries four, the closest of them in Columbus on a street confusingly named Macon Road.
Used bookstoresGolden Bough Bookstore
371 Cotton Ave, Macon, GA 31201
Downtown on Cotton Avenue, the closest stop on this page to the middle of Macon, with a stock that the Visit Macon business directory, which files it under the name Golden Bough Vintage Books, describes as leaning toward Georgia and Middle Georgia authors, Southern Americana, the Civil War, modern first editions, metaphysics and military. The Telegraph's Business 1 on 1 column, published in August 2015, dated the shop to 1989 and interviewed Eric Wakefield, a former employee who had taken it over. Visit Macon was still pushing it in a video posted June 28, 2026 that called the place downtown's best-kept secret, and the store's own Facebook page is where interruptions land: an August 10, 2026 post warned it would probably be shut for part or all of Thursday the 13th and Thursday the 27th. Treat any published week here with suspicion, because goRoundTown gives noon to 7pm Tuesday through Saturday while Loc8NearMe publishes an eleven-to-six grid broken by a half-hour afternoon gap, so use the phone number before you drive over.
Used bookstoresGottwals Books (Macon)
2834 Riverside Dr, Macon, GA 31204
Riverside Drive, three and a half miles northwest of downtown, and the Bibb County branch of a four-store Middle Georgia chain that Livability profiled on July 29, 2026 as it approached two decades in business. Secondhand copies share the floor with new ones, and the trade desk deals in two currencies: store credit against books you carry in, money for textbooks. The credit is written onto a paper slip, and the company warns that no other record of the balance is kept, so losing the slip loses the money, and no single used-book tab can be settled more than halfway with it, which means splitting the bill at the register. Separately, anything bought here can be returned for 50 percent of its price in credit provided the Gottwals sticker has not come off the back cover.
Hours : Mon–Tue, Thu–Sat 9:30am–6pm, Wed 9:30am–5pm; closed SunWebsite Used bookstoresGottwals Books (Warner Robins)
1903 Watson Blvd, Warner Robins, GA 31093
Out in Warner Robins, fifteen miles south of Macon on Watson Boulevard, this is the chain's Houston County store and the one Livability calls its 8,500-square-foot flagship. Shane and Abbey Gottwals began selling used books out of a 1,500-square-foot Warner Robins shop in March 2007, a figure the couple gave that magazine for its July 29, 2026 profile, which also records the decade-plus they spent opening franchised stores nationally under the Walls of Books name. Their own site notes that the original Warner Robins location has since moved to a much larger building, so read the Watson Boulevard address as the current store and not the founding one. Terms at the counter are the chain's: credit against used books, cash on textbooks, half the purchase price back in credit on any copy still wearing its sticker.
Hours : Mon–Tue, Thu–Sat 9:30am–6pm, Wed 9:30am–5pm; closed SunWebsite Friends of the Library bookstoreFriends of the Library Bookstore
5494 Forsyth Rd, Macon, GA 31210
Seven miles west-northwest of the center on Forsyth Road, a volunteer shop stocked entirely from donated material that also feeds the group's spring fundraiser, a split the Friends spelled out on Facebook in April 2025 when they named this address as one of the two destinations for anything you drop off. It shares a street number with the Cathy Ivey Community Library, which WGXA reported on September 24, 2025 would open on Monday, October 13 in memory of Catherine Ewing Ivey, and the building carries a Friends workroom in acknowledgment of the partnership. The organization posts its own five-day week at the head of every page of its site, splitting it between morning shifts and afternoon shifts rather than running one straight schedule. Its newsletter archive, which runs from January 2025 to April 2026, files bookstore specials beside the book club pick.
Hours : Tue, Thu, Sat 10am–2pm, Wed, Fri 2pm–6pm; closed Mon and SunWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Macon?
Start with the volunteer-run rooms. The Forsyth Road shop, staffed by Friends of the Library volunteers, sells nothing but donated material and works five days a week: before lunch on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, after it on Wednesdays and Fridays. Their big spring event ran April 24 to 26, 2026 at the Round Building, where The Macon Melody found paperbacks and hardbacks between one and two dollars and the leftovers halved on the closing day. Out on Napier Avenue, the Rescue Mission's thrift store priced its books-and-media line at $0.99 in its own August 2026 sale announcements, stacked on the half-price tag color of that particular week. And up in Gray, the Jones County volunteers price a four-hour second-Saturday sale for a library rather than a business.
Where do I sell used books in Macon?
Gottwals Books is the answer, at Riverside Drive in Macon or Watson Boulevard in Warner Robins, and it works on trade credit rather than cash for everything except textbooks, which it buys outright. Credit comes on a slip the chain describes as the sole record of what you are owed, and it can only cover half of a used-book purchase, so a big trade takes more than one visit to spend down. Nothing else in this guide buys: the Friends groups in Bibb, Houston and Jones counties and the Rescue Mission all take donations, which is generous but not income. Photograph the pile before you decide anything — BiblioScan turns a shelf image into a resale figure per spine, and the split between what deserves an Amazon listing and what deserves a trade slip stops being guesswork.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Macon?
The Bibb County one runs in spring at the Round Building, 130 Willie Smokie Glover Drive in Carolyn Crayton Park. The 2026 edition ran April 24 to 26 with a members preview the evening before, and dates for 2027 are already published: April 22 through 25, the members-only hour running from 4pm that Thursday, then 10am to 7pm on the Friday, a 10am to 6pm Saturday, and a half-price close from 10am to 2pm on the Sunday. The organizers promise upwards of 50,000 volumes and media items across more than fifty categories, with free entry and easy parking, while cautioning that the standard prices will rise above the 2026 figures by an amount not yet decided. Between editions the same volunteers keep their permanent shop open on Forsyth Road, and separate groups run their own sales in Gray on second Saturdays and from the library lobbies of Houston County.
Which day is best for book hunting in Macon?
Saturday, comfortably. The Forsyth Road shop keeps a Saturday morning, Gottwals is open until six at both of its counters in the area, Napier Avenue trades all day, and a second Saturday adds the Gray sale to the same run. Sunday is the write-off, since both Gottwals stores and the Napier Avenue thrift store close and the Warner Robins library does too. Midweek has one real trap worth memorizing: Wednesday and Friday afternoons are the only times the Friends shop on Forsyth Road opens after lunch, and Wednesday is also the day Gottwals locks up an hour early.