The Alabama capital keeps a short secondhand map, and you can hold all of it in your head. Two stops face each other downtown, The NewSouth Bookstore on South Court Street and the main public library on High Street, 0.3 miles apart on foot. Everything after that means driving out of Montgomery County: two more sit in Prattville, over in Autauga County, a dozen miles to the northwest and a mile from one another, and the last is up in Wetumpka in Elmore County. Where a listing falls outside the Montgomery city limits, the town shows up in its first sentence.
What this market runs on is donated stock, not a trade counter. The NewSouth Bookstore mixes secondhand copies into its new stock, but what the site publishes is a donations page rather than a buy list, and the three library entries here all live off what patrons hand in. That is exactly why the prices go so low: 50 cents a volume at the Autauga-Prattville lawn tables in May 2026, $5, $3 and $1 on the NewSouth patio at the turn of October, and a full weekend of the Morgan building given over to a sale in November. Bring bags of your own, because nobody in this group advertises a fill-a-box deal.
Three names in the local listings will sell you nothing at all. 1977 Books, the volunteer-run abolitionist shop out on Norman Bridge Road, held a closing celebration on Saturday, April 20, 2024, and the web address it used now redirects to an offshore gambling page, which is why no link for it appears anywhere below. Capitol Book and News, the Cloverdale fixture, hosted its last author event on December 19, 2015 by the Alabama Book Festival's own announcement, and an OpenStreetMap node still carries the name over on East Fairview Avenue. And "Read Herring", filed by several directories as a separate Montgomery bookstore, sits at 105 S. Court Street, which is The NewSouth Bookstore's address.
Used bookstoresThe NewSouth Bookstore
105 S. Court St, Montgomery, AL 36104
Downtown on South Court Street, two blocks or so off the Court Square fountain by its own reckoning, with secondhand copies racked next to new ones under civil rights, African American history, the Civil War, slavery, Reconstruction, Alabama and Native American headings. The store history page puts the opening at 2000, when the shop began as a sideline of the NewSouth Books publishing house, and says the founders turned their money and attention to the retail floor once that imprint went to the University of Georgia Press in 2022. Nothing in the site menu offers a trade or a buy quote; what it carries instead is a donations page pointing you at assistant manager Jessala White, by phone or email, to arrange a delivery, with textbooks and reference works refused. Its own events listing puts the fourth annual Sidewalk Sale on the patio from Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 10am through Saturday, October 3, thousands of volumes priced at $5, $3 and $1.
Hours : Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat–Sun 10am–4pmWebsite Library book salesMontgomery City-County Public Library Big Book Sale
Juliette Hampton Morgan Memorial Library, 245 High St, Montgomery, AL 36104
A five-minute walk from the NewSouth counter, the flagship branch of the city and county library system turns its High Street building over to what its own post calls the annual Big Book Sale. The library published the 2026 timings itself: 8am to 5pm on Friday, November 6 and again on Saturday, November 7, then noon to 5pm on Sunday, November 8, with food trucks, story times and arts and crafts laid on beside the tables. That announcement promises a good selection at discounted prices but names none of them, so plan on the Friday morning and pack something to carry stock in.
Hours : Fri November 6, 2026 8am–5pm; Sat November 7, 2026 8am–5pm; Sun November 8, 2026 noon–5pmWebsite Bookstore booth in an antique mallThe Second Story
616 Highway 82 Bypass W, Prattville, AL 36067
Out in Prattville, a shade over twelve miles northwest of the middle of Montgomery, trading as a vendor booth inside Prattville Pickers, an antique mall its own site describes as 100,000 square feet holding more than 300 vendors. Its Facebook page bills the booth as Prattville's indie bookstore since 2023, selling popular new and pre-loved titles alongside bookish accessories, and the shop's Instagram was still posting arrivals on August 19, 2026. The mall's Things You Will Discover page names books and comic books among the categories scattered across that floor, so the booth is not the sole reason to walk the aisles here. Its reading group gathers in the cafe inside the mall on each month's final Saturday at 10:30am, and the Bookclubs listing gives September 26, 2026 as the following meeting.
Hours : Mon–Sat 10am–6pm, Sun 1pm–5pmWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Montgomery?
Begin in a library lobby. The Autauga-Prattville Public Library over in Prattville holds stock in its foyer the year round and, for the lawn sale it dated to May 2, 2026, charged half a dollar per book, $2 for a bag holding about five, 75 cents per audiobook and a dollar per DVD. The city library in Wetumpka sells donated books, videos and audiobooks during its ordinary hours and throws in a $4 tote if you want one. Closer to the middle of Montgomery, the two dated sales are the NewSouth patio, which the store puts across the four days from September 30, 2026, with piles at $5, $3 and $1, and the city-county library's own weekend of November 6 to 8, 2026 inside the Morgan building on High Street.
Where do I sell used books in Montgomery?
Not across a counter, going by what anybody here publishes. None of the five stops lists buy prices or trade conditions, and The NewSouth Bookstore, the one general bookstore among them, routes arrivals through a donations page: contact assistant manager Jessala White first, and leave textbooks and reference works at home. That makes an online listing the practical way to get paid for a box. Aim your phone at the shelf; BiblioScan attaches a resale value to whichever spines it can name, and that sorts the box in about a minute: a few titles you list yourself, and a stack that can go straight into a donation run to Prattville or Wetumpka.
When is the big library book sale in Montgomery?
Friday, November 6 through Sunday, November 8, 2026, at the Juliette Hampton Morgan Memorial Library, 245 High Street. The Montgomery City-County Public Library set out the timings on its own event page: doors at 8am both Friday and Saturday with a 5pm close, and a noon start on the Sunday, with craft tables, story times and food trucks running through all three days. It calls the event the annual Big Book Sale and publishes no prices before the doors open. Over in Autauga County the counterpart is the Autauga-Prattville Public Library Book Sale on the Lawn, dated by that library to Saturday, May 2, 2026 and explicitly separate from the titles it leaves in the lobby the rest of the time.
Which day is best for book hunting in Montgomery?
Saturday, if you want the whole list awake at once. The NewSouth Bookstore trims to a 4pm close on Saturday and Sunday after 6pm closings Monday to Friday; Prattville Pickers opens at 10am six days a week and only from 1pm on a Sunday; the Wetumpka library shuts at 5pm on Saturdays, having run from 8am until 6pm on weekdays. Sunday narrows it to two, since the Prattville and Wetumpka libraries both close and the Morgan building is a book-buying stop on its sale weekend alone. Weekday evenings favor Prattville, where the Autauga-Prattville library posted 8pm closings on Monday and Thursday, later than anything else listed above.