Five secondhand shops sit inside a ten-minute walk of Jackson Square, which is more than most American downtowns manage in a whole metro. Crescent City Books holds the corner of Chartres and Bienville; Beckham's is three blocks downriver on Decatur; Faulkner House hides in Pirate's Alley behind the Cabildo; Arcadian is around the back of the cathedral on Orleans Avenue; and Dauphine Street Books, despite everything the name promises, is at Chartres and Madison. Past that cluster the trail leaves Orleans Parish entirely. Metairie and Kenner are Jefferson Parish, Arabi is St. Bernard, and four addresses on this page fall outside Orleans Parish altogether — each of those names its own parish in the opening line.
One counter in this metro publishes what it pays, and it is not in the French Quarter. Blue Cypress Books on Oak Street states the split in figures on its own sell page: an offer based on each title's resale value, then 50% of that in shop credit or 25% in cash, with buying hours posted and Saturday deliberately left out. Everywhere else is a phone call. Faulkner House asks you to ring the shop for anything rare, signed or out of print; the Latter carriage house and the Jefferson Friends store run on donations and hand back no money whatsoever; and Beckham's and Dauphine Street Books now share one owner, so one conversation covers two storefronts.
Three things in older New Orleans round-ups will waste your afternoon. Kitchen Witch, for two decades the cookbook shop everyone recommended, says on its own homepage that it was a brick-and-mortar book shop and now sells house-blended spices only. A Gallery for Fine Photography, whose interior walls opened to reveal thousands of photobooks, left 241 Chartres in the summer of 2025 and reopened at 7457 St. Charles Ave, where the books are no longer part of what it advertises. And beckhamsbookshop.com has been out of the shop's hands for years — the Internet Archive already caught it returning a 404 in January 2024, and by April 2026 the address was serving an online-casino affiliate page. The bookstore is fine. The domain is not.
Used bookstoresCrescent City Books
240 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70130
The corner of Chartres and Bienville has carried this shop since 1992, and it belongs to a dwindling set of ABAA and ILAB member shops you can still walk into off the street. Field notes filed on May 1, 2025 by the bookseller behind the Downtown Brown newsletter describe a single bright room: a wall of collectible first editions, a working run of used titles, new books of local interest, and bins of vintage maps and prints. The shop's own page claims good books and prints from the last 500 years and keeps the door unlocked all seven days, while its searchable catalog sits on Biblio — worth a look first if you are crossing town for one specific title.
Used bookstoresBeckham's Bookshop
228 Decatur St, New Orleans, LA 70130
The oldest bookstore in the Quarter opened in 1967 and has traded at 228 Decatur, opposite the House of Blues, since 1979. A dealer's walkthrough of the neighborhood published in May 2025 broke the succession: founders Carey Beckham and Alton Cook retired and sold both the business and the building to Steve Lacy, who already owned Dauphine Street Books, and the same account warned that the shelves had thinned while one owner learned to supply two rooms. Its Facebook page, still being updated in August 2026, gives 10am to 7pm seven days a week, 364 days a year, with Mardi Gras the single exception. New Orleans' official visitor site puts the holding at fifty to sixty thousand secondhand books across a wide range of subjects.
Hours : Daily 10am–7pm
Used bookstoresBlue Cypress Books
8123 Oak St, New Orleans, LA 70118
Woman-owned, on Oak Street in the Riverbend since 2008, shelving new and secondhand side by side — and the only desk in this metro that prints its numbers. Its trading terms, published and live on the shop site in September 2026, run like this: staff make an offer against each title's resale value, you pick 50% of it in shop credit or 25% in cash, and buying runs Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm and Sunday 11am to 3pm, never on a Saturday, with a pause between Thanksgiving and New Year's. The exclusions are just as explicit — no textbooks, no ex-library copies, nothing that came out of a Little Free Library, no highlighting, no missing dust jackets, and no cash option on children's books. It prices its own secondhand stock at under half original retail on average, pushes rare and interesting finds through an eBay storefront, and treats anything past 500 volumes as an estate to be discussed separately.
Hours : Mon–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 10am–5pm, Sun 11am–4pmWebsite Library Foundation bookshopCarriage House Books
5120 St Charles Ave, New Orleans, LA 70115
The old carriage house behind the Milton H. Latter Memorial Library, on the St. Charles streetcar line, holds the permanent secondhand shop whose takings go back into the New Orleans Public Library. The Library Foundation of New Orleans, which runs it, posts Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from 10am to 2pm for both buying and dropping off, and its intake rules turn away encyclopedias, textbooks, law books, computer manuals, magazines and anything touched by smoke or water. In late August 2026 the Foundation was pointing shoppers at three channels at once — this shop, its roving sales and an eBay storefront — which tells you the volunteers already lift the obvious money before the shelves see it. Priced to clear rather than to market, so it repays a full-shelf sweep far more than a title-by-title hunt.
Hours : Wed, Thu, Sat 10am–2pmWebsite Annual charity book fairSymphony Book Fair
UNO Lakefront Arena, 6801 Franklin Ave, New Orleans, LA 70122
The LPO Volunteers ran the 73rd edition on May 30 and 31, 2026 at the UNO Lakefront Arena, an event the orchestra's own page traces back to 1957. Organizers price most paperbacks at $1 and most hardbacks at $3, sort fiction and nonfiction into 50 categories, and add sheet music, LPs, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks and framed artwork; a nola.com report filed from the warehouse on May 19, 2026 put the count at 40,000 books and found a three-volume 1773 set of Captain Cook's voyages priced at $300 on the rare table. Saturday costs $20 for first pick until noon per the volunteers' page — the LPO's own event page says 1pm — and entry is free after that, through 6pm, Sunday is free from 9am to 4pm, and the 11am-to-2pm children's session on the Sunday sells a decorated bag of kids' titles for $5. Cards work with a $1 surcharge, parking off Franklin Avenue is free, and the rare shelf is the one to walk first — it is priced by a volunteer specialist, not by a machine.
Where can I find cheap used books in New Orleans?
The bottom of this market is a dollar, and library volunteers set it rather than the stores. The Symphony fair tags most paperbacks at $1 and most hardbacks at $3, and sold a decorated bag of children's books for $5 in its Sunday session on May 31, 2026. The Jefferson Friends keep a $1 paperback cart in every branch of the parish system all year and put 65,000 books on the Pontchartrain Center floor in April 2026. Between events, the carriage house behind Latter Library and the Saturday table at Algiers Regional both price to clear rather than to market. Among the year-round stores, Blue Cypress is the honest baseline, since its own sell page admits the secondhand shelves average under half of original retail.
Where do I sell used books in New Orleans?
Realistically there is one open counter and one phone number. Blue Cypress on Oak Street values each title on resale and pays 50% in shop credit or 25% in cash, weekdays 10am to 5pm and Sunday 11am to 3pm, never Saturday, and it will not touch textbooks, ex-library copies or anything highlighted. For rare, signed or out-of-print material the call goes to Faulkner House, and one call now covers both Beckham's and Dauphine Street Books since they came under Steve Lacy's ownership. Neither the Latter carriage house nor the Metairie store buys anything — they take donations only. Triage before you drive anywhere: point a camera at the whole shelf, let BiblioScan work down the spines, and every one of them returns with a current resale number attached — enough to separate the two or three you ought to list yourself from the boxful that simply belongs at Oak Street.
Which day is best for book hunting in New Orleans?
Saturday, and the reason is geography rather than opening hours. It is the one day the carriage house behind Latter Library and the Algiers branch sale both run, from 10am to 2pm, which lets you take the St. Charles line and the West Bank in a single morning while the Quarter shops stay open around them. Wednesday and Thursday are the quieter alternative for the same two library rooms minus the crowd, and they are also when the Metairie store keeps its longest shift. What Saturday costs you is the Blue Cypress buy desk, which is closed for trading that day — so sell on a weekday and hunt on the weekend. Sunday leaves you the French Quarter and little else.
When is the big library book sale in New Orleans?
Two of them, in two different parishes, and they alternate through the year. The Jefferson Friends hold their sale at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner twice annually — April 17 to 19, 2026 for the spring edition, October 24 to 26, 2025 for the one before it — with roughly 100,000 volumes passing through across a year and 65,000 counted on the floor in April 2026. The LPO Volunteers run the Symphony Book Fair at the UNO Lakefront Arena at the end of May; the 73rd edition took May 30 and 31, 2026, and $20 buys you the first three hours on the Saturday before admission goes free at noon. Neither publishes its next dates far ahead, so check the organizers in February and in September. Between those weekends, the carriage house behind Latter Library sells every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.