Riverside, California, seat of Riverside County in the Inland Empire, keeps two of its used-book addresses within a few blocks of City Hall. Downtowne Bookstore has been a downtown independent since 1979, and the city library's volunteer Friends sell donated stock from the archives building beside the Main Library on Mission Inn Avenue. Everything else needs wheels: Renaissance Book Shop is a short drive south-southwest, BOOKOFF and a back-issue comic shop share La Sierra Avenue on the city's southwest side, and Moreno Valley, the next city east, contributes two more.
For a reseller, the first thing to know is which doors buy and which only sell. Downtowne evaluates trade-ins for store credit, by appointment and in person, while BOOKOFF buys books across its counter alongside discs, games and consoles. The library groups run on gifts instead and price accordingly, and the Moreno Valley shelf posted nothing above $2 in early 2026.
West-northwest of downtown, Jurupa Valley contributes the Rubidoux Drive-In swap meet, a morning market whose operator counts books among hundreds of stalls of everything else, which makes it a gamble rather than a sure thing. Two more swap meets keep the same caveat, Van Buren on its namesake boulevard and Bel-Air up in Bloomington, and neither organizer says a word about books. Farther out, Corona holds a used bookstore of its own, some thirteen miles west-southwest.
Used bookstoresDowntowne Bookstore
3582 Main St, Riverside, CA 92501
A woman-owned downtown shop in business since 1979, and a fixture of the Orange County Register's bookstore map dated May 20, 2026. The store frames its stock as used, rare, fine and new curated titles, and on Saturday, January 24, 2026 it hosted Kadir Nelson for a BASKET BALL signing at an off-site downtown venue open to confirmed RSVPs. Trade-ins run by appointment, arranged by email, and each book is judged in person for store credit with no promise that all of them will be taken. No full weekly schedule is published on the store's site, so phone 951-682-1082 before a special trip.
Friends of the Library bookstoreFriends of the Riverside Public Library Bookstore
3900 Mission Inn Ave, Riverside, CA 92501
Across the breezeway from the Main Library building, a short walk north of City Hall, the Friends sell donated hardbacks, paperbacks, CDs and DVDs, and this room alone adds vintage vinyl and gift items to what their seven branch sale corners carry. Once a month, on its closing Saturday, they run a Buck a Bag sale: one dollar buys a plastic grocery bag to fill, a second dollar buys another, and there is no cap. Their Instagram offered a gilt-edged World's Greatest Literature set at $1 a volume on August 22, 2026 and, on October 17, 2026, steered shoppers to Native and Indigenous titles on the shelves. Weekday opening is short, three hours from eleven, so plan around it.
Hours: Tue–Fri 11am–2pm, Sat 11am–4pmWebsite Used bookstoresRenaissance Book Shop
3772 Elizabeth St, Riverside, CA 92506
On Elizabeth Street, under two miles south-southwest, a shop whose seller page says it specializes in history, philosophy, science and economics, with a big science fiction and fantasy section plus German and French titles and books on Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Jazz CDs, DVDs and art postcards fill out the room, and the online catalog runs to science fiction first editions and a shelf of classical liberal and libertarian thought, in new and used copies. The Orange County Register's indie-bookstore directory, in its June 9, 2026 update, still files it under Riverside.
Hours: Mon–Sat noon–7pmWebsite BOOKOFF (buys and sells)BOOKOFF Riverside
4782 La Sierra Ave, Riverside, CA 92505
In the Five Points Plaza shopping center, nearly eight miles southwest, the Japanese chain runs its two-way trade across paperbacks and hardcovers, LPs, compact discs, cassettes, movies on disc, console games and the hardware for them, and its store page lists trading cards under "Sell only Trading Card Games". BOOKOFF's own store list, as archived in May 2026, still showed this branch open from ten to eight, matching the hours on its store page. It is the one stop here that advertises walk-in buying.
Hours: Daily 10am–8pmWebsite New and used bookstoreGet Lit Books & Things
12125 Day St, Suite E303, Moreno Valley, CA 92557
In Moreno Valley, six miles east-southeast, Ruth and Danielle Myers-Porter moved their store out of the Moreno Valley Mall after a year and reopened at Canyon Springs Plaza on Saturday, March 14, 2026, a reopening the Orange County Register announced the day before. That piece describes shelves mixing new and secondhand copies, with the new titles chosen to put women, people of color and LGBTQ authors up front, and the paper filed it under Riverside County in a September 17, 2026 round-up of stores that opened that year. The store calendar carries fiction, fantasy and thriller-horror book clubs into November 2026, and the plaza's three-level parking puts the door close to your car.
Hours: Wed–Fri 1pm–7pm, Sat–Sun noon–6pm; closed Mon–TueWebsite Where can I find cheap used books in Riverside?
Go to the library groups first. The Riverside Friends sell from their room on Mission Inn Avenue, cheaper still at their monthly bag sale, and their August 22, 2026 Instagram post had a hardcover classics set at $1 a volume. In Moreno Valley the Book Nook inside the main library keeps everything between 25 cents and $2, per the Friends' post of February 19, 2026, and it is open seven days on the library's schedule. Commercial shelves cost more, but BOOKOFF on La Sierra Avenue is open daily until eight.
Where do I sell used books in Riverside?
Two doors will consider your books. BOOKOFF buys books across its La Sierra Avenue counter, and Downtowne offers store credit through booked trade-in sessions. The library Friends accept donations, not sales, within a three-carton limit downtown. Trickier is spotting the handful worth a marketplace listing in your own name before a whole stack walks out the door for credit. BiblioScan handles that triage from a single picture of the bookcase, pricing for resale each spine it manages to match with a title, so the strong ones get pulled aside first.
Which day is best for book hunting in Riverside?
Saturday, by a wide margin. The downtown Friends room, Renaissance, BOOKOFF, Copplepot, Get Lit, the Moreno Valley Book Nook and all three swap meets are open, and at month's end the Friends add their bag sale. Avoid Monday: the Friends room, Get Lit and every swap meet are shut. On Sunday the Friends room, Renaissance and Copplepot are closed, which leaves BOOKOFF, Get Lit, the Book Nook and the three swap meets.
When is the Friends of the Library sale in Riverside?
The Friends of the Riverside Public Library hold their Buck a Bag sale on each month's last Saturday; their bookstore sits beside the Main Library at 3900 Mission Inn Avenue, and at the sale a dollar fills a plastic grocery bag and there is no limit on bags. On other days the same room keeps an 11am to 2pm window Tuesday through Friday, stretching to 4pm on Saturdays. The county library Friends in Jurupa Valley run separate sales at Glen Avon and Louis Robidoux, posted on the Riverside County Library System events calendar.