As some of you may be aware, I moved recently. It was quite an…interesting exercise, packing up and moving, but I’ve ended up in quarters significantly nicer than those I left. And along the way, I had occasion to reflect once more on the persistent folly of moving reams and reams of dead trees. I refer, of course, to my bookshelves.
Which of us hasn’t heard tales of people who came to love ebooks upon having to move, and realizing just how many boxes were taken up by all their dead tree books? There have been stories of people getting rid of printed books altogether and being the happier for it. And I have to admit, I’ve been more than a little tempted from time to time.
Those books don’t even represent all of the printed books I own. I’m pretty sure there are at least two or three more big boxes of paperbacks and a couple more of textbooks among the relics of past moves currently stored in my parents’ basement. Relics they’ve been talking about bringing on to me, now that I have room in which to put them.
I wonder if there will even be room for them all on my bookshelves when they come? I have a sneaking suspicion I will either need to invest in another bookshelf or two, or else begin the triage process of deciding exactly which books I want to try to find a new home.
But there was never the slightest thought of trying to get rid of all the books, even as I laboriously ensconced them into the many boxes I begged from local liquor stores (though there was a touch of sadness that I didn’t get to drink any of the booze from said boxes). Even if I had to admit it wasn’t likely I was going to be reading many of them any time soon. Most of my most treasured books are now in electronic form in my Kindle library, or my Calibre library on my Dropbox. Why keep the printed books at all?
Part of it is, of course, that some of them are autographed. There’s even one—Black on Black by K.D. Wentworth—whose author has since passed on, alas, and won’t be autographing any more books ever again. Those books are precious to me, but they’re far from the majority of the books on the shelves. Many of them, I’ve never even read to begin with—books I was given at the Gen Con Baen Roadshow, or that I picked up at BookExpo America. So why do I care for them?
I suppose it’s just that I like having full bookshelves—shelves full of books I have read, or might want to read eventually. They’re a tangible representation of my literary taste, and in some way they describe who I am for the people I invite into my home to inspect. They’re all carefully alphabetized, too, which might itself say something else about me—most likely, just that I’m the son of a couple of librarians.
With that being said, I have to admit to being glad of my ebook collection, too—not least because, if I actually owned the 1,389 books from my Kindle and Calibre libraries in print, those would probably have taken up even more shelves than all the dead-tree titles I have now! But those books are supremely portable. They all fit into the hard drive of my computer, and the Dropbox stash had no need to change position at all.
At the same time, I’ve been doing a lot of audiobook listening lately. Felicia Day’s You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), read by the author, was a fun listen from Audible while boxing up my life. Then while unpacking, I listened to Scout’s Progress and Mouse and Dragon by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, from the Liaden Universe series that I so adore. I’ve been finding audiobooks really are good for the ears while you’ve got your hands and eyes busy doing other things.
Anyway, I now have everything unpacked into a much larger, 99-year-old condo unit with a basement, two floors, and a finished attic where I’m even now sitting and typing this into my desktop computer. I’ve cooked my first meal—a huge pot of chili that will provide grist for my next journal entry. I’m enjoying the ambiance of this new part of town in which I find myself. And I have shelves full of books downstairs to be aesthetically pleasing, and a hard-drive full of ebooks upstairs to throw up on my screen at need.
teleread.org 
Those who’re moving a substantial distance should check out the USPS media rate for books, CDs and DVDs. It’s about half the rate of parcel post and doesn’t charge by distance. Seattle to Miami is the same price as Seattle to Portland.
Since books are among the heaviest items you likely to move, you can ship your books via USPS and use the weight you’ve saved to transport other items by van or car. That is how I moved cross-country in 2012.
I found the large boxes used for copier paper are about the right size. Large enough to get a good price, but not so large they can’t be lifted. Do NOT use an carton that suggests it was once used for anything alcoholic. That’s apparently a no-no even if what’s inside is just books. I had one box returned for that reason. I’d taped over any mention of wine but a picky USPS employee decided that the mere mention of bottles of a certain volume was enough to suggest wine.
Click to access media-mail-rate-guide.pdf
http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/173.htm
https://about.usps.com/notices/not121/not121_tech.htm
As I read the rules, the reason for the shipment does not matter, only the contents. if you’re attending a conference and planning to sell books there, you can use this going and coming and save quite a bit over virtually any other way of shipping. Just be sure to allow plenty of time for it to arrive. Do NOT include any advertising material with those books. That is a no-no. The USPS can open your box to make sure it meets standards. Simply taping shut a copier paper box is suffient to make it easily openable.
–Mike Perry, Inkling Books
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My father was in the Air Force. We moved a lot when I was a kid. I really wish that eBooks had been around then. It would have saved me a lot of angst when my dad told me that I had X pounds available to ship all of my personal stuff, but I knew that my books alone weighed 2- or 3X.
I am also at the age where my next move, hopefully not for another 20 years, will be into a retirement home. I just can’t see cramming a paper book library into a retirement home bedroom.
Both of these considerations have led me to switch over to eBooks for all new purchases. I still have a lot of legacy paper books, however. Perhaps I will send them off to a book scanning service.
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For every ebook, read a pbook, and then deal with it.
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I have a friend who has over 15,000 books which he won’t part with. I cut down my collection of other authors’ to around 100, besides the collection of my own books published by foreign publishers (another 100 or so).
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I recently moved to a temporary place and had to put about 3/4 of my books in storage. But which ones!? I was only moving across town (btw, banana boxes are the best!), and I decided to update my librarything catalog to note box numbers. https://www.librarything.com/catalog/rjnagle (I manually verified that every title was already on librarything and discovered how many duplicates I inadvertently have). I used the PRIVATE field on my librarything book record to indicate box number and then export the Excel columns I need into a more tablet-friendly spreadsheet. This took two weeks or so to do, but now that I have it, I am really happy.
I love having books around the home, but you’d be surprised at how many people really don’t like that kind of decor. Moving book boxes requires that you hire 1 or 2 strong teenage boys — don’t do it yourself!
I wish there were some service you could do to qualify for discounted prices for ebooks if you can demonstrate that you already have a copy of the printed book. Incidentally, when confirming my LT database, I realize that quite a number of older titles between 1923 and 1963 are available for free download from archive.org .
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Well, as far as getting a discounted ebook for owning the print book goes, there is Shelfie, though it only works with select titles.
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