VOLUNTEER WITH US

It takes many boxes to pack up the books at the end of each sale. Each box contains from 20 to 50 items depending on the proportion of large hardcovers and smaller paperbacks.
Before the sale, the number of boxes stored in the work room is close to twice the post-sale stock, and an amount equal to at least half of our pre-sale stock comes in as donations during the sale.

We have not in the past, but we did it for the first time in 2023, and we plan to do it this year again for a few specialty books.

Our pricing strategy is pretty simple. In general it’s $3 for a Hard Cover book and $2 for Soft Cover.

Bundles

• 10 soft cover books for $11, and 20 for $25.
• 5 hard cover books for $14, and 10 for $25.
• There will also be bundle bin with pre-packaged books in bundles of 5 or 10 for $3 and $6 each, respectively.

Some specialty books will be individually priced and either pre-sold through our facebook event or in our specialty book rooms during the event.
For the specialty books, consider the following factors that affect pricing:

• What’s the original price?
• What’s this used book been priced at in the market?
• What’s the physical condition of the book?
• Is it unique or rare?
• Was it a bestseller or well known?
• Is it about a popular subject?
• Does it contain illustrations, photos, maps, engravings, plates or other content that may make it collectible?
• How many other copies are in stock?
• How many copies come in every year?

We welcome donations of faith books ONLY. You can also choose to support theCODE Ottawa through a monetary donation

Most books are donated by the general public just like you!

No. We do not have the resources to carry out appraisals of donated items.
If you believe that some of your collection may be particularly valuable, we recommend you have these items professionally appraised. If you then sell them to a store, library, museum, or other organization you can donate the money to theCODE Ottawa or charity of your choice, for which a tax receipt can be provided.
Of course, we will gratefully accept your book and music donations regardless, but we cannot provide tax receipts or any other kind of receipts for donations of material.

This is one of the biggest fundraisers for theCODE Ottawa and funds are used to support our mentorship ministry.

The sale will run on Thursday and Friday, May 09 and 10th respectively from 10am to 7pm with the last day being Saturday, May 11th from 9am to 3pm.

The majority of the books that have not sold are donated to Christian Salvation Mission which groups the books into categories and gives them to pastors in Africa.
Also, items donated that are not faith related are given away free of charge near the entrance of our event.

They are regularly collected from local restaurants or stores that have kindly agreed to save them for us.

The current shelving was donated.

The sale is usually scheduled in May to avoid it being too early in spring and perhaps being adversely affected by bad weather and staying away from the hot summer days.

Space for the sale is not feasible to make available year-round, plus volunteers are focused on supporting the ministry through the balance of the year.

We are a volunteer organization, not a bookstore. We can’t run a conventional store for the same reasons listed in the previous FAQ. We leave that to the local bookstores, whom we don’t want to compete with.
All costs are minimized in order to maximize the revenue for theCODE Ottawa. There would be little to no return on investment in renting, leasing or owning our own store.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful! It would be an immense effort with little value to try to enter our stock into a computerized database and maintain it through the sale thereby taking a lot of manpower hours that we don’t have for little incremental benefit.

In a storage locker.

Some sections sell faster than others, so books are shifted to allow the volunteers to put out as much stock from the work room as possible.
Our primary goal is to sell as much as we can given the limitations of our sale space. Nobody will buy stuff if it’s not on the shelves!

Our focus is being a great book sale to find wonderful faith material for all ages at great prices! There are many other used book or thrift stores that can help you find the other stuff.

It’s too much time and effort for volunteers to pursue this along with other duties over the year. Taking the photos and posting the items on eBay are not too tough to do, but shipping and payment headaches are something we want to avoid.
As noted, this year, we will try to sell a few things in advance and see how that goes.

So come to the sale for great deals!