Professors, Poets, and Me

A published poet. Principals. Mystery authors. Doctors. Social media influencers. A “big-time troublemaker.” University professors. And me.

It’s an unlikely group of people that have come together. But we all have one thing in common: a love of literature.

“We’re about literacy,” longtime volunteer and Mary Jane McCord Planned Parenthood Book Sale co-chair Fran Antenore explains. My second day on the job, Antenore pulls me away from my “rough sort” duty — a role I’m both eager to start but also terrified of, since I’m still learning the more than 50 categories of books (because, 50!) to talk with me about some of the people she’s encountered in the dozen years she’s volunteered. Set to begin serving as the chair for her fifth sale, Antenore isn’t just a volunteer — this is her life.

The Mary Jane McCord Planned Parenthood Book Sale is celebrating 50 years this year. For five decades, this entirely volunteer-run operation has gone from earning around $4,600 out of their State Street book sale site to more than half a million dollars last year.

Today, they have a completely dedicated book sale warehouse and donation site near Old Town Goleta where books are shlepped, sorted, categorized, scanned, shipped, and stacked — every single week of the year. Every new set of volunteers is trained by a manager who runs their team enthusiastically. It’s fun to be here. I mean, everyone is a volunteer, so why shouldn’t it be fun? But also, everything is organized. Like, a dedicated person that arranges, restocks, and purchases supplies for the office, kind of organized.

For an organization that’s just half a century old, this thing could be studied by Harvard Business School (and it might be — just give the group until October to set the plans in motion). “I’ve never seen anything like this … in America,” quips Carol, another volunteer.

I am four weeks into this gig, one I signed up for months ago just thinking I’d just get first dibs on children’s books at this big sale everyone always talks about (NO, I HAVE NEVER BEEN) and am literally getting chills. “We operate like a collective,” Carol chimes in during my chat with Antenore. 

If you’ve ever attended the Mary Jane McCord Planned Parenthood Book Sale, you know it’s good. Like, according to Antenore, no-one-ever-walks-away-empty-handed good.

The history of the sale is a beautiful one. Because of course it’s beautiful. A group of volunteers and boardmembers got together in 1973 to create an auxiliary of Planned Parenthood to support education and fundraise. They chose to sell books! In the beginning, books were collected in bins at gas stations, so needless to say, things were scrappy. Phone trees were used. Mothers with children, specifically children “who could read,” as Antenore puts it, were called on to help set up the sale.

But what isn’t often told is how this book sale got to be so good. Because it’s not just the community coming together every September to attend “the biggest used-book sale in Santa Barbara with thousands of donated books collected all year on everything from aardvarks to zygotes,” as one newspaper ad wrote about the event in 1994. (Yes, that’s great, too.) It’s the volunteers.

I’m not sure when I got the first email to volunteer for the book sale. It might have been in January. The training day had been on my calendar for months. When I finally walked into the room for my first day of orientation, I was five minutes late, but the meeting had already started. Everyone in the room had already introduced themselves. “But I’m a mom!” I screamed internally, as I quickly stashed the half-eaten Clif bar in my purse for later.

Somehow, two hours of training in the office rushed by. Obviously, I love books. But as I learned during my first day of rough sort training, I don’t love books in the way that some people do — the way they can immediately pick up a book or catch the author’s name from the other side of the room and know whether it’ll fit under one of 50 categories, such as Natural History or New Age. This isn’t just training; it’s an education. And I’m a student. My teachers are the volunteers who work tirelessly all year to put together an annual fundraiser that benefits Planned Parenthood of California Central Coast.

Part of the initial training is to learn about the book sale’s “side hustles.” I’m using that term playfully, because selling on Amazon is considered a side hustle, but it raked in just as much money a few years ago as the book sale did. A large part of that is likely due to a volunteer named Steve, who created a proprietary software named Lookling.

Lookling allows category owners to scan every single book that’s been delivered to them by a rough sorter and determine whether it has value, and how often it sells online. Not only that, but this tool also generates a basic description of each book, posts it online, and creates a packing slip. It’s a tool literally created for this book sale. By a volunteer. In their spare time. “He thought it would take him a few months, but it took him a few years to flesh it out,” Antenore tells me.

There’s also a room the team refers to as “ABE” — not because the category owner is named Abe, but because another volunteer who deals directly with specialized books full-time curates high-end, one-of-a-kind, and first-edition books that can be sold on AbeBooks, a site that’s described as an “e-commerce global online marketing … that offers books, fine art, and collectables from sellers in over 50 countries.” Last month, one of the donated books sold for $1,500.

And that’s just scratching the surface. There’s also the puzzles and games that volunteers began collecting and organizing during COVID; or Bernie and Carol, who took one look at the upstairs “record room” last year, if you could call it that, and took it upon themselves to organize, sort to sell at the sale, and on occasion work directly with dealers to sell high-value records.

“We get so many books, often duplicates, and we try to fulfill the requests of outside organizations who are also interested in literacy,” explains Antenore. Organizations like Alcoholic Anonymous, where boxes of books that can’t be sold are donated to give to individuals who may not be able to afford a new book; or building a North and South County library for the jail. “We know people want to donate to the [Planned Parenthood] Book Sale, but we’re about community,” says Antenore.

There’s also an entire team dedicated to selling all the random stuff they receive on eBay (a Sleep Number Bed control?), and the group that collects data to help analyze the number of books sold per category and price during the sale, allowing future category owners to assess how to organize for the following year.

“My answer is just to say yes to everything,” smiles Antenore.

I get chills every time I hear these stories. Because it’s the volunteers that have made this all happen. “The span between our youngest volunteer and our oldest volunteer is 78 years.” Antenore tells me, sharing that the youngest volunteer, at age 14, designed this year’s new logo. “So, people show up, they bring their brilliance, and they create and do.”

I’m not sure if I’m adding any brilliance to the group, but in just a few short weeks, I’ve worked alongside neighbors, fellow moms, and new friends to determine what ends up in the sale. And yes, I’ll finally be attending this year — as a proud volunteer.

The Mary Jane McCord Planned Parenthood Annual Book Sale takes place at Earl Warren Showgrounds September 12-22. Admission to the opening night party (September 12, 4-8 p.m.) is $30; all other days are free. See booksale.ppcentralcoast.org.