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https://about.betterworldbooks.com/impact/ https://about.betterworldbooks.com/impact/

• jjeaff 4y ago
  Those look like big numbers (and interestingly they seem to have not budged upward since prior to 2019). But one must understand that the book business, especially the textbook business deals with a lot of worthless books that you have to find a way to get rid of. So anyone in the business donates or trashes/recycles a ton of books. Especially when you have book donation boxes all over the country. As for the cash, they have been around for about 20 years now and have revenues around $65 million a year. So $25m in lifetime donations is not as much as it seems. Also, they don't say they donated that much cash, they said they have "raised" it. Which usually means through programs like asking customers to donate in addition to their order. But I just remembered that they were sold to Better World Libraries in 2019, who is a non-profit associated with the internet archive. (It seems that I made a similar comment on HN back then but I have little recollection of it.) So maybe all of their profits go to a good cause now, I can't really find many details on the acquisition. But they were originally VC and PE funded. So I wonder if the business has dwindled like many book/textbook resale companies have over the last few decades. I can't imagine that a non-profit would pay any kind of premium for a for-profit business.