It’s hard to find anyone enthusiastic about a city proposal to close the Recycled Reads bookstore and scatter mini versions of the shop across Austin’s library branches.
The bookshop selling mostly used library copies, often for $1, recycles or repurposes whatever it can’t sell. Proceeds benefit the library system.
Since opening in 2009 on Burnet Road – back when the North Austin corridor was a patchwork of aging businesses and cracked sidewalks – Recycled Reads has been a quiet constant. Over the years, the city spruced up the road with much-needed safety upgrades; condos went up, trendy bars moved in, and rents soared. But the shop endured, surviving two attempts to drastically shrink its footprint or close it altogether. The latter idea sprang from a onetime conservative wing of City Council that nearly succeeded in ending the store’s lease in 2015.
Today, Austin faces a severe budget crisis driven by federal funding cuts, an unexpected dip in sales tax revenue, and a generous but controversial police pay raise approved by Council last year. To counter a $33 million budget shortfall, the city manager has proposed a spending plan that includes a slate of cuts, including shuttering Recycled Reads to save $107,000 a year.
Since word spread of the potential closing, store manager Paola Ferate-Soto has been hearing from regulars who rely on the store for more than just cheap books weeded from the library system and residents’ personal bookshelves.
“Most people are pretty vocal about it and are upset,” Ferate-Soto said. “Some have told me they contacted their Council member or the mayor. They say this is much more than a bookstore, that it’s a community. Some people are very concerned about the vintage materials that we get,” she continued, referring to items that can’t sit unattended on a shelf. “Others are upset there won’t be the quantity of materials all in one place.”
“I don’t know anywhere else in town you can get a children’s book for 25 cents.” – Former Council Member Kathie Tovo
Indeed, it’s the browsing – the joy of poking around the stacks, mingling with fellow patrons, and walking out with a $2 treasure – that has long defined the Recycled Reads experience. Through the years, the store has become a refuge in a fast-changing city – a place to join a knitting group, rent a household tool, or renew a passport. To many, it’s a piece of Austin worth holding on to.
“This is part of what helps make Austin affordable – as much as it can be these days,” said longtime customer Nancy Harris, who shops there with her husband, Chip. “People who might not have the means to pay for used books from other sources can find affordable books here – books that are kept out of the landfill, or aren’t sold off for pennies to national chains.”
“I don’t know anywhere else in town you can get a children’s book for 25 cents,” said former Council Member Kathie Tovo, who helped fend off previous efforts to close the store. “It’s really supporting the mission of the library system – promoting literacy and getting books into the hands of Austin readers.” That it can do all that while diverting thousands of tons of materials from the landfill is something to celebrate, she said.
For some local nonprofits, the store’s loss would create tangible hardships. Inside Books Project, an Austin-based organization that sends books to incarcerated people in Texas, relies heavily on Recycled Reads as a place to buy affordable books to supplement donations from the Austin community.
“Books are a lifeline to people in prison,” the group’s Scott Odierno told Council at last week’s public budget hearing. He noted that Inside Books recently donated more than 500 books in six languages to the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, with nearly all of them coming from Recycled Reads. “Each month we’re able to buy all the books we need in one stop,” he said. “It wouldn’t be possible to drive to multiple smaller library bookstores to find the books we need.”
Council continued hearing from speakers this week and expects to vote on a final budget Aug. 13.
This article appears in August 8 • 2025.
