The Living Bookshelf
A bookshop shaped by its readers

Help us build a better bookshelf.

We're creating a carefully curated little bookshop at Anderson & Co. Mercantile—and exploring a way to trade good books for more good books. We'd love your honest input before we decide what comes next.

About 4–5 minutesReaders of all agesNo account needed

There are no right answers. If a trade program isn't for you, that's useful to know, too. We're listening before we make any promises.

01 · About you

Your reading life

First, tell us what you already do—not what you think we'd like to hear.

1. Do you currently homeschool children in your household? (Required)
2. Where do you live? (Required)
3. How many used books have you purchased in the past three months? (Required)
4. Where did you most recently buy a used book? (Required)
5. Which kinds of books do you look for? (Select all that apply)
6. What's your biggest frustration shopping for used books?
02 · The books you finish

What happens next?

This helps us understand whether book trading would actually be useful.

7. Last time you had books you no longer wanted, what did you do? (Required)
8. How many good-condition books could you realistically consider bringing to a local shop in the next month? (Required)
03 · A possible trade program

Would a book trade work for you?

We're testing an idea, not announcing a final policy. Please judge these terms as they are.

Here's one way it might work:

Bring in books in good condition. We review them and select the ones that fit our shelves. For accepted books, we offer store credit, not cash.

Example: A book we'd price at $10 might earn you $3 in store credit.

Under this possible plan, credit could pay for up to half of each used-book purchase. If you bought $20 in used books, you could use $10 in credit and pay $10 yourself. Unused credit would remain available for later visits.

This is just a proposal, and not every book would be accepted.

9. With those terms, what would you most likely do? (Required)
10. What would be your biggest hesitation about trading with us?
11. Imagine bringing us a book we'd resell for $10. Which offer would you prefer? (Required) There's a trade-off between how much credit you get and how quickly you can spend it.
04 · The books you want

Help us fill the shelves.

12. Which used-paperback price range usually feels reasonable to you, depending on condition?
13. If you homeschool, which secondhand books would help most? (Select all that apply)
14. If we hosted a small book-trading preview, what would you want to do? (Required)
Optional, but especially helpful for deciding what to stock.
05 · Stay in the loop (optional)

Want to hear what comes next?

Your survey is anonymous unless you choose to leave an email. You can answer without joining any list.

We will use survey answers to plan the bookshop. We will only send updates to addresses that explicitly opt in. Survey submissions are stored privately through our website's form service; we won't post your responses publicly.

Thank you for helping us decide what to build, before we build it.