Sooner or later, most books leave the hands of their original purchasers and enter the secondhand (or thirdhand, or zillionthhand) realm. Nonetheless, even though it’s inevitable, most authors find it a bit painful to imagine their books for sale at thrift shops and yard sales. Minnesota author Leif Enger told the Austin Daily Herald how it was for him:
“An old friend of mine took enormous joy in calling me on his cell phone from a garage sale in Iowa where he’d just found a hardcover copy of Peace Like a River” — his 2002 debut novel — “for 25 cents. I felt like a proverb about the insignificance of man, or a song by Kansas about blowing dirt.”
But ultimately, Enger said, “It made my day.”