How does NMLP make money if pickups are free and donations aren't tax-deductible?

NMLP's revenue model is straightforward: about 5-15% of donated books have current market value (Amazon, eBay, AbeBooks), and that resale revenue funds the entire operation — free pickup, warehouse rent, gas, insurance, sorting time, and routing to APS Title I, UNM Children's Hospital, Little Free Libraries, and the regional commercial paper pulper for unsalvageable copies.

Concretely, the operation runs on:

• Online resale revenue — Amazon FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) and eBay listings of authenticated first editions, signed copies, scarce regional NM titles, current academic books, and other market-valued inventory.
• Operational efficiency — single-operator, single-warehouse, no payroll beyond Josh, no marketing budget, no franchise fees. Almost every dollar of resale revenue goes back into operations.

What NMLP does NOT do:

• Charge donors any fee, ever, for anything
• Accept advertising or sponsored content on the website
• Sell donor data or contact lists
• Take grants or government funding
• Solicit financial donations (donations are books, not money)

The 5-15% of books that have market value carry the cost of routing the other 85-95% to readers or recycling. That's the model.

Where the resale dollars actually land

The arithmetic is visible from the warehouse floor: roughly one book in ten carries the other nine. The resale slice pays the concrete costs — warehouse rent on Edith Boulevard, gas for the statewide runs, liability insurance on the pickup operation and the facility, boxes, and the sorting hours. There is no payroll beyond me, no marketing budget, no franchise fee, which is why a margin that thin can fund free pickup at all. The routing of every book is public: five tracks — online resale, APS Title I and the UNM Children's Hospital reading program, Little Free Libraries, research-library routing for regionally significant material, and the paper recycler — with the interesting finds documented openly in the donation archive.

Nothing here runs on fees, advertising, grants, donor data, or cash solicitations — the model is books in, readers and revenue out, and the revenue goes back into the van. Why the whole thing is structured as a for-profit instead of a 501(c)(3) is its own honest answer: see why NMLP is for-profit.