Charity begins at home for this bookseller

Perhaps you have seen the large, ubiquitous advertisements in community newspapers and in the Globe: "Donate Books." My American Heritage dictionary defines donate as "to present as a gift to a fund or cause." And if your cause is the enrichment of an entrepreneur named Robert Ticehurst, who runs GotBooks .com, then you have made a worthy donation.

You might be forgiven for thinking that you are donating books to charity. You are not. If you use the free pick-up service relentlessly plugged in the ads, your donation is not tax-deductible. If you would like to donate your books to charity, Mr. Ticehurst can suggest several locations where you might go, but he can't take the books there himself.

Thanks to the Internet, the used book business isn't the doggy trade it once was. GotBooks.com's competitors accuse Ticehurst of duping the public and snatching up oodles of free inventory for his business. "I've heard that," Ticehurst says, "and they couldn't be more wrong. A lot of work and expense goes into our business."

The sticky part is that GotBooks does do some charity work, cooperating with fund-raising projects at schools and libraries. The front page of its website hypes eight charity drives and uses the word "nonprofit" eight times. Elsewhere on the site, you learn that GotBooks is a "for profit used bookseller."

The question is: What is the value of the books they sell for profit, compared to the value of the books they donate to libraries and schools? Ticehurst won't say. He says only 10 percent of the books he collects are sold for profit, thus failing to dispel the suspicion that he freely gives away low-value paperbacks and sells higher-worth books on amazon.com, abe.com, and alibris.com. If GotBooks were a charity, its sources of funds and sales data would be public information, but it is not and they are not.

One competitor confesses to both admiration and mixed feelings about GotBooks. "He's a very hard working guy, and he has thought of something that nobody else has," says Ken Gloss, owner of the downtown Brattle Book Shop. Gloss has visited the GotBooks operation in North Reading. "I was really impressed. He has incredible amounts of stuff. There are about 40,000 square feet of working space, with a small section devoted to the charity work."

Like me, Gloss has a problem with the marketing: "You think you're giving to charity, and he does support some charities, but you're really giving to his profit. It's a way of promoting his business."

Ticehurst says he has kept his nose clean with the attorney general's office, and spokeswoman Jill Butterworth confirms that. "There is nothing wrong with using the word 'donate' in connection with a for-profit marketing campaign," she says.

Temple of doom?
If people are going to take the trouble to leak us internal memos, we are going to take the trouble to print them. In an all-points bulletin issued last week, WGBH president Jon Abbott warned that the World's Greatest Broadcast House may end its current fiscal year in deficit, and declared an immediate freeze on hiring.

A friend of mine hates the cliche "a perfect storm" - and so do I - but it looks like WGBH may have sailed into one. Abbott notes that the "recessionary climate" has chilled viewer and listener donations, as well as corporate underwriting. The station has had "increased debt service costs from the disruption in the bond markets," he added.

In late February, Abbott informed his staff that the subprime credit crisis was affecting the price 'GBH had to pay for bond insurance, and that the station was refinancing its variable and fixed rate bonds at an increased cost, and drawing on contingency funds to pay expenses. Those bonds were issued primarily to pay for the station's new, $85 million headquarters in Brighton.

The 343,000-square-foot new building is Glam Central Station, with a state-of-the-art auditorium, a recording studio, and the signature 30-by-45-foot LED screen that looms over the Mass. Pike.

With 20-20 hindsight, I wonder: Maybe some warehouse space in Waltham or Watertown might have been a better choice? Will One Guest Street in Brighton become known as Becton's Folly, in honor of Abbott's predecessor, Henry Becton? Stay tuned.

Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.