Feeling his home had become “overrun” by books, John Updike, who “counts himself a supporter of independent booksellers,” has decided to sell them to a local bookseller. “They were just collecting dust and mouse droppings,” he explains in an Associated Press wire story. The bookseller, Mark Stolle of the Manchester by the Book bookstore, got more than he bargained for, however: In some of the books’ margins are handwritten questions and analogies from the novelist and essayist,” which increases the value of those books to “between $200 and $1,000.” But Updike doesn’t mind that Stolle will make extra money off the books. “If he’s able to make a few dollars on a few of the review copies scattered in there, all the better,” says the two-time Pulitzer winner. “He paid a fair price.”