
The demise of the second-hand bookshop - pseudolus
https://thecritic.co.uk/the-demise-of-the-second-hand-bookshop/
======
mistrial9
Used bookstores are a lot like gardens -- they must be tended daily and grown
in 100 ways, year after year. The city I grew up in was legendary for used
bookstores, and they sit all but empty now, decades later. The 'modern' people
chiming in about how to "search faster" are missing an aspect of the
experience that is literal and measureable, as well as partially undefineable
simply because the portion of the mind and senses that is exercised is non-
linear -- file that under "non-linear thinking"

I have a Powells bookstore bookbag, and know others that do, too. Bookstores
were a destination across counties or states. The loss of these local
bookstores has 1000 unintended consequences. People see the absence the same
way they see the absence of a blooming meadow where there is now only pavement
and some litter -- in other words, not at all.

I am literally disheartened by the loss of local bookstores, in any size town.

~~~
smoe
For me, the most magical thing about the small local bookstores is the people
working there.

Just getting into one, chatting with people genuinely and deeply passionate
about what it is that they are selling. Having a coffee, talking about a book
I read, what aspects I liked, philosophizing about the topic in general and
getting recommendations what to read next based on that has beaten at least
10x any 'modern' and automatized approach I have ever seen.

But I think that is a situation where a lot of small shops, whether they sell
books, music instruments, clothes, food, etc. are in. If they grow too big,
the immense value of personal advice and interaction gets lost and if they are
too small the people might not be able to make a living.

~~~
op03
Isn't that what we get out of aggregating here tho at HN or slashdot? Some
banter and the browsing of random subjects.

I'd like the coffee though if someone cld please figure that part out.

~~~
3747yreur
Are you suggesting online posting is the same as an in-person conversation in
a somewhat intimate environment? I get that it might be the same for you but
surely you can appreciate that for most people online discussions are about as
personal as a trip to the dmv.

~~~
Nullabillity
If anything it's better since, in general, one party isn't there just to sell
something to the other.

------
biophysboy
One thing I appreciate about second-hand bookshops and libraries is that they
are not curated for me.

I read a lot of non-fiction, and I find that websites like Amazon and
Goodreads do give decent suggestions, but they are books about topics I
already know, sharing ideas I am already familiar with, in a style I like. I
can feel the customer profit gradient descent maximization breathing down my
neck. Looking at you, books with sans-serif titles, white backgrounds, and
clever illustrations!

Algorithmic websites prioritize the new and the popular, whereas bookshops and
libraries still feature the old and obscure (I realize that libraries have 30
copies of Harry Potter, but you get my point).

So, in my opinion, while these vicious market forces are currently destroying
bookshops, I think it'll get to a steady state where bookshops serve a
smaller, more loyal and niche audience.

~~~
Balgair
When I was traveling, I'd love me some second-hand bookstores. They were
perfect for a few hours to kill. Each one was like a tattoo on a town, unique
yet familiar.

Large cities, small hamlets, the used bookstore in each were all the same
stacks of yellowing books haphazarded. The smell, oh the smell, exactly the
same musky deep scent. The pacing feet or strolling dogs outside the door drop
away, leaving an alike meander and comforting scootch past stacks.

But the books, the little things in the windows, the person behind the
counter, the dog or cat, the hippie and the retiree, the fliers and aged comic
strips, each of those things was utterly unique to the place. Those little bit
of character just sing out the place they are in. The stacks of surf boards on
Bondi Beach, the brownies in Newhaven, the beer glasses in Denver, it's those
little things that made those used bookstores an absolute joy to wander into
for an hour and slow down.

I'll miss them, I think we all will.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
The last few holidays I've had I make a point to look up whether the towns
we're staying in have any second hand bookshops, and to damn well visit them -
with the ever present chance of slight frustration due to some odd opening
hours that seem unique to second hand bookstores in such a way as to appear to
be saying "you must earn your visit by rescheduling your holiday around me".

It's possible to be correct in three guesses what the owner will look like
just by knowing the opening hours.

------
sbuccini
The big second-hand bookseller in my town has a huge collection and several
locations in multiple metro areas. Yet they have no way to search for a
specific title!

I was shocked. If you have no idea of your current inventory and sales
history, how do you know how much to pay for people's books? Their books are
about $0.50 a title -- I would gladly pay that price for a book I would
otherwise get from the library if I knew it was available. They would be able
to do a serious business selling required titles to local college students.
And they could have a robust online presence through 3rd party sellers like
Amazon and Ebay.

Yes, some beloved used bookstores are falling victim to "market forces". But
if those same market forces inject some modernity into these businesses that
badly need it, I'd be very grateful.

~~~
contingencies
All books in the last ~50 years have a barcode already printed on them, and an
ISBN printed inside. Any phone camera can read these. If you assume 15 seconds
per book at pace, 40 books per shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases
in the average store, complete digitization of a collection should take only
...

Edit: Responding comment is quite right, original calculation mistaken. It's
4AM here. 40 × 6 × 30 = 7200 books × 15 seconds ÷ 60 ÷ 60 = 30 hours, so <4
days assuming 8 hour days. Or 1 day if you can speed up to 5 seconds per book.

~~~
bjo590
Assuming ~600 man hours (your numbers) to digitize an entire used book store,
at $15/hr cost for labor it would cost ~$900 to digitize a bookstore. I think
you're shy a factor of 3 or 4 on the amount of labor it would take to digitize
a book store, given my experience with running inventory at retail shops.
Maybe it could be worth it if there was an inventory management system that
could automatically post the books for sale on an internet platform, but if
every used book store posted their entire inventory online the market for many
titles would be flooded and it would be a race to the bottom.

Ultimately all physical retails spaces have the same common problem -- why
should someone go into your store when they can get the same products online.
This problem is even bigger during covid-19. I personally think there are two
answer, one is to move the core retail business online, and the other is to
create experiences people will keep coming back for. If you're making unique
products it might be best to pivot online. If you're into the classic buy
wholesale sell retail business than the online market can be very competitive.

A used book store can be a great place to have experiences. Authors can come
and talk, you can have children story time, book clubs can meet, coffee shops
pair well with book stores. You have to clear inventory to make space for
experiences, but you can use it as an opportunity to remove inventory that
wasn't selling anyway.

~~~
billjings
"Ultimately all physical retails spaces have the same common problem -- why
should someone go into your store when they can get the same products online.
...I personally think there are two answer, one is to move the core retail
business online, and the other is to create experiences people will keep
coming back for."

This is a great observation. I think that every business looking at option 1
would run away in terror, as that would mean competing directly with Amazon.
My local bookstores have pursued this to some degree out of necessity in covid
times, but it doesn't seem sustainable, and I never got the impression that
they prioritized it.

The bookstores local to me that have thrived have pursued the latter strategy
with events, but primarily by having an opinionated selection that is a joy to
browse. Amazon cannot compete on this for two reasons:

First, they cannot have a uniquely opinionated selection. They can have an
"Amazon" selection, which will by its nature be the lower common denominator,
or they can have a "personalized" selection, which will by its nature play to
the customer's pre-existing interests and the generic global recommendation
insights from Amazon's ML models. People do have lists on Amazon, but this
isn't a profitmaking endeavour worth a full time commitment. No single
perspective will be rich enough to engross the consumer for more than a minute
or two, or call them to return regularly.

Second is that Amazon does not provide the physical experience of browsing
physical books.

As you said, this still leaves the problem: even given all the above, why
wouldn't someone just browse the in person bookstore and buy the books online?
Thankfully, the survival of these stores shows that there enough buyers are
"non-rational" to financially support the experiences they enjoy.

~~~
bjo590
> This is a great observation. I think that every business looking at option 1
> would run away in terror, as that would mean competing directly with Amazon.

I don't think pivoting online is a suicidal move for many business, but it
takes a different type of mindset to make it work. I'd like to highlight
heatonist.com as an example of someone doing it right. It's a NYC based hot
sauce boutique with a web presence. They create quality web content and use it
as advertising
([https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAzrgbu8gEMIIK3r4Se1d...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAzrgbu8gEMIIK3r4Se1dOZWSZzUSadfZ)).
Their inventory is a curated list of high quality products. Their web reviews
are all from people in the same tribe of hot sauce fans. Their website and
shipping practices are all _good enough_.

~~~
billjings
What makes it work? I see the web content, but driving web content to Amazon
would make the site pointless. It seems like Amazon's prices are higher,
though. Is it direct sales?

------
ghaff
Browsing a used bookstore (or any other bookstore) when I have some time to
kill is still fun. [And my local library has a booksale every year.] But with
the exception of maybe looking through cookbooks or art books or something
like that, it's not really how I buy or even browse books any longer.

In the "bad old days" when new books were mostly sold at list price and there
really wan't a whole lot of independent information about books out there, it
often made a lot of sense to buy used books at half off based on serendipitous
browsing of the shelves. But that's not really true any longer.

I used to go into Harvard Square on a Saturday afternoon every month or two in
no small part to browse books and CDs at a variety of stores (many of which
are long gone). I haven't done that in years.

~~~
grugagag
I believe you’ve stopped doing that but the experience was more fun. Now you
have search and recommendations and it’s definitely a better value, book
reviews can give a good hint if a book is crap or not what you expect before
you buy it.

------
vr46
What could well be the very last truly independent bookshop in London, will be
gone soon. And I don’t mean Henry Pordes on Charing Cross Road, which I love,
but Anthony Hall in Twickenham. He owns his entire building outright, and even
though he is a specialist book dealer, has always maintained a small bookshop
as a luxury addition to his main office, if you like. At one point, all nine
rooms of the building were filled with books, but he’s in his 80s and is
selling up. Most of his business is on the internet, as he says now. No need
for the bookshop.

~~~
gorgoiler
You reminded me of Fisher and Sperr in Highgate, gone but not forgotten, and
illustrated a little by this article:

[http://www.dalemcgowan.com/samples/bookcrawling.html](http://www.dalemcgowan.com/samples/bookcrawling.html)

It is a grand theme of life that we fail to appreciate these things until it
is too late. Thank you for the reminder.

~~~
vr46
Wow, what a place. I sadly never had the pleasure, being a West/South-West
Londoner and only really making it as far as Camden in my teens. I used to
live in Marylebone and there is still a fantabulous little bookshop - as far
as I know - called Archive, which deals with a lot of sheet music and retains
a piano. It's a marvel. Buried in the backstreets just south of Church Street
market, and just thinking about it makes me want to bike into town and give
them all my money.

------
pasabagi
From personal experience, what has made me rarely go to second-hand bookshops
(or bookshops of any kind) is they typically have a really bad selection. The
amount of trash printed is insane, and not only do people tend to keep the
gems, but they also tend to suck them out of second hand bookshops, so only
really useless books are left.

~~~
karaterobot
I've found that it's hard to find specific books you know you want, unless
they were really popular, but it's easy to find something interesting you've
never heard of before.

~~~
Freak_NL
That, the chance to happen upon something you didn't know you wanted, is what
adds to the charm of second-hand bookshops.

A few weeks ago I picked up Umberto Eco's _Misreadings_ in the second-hand
section of our local bookshop. It's a collection of short stories from the mid
twentieth century translated in English in the nineties. I grabbed it for a
closer look because the author was known to me ( _The Name of the Rose_ ,
_Foucault 's Pendulum_), and because the back of the book introduced one of
the stories therein as a pastiche of Nabokov's _Lolita_ , wherein a certain
_Umberto Umberto_ (heh) pines for an elderly lady referred to as 'Granita'
(incidentally, 'Nonita' in the Italian original).

That story was a delight to read and totally worth it.¹

I also would never have found, never mind purchased that book online. My
biggest source of books is a yearly book-fair (in Deventer) where I will
gladly spend hours trawling through banana boxes for cheap paperbacks and
random chance finds. (Except this year due to bloody _you-know-what_.) So
hurray for the serendipity of second-hand bookshops!

1: Anyone who has read and enjoyed _Lolita_ ought to read this short Umberto
Eco story:
[https://thefloatinglibrary.com/2008/08/24/granita/](https://thefloatinglibrary.com/2008/08/24/granita/)

~~~
pasabagi
I think this very much depends on where you are. In england, culture has
always been a dirty word, so second hand bookshops have the kind of books
english people read, which are dismal. In germany, I've had much better luck -
packed shelves of reclam-edition books, for instance.

------
jb775
I actually really appreciate second-hand books. It sounds weird, but it makes
it feel like there's more life to a book knowing others have read that exact
copy. I also find it interesting and often helpful reading notes or
underlined/highlighted parts of the book.

I recently purchased a few books from thriftbooks.com and noticed they shipped
from different locations....I'm not sure if they're run as a marketplace where
individual sellers can post books, or if they have multiple warehouses.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
I also enjoy buying used books where one can tell that the previous owner
treasured the book over the years and made notes or highlights. However, the
demise of the sewn binding – publishers have shifted to shoddy glued bindings
even for prestige titles like the collected works of many poets – means that
there will probably be less well-used and loved books around, since the
binding is likely to give out already within the time that the first owner has
the book.

~~~
scottlocklin
Binding is something you can do at home with minimal equipment. I have a fair
sized library with lots of old books; got into bookbinding as a side effect to
keep everything ticking over.

Even acidic paper is something you can deal with, though it's more difficult
than cutting off lousy glue bindings and replacing with something better.

------
Doctor_Fegg
Nope. There are several reasons why individual secondhand bookshops are on the
way out, but Oxfam is not a particularly significant one.

I am honestly puzzled by the author citing the Oxfam shop on St Giles as an
exemplar, because it's a poor shop full of tat and tired old guidebooks to
Greece in the 1960s. Even the Oxfam bookshop 15 miles up the road in little
Chipping Norton has more interesting stock. But it's interesting that he cites
an Oxford example, because independent retail in Oxford generally has been on
the decline for 20+ years, and I suspect the woes of the secondhand bookshops
in Oxford are the same as those of small retailers generally.

Abebooks and Amazon, eBay etc. are a more significant cause. You can now order
the rare book you want from a dealer somewhere in the countryside without them
needing to pay for retail premises. One of my favourite secondhand bookshops,
Sedgeberrow Books in Pershore, has recently gone that way - the shop has
closed but the operation lives on as an Abebooks dealer. Pershore still has a
secondhand bookshop, which is a lovely relic that doesn't even take
debit/credit cards. Many of the survivals seem to fit that mould:
intentionally arcane dealers who've chosen not to move with the times.

~~~
fsckboy
fwiw, Abebooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008

~~~
ghaff
I find it somewhat interesting that Amazon has kept Abebooks separate. The
latter certainly seems to me to be a better source for relatively obscure
titles.

------
pratio
Setting aside the damage done by the advent on internet which helps with
search and deliveries, i feel that there's a change in the attitude of people
today. I used to walk into the bookshops near my home and university, walk
around and browse, the people who worked there were passionate and would
recommend titles to you. One of them even helped connect people to book-clubs,
i miss those connections. It doesn't seem that people want to spend that kind
of time. Browsing UBS, checking titles and finding those with notes marked in
pencil and messages for the next reader across books is an experience i would
like my children to have.

------
briga
In my hometown I've seen about half of the used book stores disappear within
the last 10 years. There are a few still hanging on, but with rising rents and
fewer people reading it seems like their days are also numbered. Which is a
shame because to me aimlessly perusing through old stacks of books is very
enjoyable and somehow comforting. I love the rush you get when you come across
some rare book you've spent years looking for, or when you find some new book
you didn't know you wanted. Going on Amazon and ordering the exact book you
want is easy and convenient, but I don't think it can replicate that feeling
of discovery.

------
dehrmann
In the late-90's, early 2000's, my high school weekend job was doing computer
work for a local bookstore starting to sell online. On the tech side, it was
interesting to see online marketplaces taking off, how ordinary people use
computers, the sorry state of single-purpose software meant for a small group
of paying customers. I also got to learn a lot about books, which ones are
more likely to be valuable, which ones have no values (I have no problems
throwing books away), and where to find books online.

Now the book business... The best used book marketplace at the time was
Abebooks. There's been some consolidation, and they got bought by--who else--
Amazon, but I ordered something from them recently, and as far as I could
tell, it wasn't just Amazon sellers. Amazon and Ebay looked like huge markets
to tap, we we never had much luck on either. Ebay, especially around 2000, was
more auction-oriented, and those work great for mid-price, in-demand products.
For books, to hit the price range for making a good listing make sense, it
would have to be rare, but how many people are in the market for a first
edition of "The Jungle." The smaller marketplaces made more sense because
that's where the buyers were. It was a hard business, even then. The bookstore
closed its storefront and moved everything into a second home because the
rent/mortgage was cheaper. The other thing that became clear is that "rare"
books weren't as rare as people thought once they started surfacing online, so
prices dropped. I have no idea how Amazon sellers selling copies of old, but
popular books for $2 can turn a profit. The only reason the owner ran this
store was she had a passion for books.

~~~
grugagag
It is true, a lot or collectible items lost most of their uniqness derived
value when vast amounts filled the inventory of digital stores and demand for
them proved much lower than expected

------
chrisseaton
If you like second-hand bookshops, visit Hay-on-Wye. I'd recommend crossing
the Atlantic to see it even. It's in south Wales, and it's a whole village of
second-hand bookshops. Many are huge, some are tiny and very specialist
(horror, detective fiction, etc.) Every year I spend three or four days there
browsing and reading, and doing some walking in the mountains as well.

~~~
Freak_NL
I've had Hay-on-Wye on my radar for a while (I'm Dutch, so it is a doable
holiday destination by train and bus). The surrounding area looks interesting
as well, and the mountains certainly appeal to me. You make it sound
worthwhile. How are the prices? London's second-hand bookshops seem to be
notoriously overpriced (not surprisingly due to rent and costs).

For now the only things holding me back are the fallout of Brexit and Corona.

My wife and I visited London three years ago and popped into bookshops
wherever we could find one (Word on the Water, the London book barge was
nice), but the best haul we had was on a day trip to the Isle of Wight where
we rode the train to the end of the line and hiked to Ventnor where a festival
was going on. In a churchyard an old man had a vintage bus he brought to
England from Paris for the sole reason that he fell in love with it (the bus,
not Paris), so he bought it when it was too old for its public transport role
and restored it. It was filled with second-hand books for the occasion (for a
charity I think it was), and we came away with a dozen books and a lovely
chat.

~~~
chrisseaton
> How are the prices?

I don't think I've ever really considered the prices. They're always just 'a
few pounds'. Doesn't seem necessary to worry over it given how good the
experience is.

If you're buying genuinely valuable or rare older books over the £50 mark I
might stop and think, but I'm usually not browsing for that kind of book - I'm
already looking on AbeBooks etc.

------
mushufasa
Lots of second hand bookshops are combined with coffee shops. When consumers
become comfortable going to coffee shops again, those places will likely
return. Meanwhile, current owner/operators will lose.

------
philip1209
Most new books are not that expensive compared to how much time people put
into reading them and the value they derive, and libraries provide a free
alternative. I think the middle is just getting squeezed.

------
simplesleeper
In the UK, I've helped run some of the ninja bookshop crawls. There are
usually guided routes that take you through independent bookshops - they are
always interesting and great for discovering bookshops and the cities
themselves.

Independent and second hand shops have really benefitted from these events and
they usually offer discounts and gift bags for crawlers

[https://www.ninjabookbox.com/london-bookshop-
crawl](https://www.ninjabookbox.com/london-bookshop-crawl)

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
That's a wonderful initiative - I'm really intrigued by that, and might sign
up for one of the subscriptions. Thank you for posting.

(Could you have words with your site designer, though? I honestly haven't seen
Safari struggle with a site like that for months, even including the worst
excesses of UK local newspaper sites or the Independent.)

~~~
dylz
It's a SaaS WYSIWYG site builder, the page is 300 requests and 20MB with
aggressive adblocking turned on, and over a thousand requests with adblock
turned off.

Almost every element is hard-positioned with absolute onto the page, or
misusing flexbox in weird, overlapping, z-indexed ways

------
TrackerFF
A couple of years ago one of our local shops closed down, and in the end, they
threw away tons of books - as in metric tons. They had a couple of weeks where
people could basically just come in and take whatever they wanted, but still,
tons of leftovers.

I have fond memories of those shops, but, they had their quirks. Inventory
systems were typically non-existent, and some of those shops were a mess.

But you know, even those things had their charm. Reminds me of the older mom'n
pop stores and shops that didn't have the 100% cleanliness or neatness of
modern big-box stores, where everything has been designed and optimized to
perfection, and just looks...sterile. The modern stuff is excellent when your
only goal is to go in, find your stuff, and get out - as fast as possible. But
it's not that great when you just want to exploring/treasure hunting.

The old and unorganized stuff was great for that - treasure hunting. You
didn't get the flippers or re-sellers that would swoop in 9AM on a daily basis
to get the most valuable stuff, because their inventory trackers had notified
them that store XYZ just got in rare item ABC.

------
chris_st
Well, for whatever it's worth, PaperbackSwap [0] has become my go-to place for
getting rid of books and (often) finding ones I want to read.

Just cleaned out a bookcase and put up a bunch that people want... glad to get
them to good homes (where they might actually be read, rather than collecting
dust on my shelves).

[0] [https://www.paperbackswap.com/](https://www.paperbackswap.com/)

------
dheera
At the beginning of the year I spent about 10 days in 40 bookshops around
Taiwan and one of the things I noticed is that a lot of bookshops (both first-
and second-hand) are stepping up their game in a few ways to stay alive. Some
of the things I noticed included:

\- Well-curated collections to make people actually want to be there

\- Some bookshops collect entrance fees since they don't necessarily expect to
sell books. In return, you often get nice couches to read all you want, air
conditioning, Wi-Fi, sometimes free tea, and sometimes you can discount your
entrance fee against the cost of any books you buy.

\- Some bookshops offer themed experiences in the shop itself. One I went to
had the entire bookshop very dark except for the books and reading areas
themselves, with the idea being that you only see yourself and the books, and
not other people.

Of course, yet others seemed to be struggling, in the face of Eslite and other
massive bookstores that have started to capture the young crowds.

------
cafard
The nearest thing I know of in the US to the Oxfam shops are the Carpe Librum
pop-up stores in Washington, DC. They will operate for a few weeks--
occasionally a few years--in a building that is awaiting redevelopment. All
books/tapes/cds are donated, all staff is volunteer. Working near one is a
standing temptation to purchase piles of books. I guess that the Friends of
the Library shops one sees at Montgomery County libraries are comparable.
Neither has much reduced my urge to shop in the remaining second-hand
bookshops.

"[Graham Greene] and he remains one of the few serious literary figures who
also understood the glamour and romance of the bookselling trade." Take that,
Larry McMurtry! At least one other moderately known author had a used
bookstore in Washington, DC, years ago. And Nancy Mitford worked for Heywood
Hill in London for a while.

------
m4rtink
Yet the japanese second hand book/game/CD/DVD/hadware company Book Off is as
successfull as ever, with stores pretty much everywhere in Japan and starting
to expand overseas:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Off](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Off)

Its really an amazing rxperience there - clean orderly stores with bright
illumination jam packed by books at lidiculously low prices & you can find
total gems there if you look for a while - like the first artbook of Masamune
Shirow in perfect state for abou 1500 yen (~13$ ?)! I dont even want to think
how much that would have cost on Ebay...

~~~
pm215
I would be interested to know how much the Book Off model depends on the fact
that manga is a huge market in Japan. Every time I've been into a Book Off,
there's always been a huge manga section and it's always packed with people
because (a) manga is really popular and (b) they don't shrinkwrap the manga to
prevent people reading them in the shop the way a lot of places do. In a
market like the UK or US where (comics being more niche than manga) there
isn't that huge part of the store that's driving footfall and turnover, would
the same model but working primarily with books do as well ?

~~~
m4rtink
Manga is certainly big part of it, but there was always a sizeable "text only"
section as well - 20-30% maybe ? Manga 40-50% I would guess. And indeed, no
shrinkwrapping (only exception - the 1000 yen series bundles, but thereit was
for practical purposes :) ) and you can see a lot people reading at any time.

And its kinda necessary to find what your are lokking for, especially if you
are a foreigner with shaky levels of reading Japanese. :) Also you can find
interesting stuff you did not know existed just by picking a random book and
looking inside. More so as each Book Off store seems to have different gems
hidden inside - we visited quite a few (Kagoshima, Kawasaki, Akihabara) and
each one had something special. :)

~~~
pm215
Oh, absolutely, as a foreigner in a Book Off I love the no-shrinkwrap policy
and also the way it's a large and well-populated space that's much less
intimidating to walk into than the kind of second hand bookshop that's
practically empty and you feel like you're being observed by the old dude
behind the counter... And they are indeed great too for buying "text-only"
books -- I'm just not sure the business model would work anywhere near so well
if the text-only section had to carry the whole thing without that 50% manga
area.

~~~
m4rtink
Agreed about the regular local (in my case Czech Republic) used book shops -
they are kinda like antiquities and totally different atmosphere. They also
seems to buy & sell old and somehow interesting books - if you just want to
sell a recently released novel or some text books good luck. As far as I can
tell Book Off does not make such a distinctions.

Anyway, as a result there is really not a good place where to sell newer less
interesting books to other people - there are some online Ebay like sites &
I've heard people buy & sell used books over Facebook. Still far cry from
basically going to a nearest Book Off with bags of books to sell (at least
that's how I imagine it to work when you sell books to them ;-) ).

Maybe that could be something that would make it work here as well. It really
seems like there is a complete "circle" for books in Japan but not here & Book
Off seems to be a big part of that.

------
glangdale
I love second-hand bookshops, but you can see the death spiral. The
neighborhood in which I live used to have about 7 bookshops; they are down to
about 3.5 and some of the remaining ones look none too healthy.

One problem with a lot of 2nd hand bookstores is that they have stuffed their
shelves with remainders - these are not a interesting stock choice as they are
really just "what was selling - or more likely not selling - on mainstream
shelves a few months ago". They can't compete on price moving those remainders
compared to "Downtown Book Barn" places, and it crowds out genuine used stock
(which will provide more surprises).

------
elliekelly
The Original Book Barn in Connecticut (I think they’ve since opened many
“satellite” locations) is one of my favorite places in the world. Carefully
curated for quality but just messy enough to make it fun to hunt around for
treasure.

~~~
chewzerita
Yes! We love the Book Barn! Looking up from my desk now I see at least four
books from there. They are great for getting rid of your old books too, just
make sure to get the store credit so you can fill that empty place on your
shelf back up :). They recently (last year I think) moved the computer related
books from the back of the downtown store to the back of the first floor of
the store next to East Coast Taco (I think it's called Chapter Three). (Final
note: when you go there, East Coast Taco is a must if you are into that kind
of food)

EDIT: also the cats are friendly

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CarbyAu
The biggest joy of a second hand bookstore for me is much the same as my local
library.

No attention-grabbing adverts. No video walls.

It is refreshingly relaxing to be able to drop the cognitive load of "anti-
advert filtering" and simply look...

------
loughnane
Just want to shout out my two favorite used bookshops in Boston. Commonwealth
books and Brookline Booksmith.

Both still seem to be thriving but with COVID they were my #1 concern about
closing, followed shortly by the long-established neighborhood pubs.

Vibrant neighborhoods need what have been called 3rd spaces (I.e. neither home
nor work) where people can hang out without necessarily spending much/any
money. Bookstores fit that bill.

Though, to be honest, a good library offers much, though not all, of the same
benefits.

------
throwaway0a5e
Ebay, Amazon and all the other online retail platforms are the second hand
book shop of the world and their reach is amazing. I'm sitting in front of
reams of obscure service literature I wouldn't be able to access if the used
book sellers weren't all online now. I'm not gonna shed any tears over the
stores and their shelves being replaced with storage lockers and online
product listings.

------
jamiek88
Anyone else find used books _gross_?

I wonder if it’s just a quirk/phobia of mine? Library books gross me out too.

How many page turns between butt wipes?! How many picked noses leaving
through?

I never used to be bothered as a kid but this feeling has grown over the years
culminating in a general ickiness.

The number one benefit of ebooks to me was that I could get old/cheap books
that hadn’t, indeed, _couldn 't_ be handled by people.

it ain’t easy being weird!

~~~
grugagag
It depends on each item. The yellowing or dusty ones I avoid. Also I disinfect
the books when I get home. A lot of books are still very ‘virgin’

------
chmaynard
Many used bookshops are managed by people who could never run a successful
business. They love what they do but are not particularly good at it. These
shops probably deserve to fade away. I purchase used books frequently. I
almost always find what I want on Amazon, usually from multiple booksellers,
and I have the book within a week. It's hard to compete with that level of
service.

------
GnarfGnarf
This phenomenon is pre-Internet. There were many great used bookstores in New
York in the 70' and 80's. I went back twenty years later and most had
disappeared. I think it's a function of a certain kind of person that wants to
be independent, doing something they love. Those mavericks are gone.

~~~
grugagag
In the early 2000s there were still a lot of great used bookstores in New
York. Being younger I could not compare to the 70s or 80s but could see the
shocking transformation in the last 20 years. Too many shops closed only to
remain empty storefronts

------
SubiculumCode
In my small town, we have a game store that sales used sci-fi books, a tiny
used books store with a small selection, and two thrift stores with decent
selection of books. Nevertheless, I do not feel any of these constitute a real
used-book store with any real breadth or depth. I'd love to visit one.

------
commonturtle
I think at least in London used bookstores are doing better than normal ones.
The books are cheaper and the selection is more unique — Waterstones etc.,
have a harder time beating Kindles selection.

------
markus_zhang
Same thing is happening in Montreal. There are at least two bookshops closed
because the owner was too aged to take care of the business and no one wanted
to do it. Wish I could do it but I don't have the expertise.

------
acdha
Several used bookstores by us have had business pick up during the pandemic
with subscription services. As long as the USPS media rate survives, anyway.

------
perseusprime11
Nobody here is talking about EBay but I am able to get the books I want on
EBay after the local bookstore closed in my town.

------
frereubu
I'm torn when I read articles like this. On the one hand, I've spent many
happy hours browsing round second-hand bookshops (a particular favourite
memory was discovering the unabridged Gulag Archipelago while on a trip to
NYC). On the other, the democratising effect of publishing leads to things
like this - [https://www.theguardian.com/focus/2020/aug/16/literary-
world...](https://www.theguardian.com/focus/2020/aug/16/literary-world-
overwhelmed-by-600-books-to-be-published-on-one-day) \- which, while
potentially problematic on the surface, means that a much larger number of
people can be published, no matter what their social status or connections.
I've recently been reading Bruno Schulz -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz)
\- and if it wasn't for the intercession of someone powerful in the Polish
literary world we would never have read his work (and, thanks to the Nazis,
unfortunately we had even less than we might have had). What gems by
marginalised authors might we not have read without this "excess" of
publishing? Personally, I think this abundance of new published writing
(including really interesting examples of self-publishing like Your Name Here
by Helen Dewitt) is part of what makes second-hand bookshops less attractive.
There is simply so much great stuff being written now by people who would
never previously have had an audience, as well as unjustly-neglected authors
being rediscovered. I used to feel like I knew most fiction authors' names in
second-hand bookshops, even if only by reputation, but I'm not sure that would
be the case any more. On balance I think I'd rather have a broader set of
voices than a limited selection of second-hand books. And when you also have
access to older titles that you might be interested in on abebooks, you can
follow your own literary path rather than be guided by someone else's opinions
about what's "important".

Edit: Thinking about this more, maybe it's because I'm in my late 40s now, but
I get a lot of good recommendations from friends who have been reading all
their lives, so I don't feel the need for anyone else to recommend things. My
"to read" pile is huge as it is! I guess one thing second-hand shops were good
for was suggesting things to me that I might not have read otherwise. But
personally I think the internet, particularly Wikipedia and niche blogs, gives
me a really good route to the next thing I want to read. After reading Bruno
Schulz I've started delving into Polish fiction, and it feels like I've struck
yet another goldmine.

------
GnarfGnarf
Another problem is that retiring boomers are keen on downsizing, and are
flooding the market with used books, for which there is little demand.

------
orionblastar
Second Hand books get recycled or donated to thrift stores or bought out in
bulk and sold on Amazon for pennies with $5 shipping. In the age of the ebook
there is no need of a second hand book store.

------
aurizon
At the heart of this is the indisputable fact:- People save books!!. This led
to many millions of tiny isolated and undocumented collections of assorted
books. People who wanted a particular book had one option - a Used Book
Seller(UBS). These UBS's would open a retail spot and gather books from
estates or the public or library disposals of un-demanded books etc. As time
passed, they would create a viable business. Time passed and most cities had
UBS shops. Then the internet happened, craigslist EBAY, etc., which enabled
anyone +dog to list all they had as line items, author, date, condition etc -
often with photos. This enabled the collector to select what he wanted at very
low prices compared to the UBS stores, as there was a huge overhanging mass of
books that people wanted small $$ for - competition soon drove the prices
down. True rare books maintained a higher value - but the mass of pulpable
junk swamped the market. USB could not easily bulk buy from these Ebayers or
Craigslisters because their business model required them to offer lowball
offers. One by one these UBS died off. Killed by rents/taxes etc. A few who
owned their own stores had a degree of immunity to these market forces, but
their income fell as well, and after a while they could make more $$ by going
online from a cheaper warehoused list and they rented their high street shops
to a Starbucks or ??, and never looked back. I travelled in Northern Ontario
(Canada) and there was a huge rambling UBS in Cobalt Ontario, with zero rent
on owned land - even they eventually ceased =
[http://www.highwaybooks.ca/](http://www.highwaybooks.ca/) they still operate
online in some manner.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Book_Shop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Book_Shop)

~~~
mikepurvis
Rings true to me. I have a lovely used bookstore in my area which has a
variety of extremely eclectic stuff, and even he lists his whole inventory
online now, as well as maintaining the in-person shop:

[https://www.abebooks.com/old-goat-books-waterloo-on-
canada/1...](https://www.abebooks.com/old-goat-books-waterloo-on-
canada/1611996/sf)

~~~
aurizon
Sounds like he has the blessing of owning his own store, so he has no rent
burden - the real killer as gentification ruins many places via rent
increases.

