Established 1979
Someone living abroad, who presumably didn‘t want to continue paying storage charges, has just sold us thousands of their books. This includes a number of areas of study, especially mathematics. It is one of the best collections we‘ve ever had. If the sight of those yellow Springer spines quickens your blood, now could be the moment to violate the porcelain pig. We are processing the books, those shown were just the ones on the desk when illustration was required. They will be divided between the shop shelves and the online listing over the coming weeks. Other strengths of this collection are computing and history/philosophy of science.
We have just had an impressive influx of literature in the Penguin Classics and Oxford World Classic series. All in very good nick and including a number that are usually in short supply secondhand.
Not the best time to be an architect perhaps, but a good moment to get your books secondhand. Our extended section is not just healthy, but crammed. Lots of key figures and interesting areas of study.
We are working to process an impressive linguistics collection. The books on the shelves have been considerably refreshed. There‘s much too much to be accommodated in the shop, see the search our warehouse page, for the books appearing online.
A local bookshop specialising in foreign language has recently closed and we have acquired their residual stock. The majority is reference and learning materials. We don‘t have space in the shop for much of it, though these languages courses have been added. It will take a while, but many of the books will appear online, see the Search our Warehouse page. As usual, you can have books from the warehouse sent to the shop, if you prefer.
We‘ve also taken in a collection of travel books, many of them are current or recent editions.
People often ask where we get our books. The sources are varied, from individuals with two paperbacks to institutions clearing a library. Some comes from the book trade including a limited number of remainders and occasionally a bulk collection from another shop. Perhaps a lease has ended, or the owner is retiring or giving up. Not a moment to rejoice when a bookshop closes, but finding a home for the stock is appreciated by the bookseller and the books are quickly available again. It also means that the shiny new books on our shelves are often single copies and not remainders, which might be found in quantity.
Publishers sell off some new books to wholesalers, after they have judged that the majority of the sales they are likely to achieve, have come in. It can be the end of a hardback with the paperback arriving, the end of an edition before it is superceded or a decision to clear a book out, to make space. It may simply be to gain quick income and there is also some reprinting done purely in this regard. Frequently good things from the USA turn up here and vice versa. Altogether this provides a supply of new books at bargain prices.
As booksellers we can often see why a book has been remaindered, from spines that don‘t show up well, to poorly thought out titles, to just not very good books. Those aside, there is a lot that is wonderful, books for which nothing more than the mathematics of marketing decreed the chop.
Aside from the corporate book selling chains, bookshops are more likely to be complementary than competitive. Secondhand and remainder bookshops in particular often cluster together, as has been the case over time in Bloomsbury and along the Charing Cross Road. We are unlikely to have exactly the same books and in our various strengths will find separate niches. Aggregations of shops give the browser more variety and a better chance of a find. Close to Skoob is a very good remainder shop, Judd Books. We are in a similar market, but do quite different things.
Bookshops who deal in remainders are piled up with new books at very reasonable prices. The good ones provide a snapshot of interesting publishing over recent years. One time, get them – and then they are gone. There lies a key difference between remainder and secondhand books.
One can gather up wonderful new books from remainder shops, from amongst a limited selection of contemporary titles. If you want to read a novel from an author who has three in print – but previously wrote another ten – those probably won‘t be in the current selection. If you want a particular monograph or some research or a recommended biography, again, you will get these secondhand.
There isn‘t any absolute divide between the two kinds of bookselling, although one side of the business or the other tends to predominate. Remainders are good books and we buy a regular selection in key areas. Remainder shops may also buy from other areas of the market, if the stock fits in.
Once remaindered books have sold, they will likely as not become secondhand. This doesn‘t mean that the books in a secondhand shop are all tired, old or post-remaindered. Our stock typically has an age range of about 150 years and there is much to be enjoyed in that variety. There is some that is older still and also new books that may appear as secondhand, even before they have been published in the UK. Remainder shops sell new books, but these will include facsimiles and reprints as well.
Both kinds of shop reward browsing. If you want to expand an area of interest, one of the best ways of getting that knowledge remains to investigate the shelves.
