Established 1979
We have recently taken in a collection of Pevsner‘s The Buildings of England, seen right in a tower of oak. If you haven‘t come across these before, the author, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner was one of a number of Jewish intellectuals who got out of Germany/Austria before the second world war. Sir Ernest Gombrich and Sir Karl Popper followed a similarly distinguished path.
Written to provide architectural information around the country, area by area, the first volume of The Buildings of England was published in the early ‘50‘s. He went on to write 32 volumes and another 10 with collaborators. The series has been further extended and is now published as the ‘Pevsner Architectural Guides‘. If you want to take a book with you visiting a city, or to get information about the buildings where you live, these are peerless. We have some volumes in their original smaller forms and other later and larger revised editions. We rarely get this many in these days, I daresay they won‘t last long.
One author has been deliberately absent from Skoob shelves since we re-opened in 2007. It‘s not because of lack of supply, nor is it that we think he‘s inappropriate to accompany the 50,000+ authors on our shelves at any one time. It is purely on the personal whim of the owner. (!)
Having struggled throughout most of his life to accumulate the collected works of Flann O‘Brien, Brian O‘Nolan, Myles naGopaleen, why should he make it easy by putting them on the shelf, open to any lout or corner-boy to treat the lumps of gold that spurted from his pen as a mere inky trace of letters, a commodity or chattel to be traded in exchange for potatoes, pints of plain or other necessities of life?
October 5th 2011 is the centenary of his birth, and the policy will change from that date. We‘ll be offering copies of The Third Policeman, The Poor Mouth etc in Steadman, Sample, Picador, Penguin, Harper and Granada liveries. Each volume, it goes without saying, will have had varying degrees of the arts of buchhandlung applied, at no extra charge. What popular but cut-price type of cigarette are potential customers encouraged to imitate?
Roll Up
Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.
Lots of economics texts now in, you can see the trolley shelf these are on bulging with the weight.
We acquired a good collection of books on the Middle East a while ago—some can be found in the book search (see Search Our Warehouse) many more have now made their way into the shop.
Regular customers will be familiar with the wall of books that ascends from our stairwell. Shop space is so precious that large sets have virtually disappeared from bookshops. We can supply sets of the Encyclopedia Brittanica, but you‘d need to ask. This kind of thing now has to be warehoused, although we do have a full sized Oxford English Dictionary in the shop.
The wall of books allows us to show some large sets and series that couldn‘t otherwise be given room. These also inhabit the stairwell cabinets, along with one or two choice titbits. Seen here, the Shorter OED is one of several in stock, we can also provide the compact version. Substantial in every sense, the Encylopaedic Dictionary of Physics is complete in 14 volumes. One of Robert Maxwell‘s more tangible legacies. Also a solid edition of Gibbon‘s Decline and Fall.
We don‘t have a large amount of hardback fiction in the shop, but we do sell Folio books. The Folio Society is a book club based in London. You can‘t buy their books new in shops, it requires a subscription and the books are posted.
They have been publishing for rather more than 60 years and the original intention to produce decoratively designed books has been preserved. The idea was to produce something like the books published by private presses, which are gorgeous, but very expensive, at an affordable price. They are well made, very often with slip cases. There is a mixture, not just fiction, some history as well. They make good presents and we do get copies in excellent condition. Whist the designs can be quite strong and thus not to everyone‘s taste, the texts of their classic works enjoy a good reputation, perhaps in a similar way as Penguin editions do.
Much of the art history, theory and picture books in the shop are obvious enough to the casual browser. For those looking for something more practical, for learning to draw from nature or imagination, we have plenty of those sorts of books too. This box is mostly on figure work for comics, there‘s much on landscape and painting as well.
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.
