Established 1979
At this time of year, the book market warms with the ambient temperature outside. We see a lot of books coming in, great stacks on desks and floor recently.
From departing students we have seen a welcome influx of law. Get them while you can, when the new term starts, demand always outstrips what we can supply.
Perhaps less expectedly we‘ve had several infusions of art books.
The film section has also been transfused with books particularly useful for film studies.
One great wedge of books is going into the politics sections. We have very new/clean stock in Linguistics, Education, Sociology with some too in Psychology and Philosophy. History too has some new books. There always seems to be addition to the Hitler/Nazi cannon, see picture above. A recent favourite, The Hitler Salute: On the meaning of a Gesture.
Our fiction is rarely weakened, we reckon to have a pretty good selection week on week. At present however we have a particularly good lot of classic fiction in Penguin especially.
For those who may not be aware of it, Skoob is a key place to find maths books in London. No new bulk buys to report, but there is constant addition to the section.
These rather handsome books were produced in the Oxford Scriptorum Classicorum series about a hundred years ago. Some have remained in print for much of that time. They are perhaps not in the first flush of youth, but for serious classics students wishing to read texts in the original Greek and Latin, they are both nicer and quite a bit less expensive than a paperback reprint. The bindings are sewn in sections, the text is readable and well laid out, sharper than a reprint too. We have a number in the classics section already and more on the way.
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.
