11 ms·

First signs of a slight decline in secondhand bookshops in Britain

84 points by fogus 4y ago

pessimizer 4y ago
Interesting. Does anyone know of any comprehensive resource that can give a number for the US? I'd be very surprised if the situation were the same (although if it were it would be a nice pick-me-up), and I'd be interested in speculating on why the US and Britain might be different. Could it be directly blamed on the degree of penetration of Amazon or Amazon Prime?
- owlninja 4y ago
  Can you expand on which way you are thinking the US is going and why?
  - klyrs 4y ago
    In my experience they're largely gone already, not going anywhere
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  At least as of a few years ago, physical bookstores were making a comeback in the United States. Most attributed this to an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario. Amazon stomped Borders and Barnes & Noble into the ground, which meant that in many towns there was no longer a huge chain competitor in the bricks and mortar space. That opened up room for the small indy bookstores to come back. Edit: this NPR piece claims that the number of indy bookstores in the United States increased 35% between 2009 and 2015. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/29/598053563/why-the-number-of-independent-bookstores-increased-during-the-retail-apocalypse https://www.npr.org/2018/03/29/598053563/why-the-number-of-i...
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > Could it be directly blamed on the degree of penetration of Amazon or Amazon Prime? I feel like everyone in this thread is missing that these are second-hand bookshops. Amazon Prime isn’t a competitor, and e-books aren’t relevant.
  - dalyons 4y ago
    I mean that’s not true? If buying new is crazy cheap and very convenient via Amazon(etc) doesn’t that necessarily undermine the size of the second hand market? It certainly has for me.
    - 1MachineElf 4y ago
      FWIW, used books (and other items) are also sold through Amazon. Either way, Amazon pales in comparison to the used bookstore I used to live nearby: McKay's Used Books in Manassas, VA.
    - lucas_membrane 4y ago
      Amazon lists 2nd hand books, and if you pay for Prime, you can get free shipping, I believe. However, I recommend you take a look at Better World Books, thriftbooks, world of books, discover books, second sale; each of these will sometimes sell books, new or used, below the standard prices that Amazon sets and the other high-volume booksellers follow.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Maybe it's different in the US, but second-hand books here more implies antiquarian, rare, collector, special interest, niche, not available new. People aren't going to a second-hand bookshop to buy everyday reading that they could get new from Amazon.
    - bruce511 4y ago
      There's "crazy cheap" on Amazon, and there's "crazy cheap" second hand, but there's likely an order of magnitude between them. Annecdotally here 2nd hand books cost around $2, for recent stuff, sometimes less than $1 for age or condition. New ones are $10 - $15. So new and 2nd-hand are not really "competing" with each other, price wise. Yes they compete, yes there are many other factors that affect the profitability of 2nd hand stores, but I don't think price-of-new is a major factor (in a decline sense.)
    - paganel 4y ago
      Amazon the company also owns AbeBooks, a very decent and large-ish online seller of SH (and even antique) books.
- tenpies 4y ago
  For starters, Americans are reading less and less (and I strongly suspect what they're most reading is utter trash [e.g. the political here-say/Trump fan fiction of the month]. The reason I bring those up is because they are terrible for second-hand because no one cares about Clinton's tell-all book after the first 6 months. These books end up first-hand in the bargain bin or at Costco after the initial hype. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-... I would be curious about Amazon thought, because there is certainly a thriving ecosystem of second-hand book stores listing their inventories there. USPS plays a huge part in making this possible through the Media Mail class of mail. Many of the second-hand stores are also British, but you will find almost none of them are Canadian because Canada hates being competitive and as such, does not have a viable class of mail to ship books with, be it it domestically, or abroad.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    You can especially see this at your local Goodwill (in the US) - all the hardcover books are of a certain "bestseller" type and many will be clearly never even opened. Meanwhile actual second-hand bookstores often specialize in something (there was a really good one that specialized in science fiction) - they still have a normal selection of books like a small library, but most of the shelf space is whatever they specialize in.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    I wonder how much book reading has been displaced by audiobooks rather than just “Americans dumb, no like book”. Basically all my friends including myself consume audiobooks but rarely sit down to read a book.
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  FWIW, the only thing I've ever bought at Amazon's was an out-of-print book via their network of book shops from when AMZN started business by selling books and other media.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Isn't this just like other industries coming off a high (computer sales for example) due to the pandemic? Obviously book sales were up, they couldn't stay there forever.
uptownfunk 4y ago
This is most likely due to the growing influence of amazon. Probably first place most people look when buying a book.
- EvanKelly 4y ago
  Not only Amazon, but the rise of ebooks in general. While there are still a lot of holdouts, I think every voracious reader in my family has switched at least some of their reading to ebooks. The ease of acquiring ebooks from the library through Overdrive/Libby means I treat the trip to the bookstore as an exploratory treat rather than an errand to buy the next book in the series
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  Amazon owns the most important aggregator of second-hand bookshops - AbeBooks. It actually helps me to support second-hand bookshops because I can search and buy from anywhere in the country. Sometimes after buying I develop a relationship and start talking to the shop directly.
  - wrp 4y ago
    BookFinder4U is even more useful, as it is a superset of Amazon, eBay, AbeBooks, and a few others. Coverage is not limited to North America. (http://www.bookfinder4u.com/ http://www.bookfinder4u.com/)
    - mattcaywood 4y ago
      viaLibri (https://www.vialibri.net/ https://www.vialibri.net/) includes ABEbooks and the other major US marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Biblio, Alibris) and international marketplaces. It's far more comprehensive than bookfinder4u, which doesn't do well for books published before ISBNs were introduced (~1970).
      - wrp 4y ago
        Thanks, this looks like a good alternative. One thing though is that people may find the presentation of results easier to search through in BookFinder4U. For pre-ISBN books, you need to use the Out-of-print Search. I use it regularly to find old, limited run, academic monographs.
walrus01 4y ago
I don't know much about the book industry specifically, but I'd be worried about the viability of second hand book shops in street-level retail environments because of rapidly rising commercial rents in many big cities. The revenue brought in by a second hand book store may be sustainable in a much smaller city with static/non rising commercial rents, but when a commercial landlord looks at lease renewal and decides they can get a whole lot more money if somebody converts the place into a small restaurant, coffee shop or (other) retail...
- zimpenfish 4y ago
  > a commercial landlord [...] somebody converts the place into a small restaurant, coffee shop Charing Cross Road in London is a prime example - used to have a whole bunch of small book (and other) shops. Now it has a whole bunch of pastry, coffee[1], sweet etc. shops and a couple of small bookshops (who probably don't have long to go, really.) (Also has a huge bookshop, Foyles, but that's a soulless corporate monstrosity.) [1] I am particularly aggrieved about the nicer of the two Any Amount Of Books being turned into a squashed coffee shop.
  - iNerdier 4y ago
    Foyles was interestingly weird but eventually got bought by Waterstones and became what it is now. I’d still say it’s better than some, just not by enough. The expensive building changes to the Chinatown side didn’t help the smaller shops and it’s clear as their leases end the shops are closing and it’ll be like everywhere else with a generic mash of forgettable places.
    - ggm 4y ago
      Had a friend who worked in foyles packing mail outs. He used to get his jollies writing author sigs and dedications on the books. Married a bookseller who worked at skoob, Sicilian avenue. The owner had worked next door to 84 charing cross road. We avoid second hand bookshops now, you can grow out of them. Everyone raves about hay. The QT is on petersfield and the honour box system.
iancmceachern 4y ago
I recently visited Paris for work and was struck by the number and quality of small local book shops, often seeming to specialize in one thing or another, as compared to where I live (SF). Prior to that I had always thought that SF had a lot compared to elsewhere.
- nikanj 4y ago
  You can read on the train but you can't read while driving. Surprising nth order effects of city planning, the more car-centric your culture is, the less time the average person has for books
  - KineticLensman 4y ago
    > you can't read while driving Hence audiobooks (and more generally, podcasts)
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    > Surprising nth order effects of city planning, the more car-centric your culture is, the less time the average person has for books Perhaps this could be a selling point here in the UK. Yes your very late train has once again been cancelled and you now have to get a place on the replacement bus service, but at least you've had some time to read! The stance I'd have is the less travel-centric your life is, the more time you have for reading (or anything else). Big tech making more remote work feasible has opened this up a lot more than city planning can.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  > I had always thought that SF had a lot compared to elsewhere Try Hay on Wye in the United Kingdom. 20 second-hand bookshops for a population of 2000.
  - robin_reala 4y ago
    That’s a somewhat specialist case though, given that the only reason anyone’s heard of the place is the literary festivals they host: https://www.hayfestival.com/wales/home https://www.hayfestival.com/wales/home & https://www.hayfestival.com/winter-weekend/home https://www.hayfestival.com/winter-weekend/home
sideshowb 4y ago
Juxtaposed with news of huge layoffs from meta, Amazon and Intel, this headline feels like something from The Onion. Alas our prime minister seems determined to outdo the US when it comes to recession. "Hold my beer..."
ricardo81 4y ago
The cost of power in the UK at the moment is going to put pressure on every kind of bricks and mortar store.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dazc 4y ago
  MY recently renewed commercial power contract attracts a Govt subsidy which puts it more or less the same as it was last year. This subsidy applies to all other businesses, including book shops.
  - ricardo81 4y ago
    Indeed, but at a huge cost to the taxpayer and only for 6 months. I've seen some local businesses closing down because they see the writing on the wall and are unwilling to pass on price increases to locals.
cyclotron3k 4y ago
99% of those bookshops are in Hay-on-Wye
- taffronaut 4y ago
  Hay does have a lot of secondhand bookshops and their existence has elevated a small backwater of a town into a successful tourist destination. However, in recent years a lot of bookshops have closed - becoming antique/curio shops instead (source Wikipedia). I suspect that many of the tourists to "The Town of Books" don't buy enough books to sustain the local economy.
- pnut 4y ago
  Wigtown in Scotland is another one, every other building in the village is a bookshop.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
The key point is that they note a significant increase over the last 40 years. But with what has happened over the last 2 years it is not surprised that the numbers have dropped in the last 12 months.
tkgally 4y ago
In Japan, as elsewhere, bookstores in general are facing hard times [1, in Japanese], but the Kanda-Jimbochō area in central Tokyo has somehow managed to keep over a hundred shops in business. Most of the area was aggressively redeveloped when land prices shot up during the late 1980s and redevelopment has continued since, but the bookshops have held on. Some of the shops at street level are visible on Google Streetview [2]. More photos at [3]. I live in Yokohama and used to go to Kanda-Jimbochō regularly, but I haven’t been there since COVID. The photos make me nostalgic. [1] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUF110700R11C22A0000000/ https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUF110700R11C22A0000000/ [2] https://bit.ly/3MuNoh2 https://bit.ly/3MuNoh2 [3] https://en.jimbou.info/ https://en.jimbou.info/
Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
For those unaware of "Driff": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driff_Field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driff_Field (He's still alive and kicking. I bought a secondhand book from a random eBay seller the other year and it turned out to be him. Quite a shock.) That aside: I find it hard to believe the assertion that "the number of second-hand bookshops in the UK had increased by about 25% over a thirty year period". All the areas with which I'm particularly familiar saw a notable decline in this period (some almost precipitous, such as Oxford or Uppingham). My gut feeling is that Driff's 80s guides were not as comprehensive as the poster believes, and that the advent of the internet has made it much easier to compile complete, crowdsourced directories such as thebookguide.info.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I suspect this may be part of the case; though doesn't the UK have some master list of companies? Maybe that could be searched. In my local experience in the US Barnes and Noble and Borders killed all the non-second-hand bookstores, and then Amazon mostly killed those, but some of the second hand bookstores have survived. Also, do you count Goodwill as a "second hand bookstore"? They have usually two or three aisles of books, after all.
  - lambertsimnel 4y ago
    > doesn't the UK have some master list of companies? Maybe that could be searched. Companies House has a publicly searchable list of incorporated companies: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/ https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/ The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code for "retail sale of books in specialised stores" is 47610: https://resources.companieshouse.gov.uk/sic/ https://resources.companieshouse.gov.uk/sic/ You can search the list by "nature of business" (i.e. SIC code): https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/advanced-search https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/a... It returned 3,437 results for me, but this will include inactive companies and chains, and exclude unincorporated shops. Tax records might be more thorough, if there are a lot of unincorporated companies or sole traders that file tax returns, but I don't think those records are public.
motohagiography 4y ago
Was just thinking about the economics of those "spirit of halloween" stores being a short term tenant of last resort for REITs and other property management firms, and if there were a way to do it for used and returned books, it could improve street life and sustain or raise the property value of the locations. Instead of promoting them as garbage outlets like discount book stores do, it could be somewhere welcoming.
- gumby 4y ago
  The term for these is "pop up shops". Books sound like an intriguing idea as the cap ex may be low (some shelves, plus of course the stock). It would be a way to feel out the local market as well.
  - motohagiography 4y ago
    So if your shop kit was a stack of shelved books sorted in categories that you could do in a single warehouse, in modular tall shelves full of a category, which fit on dollies, can get shipped to the location and loaded through a standard sized door, maybe some shelf-top warm lighting, some basic furniture (that would also be for sale as floor models), an integrated pos and inventory system, it could be a thing. The only hitch is that the magic of bookshops is the staff, so you may need to source them from acting and theatre programs where people train and specialize at being interesting, so it wouldn't fly with basic cashiers, they would need to be booksellers. Customer and local market data collection might be one of the main sources of margin as well. Can do that easily with wifi and NFC tag recievers and other sensors as part of the external signage.
underscores__ 4y ago
[flagged]
- macintux 4y ago
  So you’re just stealing word-for-word content from other sources and pasting it on HN? https://www.uplifting24.com/2022/10/a-study-finds-that-reading-fiction.html https://www.uplifting24.com/2022/10/a-study-finds-that-readi...

84 points by fogus 4y ago

Interesting. Does anyone know of any comprehensive resource that can give a number for the US? I'd be very surprised if the situation were the same (although if it were it would be a nice pick-me-up), and I'd be interested in speculating on why the US and Britain might be different. Could it be directly blamed on the degree of penetration of Amazon or Amazon Prime?

owlninja 4y ago
Can you expand on which way you are thinking the US is going and why?
- klyrs 4y ago
  In my experience they're largely gone already, not going anywhere
Turing_Machine 4y ago
At least as of a few years ago, physical bookstores were making a comeback in the United States. Most attributed this to an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" scenario. Amazon stomped Borders and Barnes & Noble into the ground, which meant that in many towns there was no longer a huge chain competitor in the bricks and mortar space. That opened up room for the small indy bookstores to come back. Edit: this NPR piece claims that the number of indy bookstores in the United States increased 35% between 2009 and 2015. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/29/598053563/why-the-number-of-independent-bookstores-increased-during-the-retail-apocalypse https://www.npr.org/2018/03/29/598053563/why-the-number-of-i...
chrisseaton 4y ago
> Could it be directly blamed on the degree of penetration of Amazon or Amazon Prime? I feel like everyone in this thread is missing that these are second-hand bookshops. Amazon Prime isn’t a competitor, and e-books aren’t relevant.
- dalyons 4y ago
  I mean that’s not true? If buying new is crazy cheap and very convenient via Amazon(etc) doesn’t that necessarily undermine the size of the second hand market? It certainly has for me.
  - 1MachineElf 4y ago
    FWIW, used books (and other items) are also sold through Amazon. Either way, Amazon pales in comparison to the used bookstore I used to live nearby: McKay's Used Books in Manassas, VA.
  - lucas_membrane 4y ago
    Amazon lists 2nd hand books, and if you pay for Prime, you can get free shipping, I believe. However, I recommend you take a look at Better World Books, thriftbooks, world of books, discover books, second sale; each of these will sometimes sell books, new or used, below the standard prices that Amazon sets and the other high-volume booksellers follow.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Maybe it's different in the US, but second-hand books here more implies antiquarian, rare, collector, special interest, niche, not available new. People aren't going to a second-hand bookshop to buy everyday reading that they could get new from Amazon.
  - bruce511 4y ago
    There's "crazy cheap" on Amazon, and there's "crazy cheap" second hand, but there's likely an order of magnitude between them. Annecdotally here 2nd hand books cost around $2, for recent stuff, sometimes less than $1 for age or condition. New ones are $10 - $15. So new and 2nd-hand are not really "competing" with each other, price wise. Yes they compete, yes there are many other factors that affect the profitability of 2nd hand stores, but I don't think price-of-new is a major factor (in a decline sense.)
  - paganel 4y ago
    Amazon the company also owns AbeBooks, a very decent and large-ish online seller of SH (and even antique) books.
tenpies 4y ago
For starters, Americans are reading less and less (and I strongly suspect what they're most reading is utter trash [e.g. the political here-say/Trump fan fiction of the month]. The reason I bring those up is because they are terrible for second-hand because no one cares about Clinton's tell-all book after the first 6 months. These books end up first-hand in the bargain bin or at Costco after the initial hype. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-books-past.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/388541/americans-reading-fewer-... I would be curious about Amazon thought, because there is certainly a thriving ecosystem of second-hand book stores listing their inventories there. USPS plays a huge part in making this possible through the Media Mail class of mail. Many of the second-hand stores are also British, but you will find almost none of them are Canadian because Canada hates being competitive and as such, does not have a viable class of mail to ship books with, be it it domestically, or abroad.
- bombcar 4y ago
  You can especially see this at your local Goodwill (in the US) - all the hardcover books are of a certain "bestseller" type and many will be clearly never even opened. Meanwhile actual second-hand bookstores often specialize in something (there was a really good one that specialized in science fiction) - they still have a normal selection of books like a small library, but most of the shelf space is whatever they specialize in.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  I wonder how much book reading has been displaced by audiobooks rather than just “Americans dumb, no like book”. Basically all my friends including myself consume audiobooks but rarely sit down to read a book.
tannhaeuser 4y ago
FWIW, the only thing I've ever bought at Amazon's was an out-of-print book via their network of book shops from when AMZN started business by selling books and other media.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Isn't this just like other industries coming off a high (computer sales for example) due to the pandemic? Obviously book sales were up, they couldn't stay there forever.

uptownfunk 4y ago

This is most likely due to the growing influence of amazon. Probably first place most people look when buying a book.

EvanKelly 4y ago
Not only Amazon, but the rise of ebooks in general. While there are still a lot of holdouts, I think every voracious reader in my family has switched at least some of their reading to ebooks. The ease of acquiring ebooks from the library through Overdrive/Libby means I treat the trip to the bookstore as an exploratory treat rather than an errand to buy the next book in the series
chrisseaton 4y ago
Amazon owns the most important aggregator of second-hand bookshops - AbeBooks. It actually helps me to support second-hand bookshops because I can search and buy from anywhere in the country. Sometimes after buying I develop a relationship and start talking to the shop directly.
- wrp 4y ago
  BookFinder4U is even more useful, as it is a superset of Amazon, eBay, AbeBooks, and a few others. Coverage is not limited to North America. (http://www.bookfinder4u.com/ http://www.bookfinder4u.com/)
  - mattcaywood 4y ago
    viaLibri (https://www.vialibri.net/ https://www.vialibri.net/) includes ABEbooks and the other major US marketplaces (Amazon, eBay, Biblio, Alibris) and international marketplaces. It's far more comprehensive than bookfinder4u, which doesn't do well for books published before ISBNs were introduced (~1970).
    - wrp 4y ago
      Thanks, this looks like a good alternative. One thing though is that people may find the presentation of results easier to search through in BookFinder4U. For pre-ISBN books, you need to use the Out-of-print Search. I use it regularly to find old, limited run, academic monographs.

walrus01 4y ago

I don't know much about the book industry specifically, but I'd be worried about the viability of second hand book shops in street-level retail environments because of rapidly rising commercial rents in many big cities. The revenue brought in by a second hand book store may be sustainable in a much smaller city with static/non rising commercial rents, but when a commercial landlord looks at lease renewal and decides they can get a whole lot more money if somebody converts the place into a small restaurant, coffee shop or (other) retail...

zimpenfish 4y ago
> a commercial landlord [...] somebody converts the place into a small restaurant, coffee shop Charing Cross Road in London is a prime example - used to have a whole bunch of small book (and other) shops. Now it has a whole bunch of pastry, coffee[1], sweet etc. shops and a couple of small bookshops (who probably don't have long to go, really.) (Also has a huge bookshop, Foyles, but that's a soulless corporate monstrosity.) [1] I am particularly aggrieved about the nicer of the two Any Amount Of Books being turned into a squashed coffee shop.
- iNerdier 4y ago
  Foyles was interestingly weird but eventually got bought by Waterstones and became what it is now. I’d still say it’s better than some, just not by enough. The expensive building changes to the Chinatown side didn’t help the smaller shops and it’s clear as their leases end the shops are closing and it’ll be like everywhere else with a generic mash of forgettable places.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Had a friend who worked in foyles packing mail outs. He used to get his jollies writing author sigs and dedications on the books. Married a bookseller who worked at skoob, Sicilian avenue. The owner had worked next door to 84 charing cross road. We avoid second hand bookshops now, you can grow out of them. Everyone raves about hay. The QT is on petersfield and the honour box system.

iancmceachern 4y ago

I recently visited Paris for work and was struck by the number and quality of small local book shops, often seeming to specialize in one thing or another, as compared to where I live (SF). Prior to that I had always thought that SF had a lot compared to elsewhere.

nikanj 4y ago
You can read on the train but you can't read while driving. Surprising nth order effects of city planning, the more car-centric your culture is, the less time the average person has for books
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  > you can't read while driving Hence audiobooks (and more generally, podcasts)
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  > Surprising nth order effects of city planning, the more car-centric your culture is, the less time the average person has for books Perhaps this could be a selling point here in the UK. Yes your very late train has once again been cancelled and you now have to get a place on the replacement bus service, but at least you've had some time to read! The stance I'd have is the less travel-centric your life is, the more time you have for reading (or anything else). Big tech making more remote work feasible has opened this up a lot more than city planning can.
chrisseaton 4y ago
> I had always thought that SF had a lot compared to elsewhere Try Hay on Wye in the United Kingdom. 20 second-hand bookshops for a population of 2000.
- robin_reala 4y ago
  That’s a somewhat specialist case though, given that the only reason anyone’s heard of the place is the literary festivals they host: https://www.hayfestival.com/wales/home https://www.hayfestival.com/wales/home & https://www.hayfestival.com/winter-weekend/home https://www.hayfestival.com/winter-weekend/home

sideshowb 4y ago

Juxtaposed with news of huge layoffs from meta, Amazon and Intel, this headline feels like something from The Onion. Alas our prime minister seems determined to outdo the US when it comes to recession. "Hold my beer..."

ricardo81 4y ago

The cost of power in the UK at the moment is going to put pressure on every kind of bricks and mortar store.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dazc 4y ago
MY recently renewed commercial power contract attracts a Govt subsidy which puts it more or less the same as it was last year. This subsidy applies to all other businesses, including book shops.
- ricardo81 4y ago
  Indeed, but at a huge cost to the taxpayer and only for 6 months. I've seen some local businesses closing down because they see the writing on the wall and are unwilling to pass on price increases to locals.

cyclotron3k 4y ago

99% of those bookshops are in Hay-on-Wye

taffronaut 4y ago
Hay does have a lot of secondhand bookshops and their existence has elevated a small backwater of a town into a successful tourist destination. However, in recent years a lot of bookshops have closed - becoming antique/curio shops instead (source Wikipedia). I suspect that many of the tourists to "The Town of Books" don't buy enough books to sustain the local economy.
pnut 4y ago
Wigtown in Scotland is another one, every other building in the village is a bookshop.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

The key point is that they note a significant increase over the last 40 years. But with what has happened over the last 2 years it is not surprised that the numbers have dropped in the last 12 months.

tkgally 4y ago

In Japan, as elsewhere, bookstores in general are facing hard times [1, in Japanese], but the Kanda-Jimbochō area in central Tokyo has somehow managed to keep over a hundred shops in business. Most of the area was aggressively redeveloped when land prices shot up during the late 1980s and redevelopment has continued since, but the bookshops have held on. Some of the shops at street level are visible on Google Streetview [2]. More photos at [3]. I live in Yokohama and used to go to Kanda-Jimbochō regularly, but I haven’t been there since COVID. The photos make me nostalgic. [1] https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUF110700R11C22A0000000/ https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUF110700R11C22A0000000/ [2] https://bit.ly/3MuNoh2 https://bit.ly/3MuNoh2 [3] https://en.jimbou.info/ https://en.jimbou.info/

Doctor_Fegg 4y ago

For those unaware of "Driff": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driff_Field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driff_Field (He's still alive and kicking. I bought a secondhand book from a random eBay seller the other year and it turned out to be him. Quite a shock.) That aside: I find it hard to believe the assertion that "the number of second-hand bookshops in the UK had increased by about 25% over a thirty year period". All the areas with which I'm particularly familiar saw a notable decline in this period (some almost precipitous, such as Oxford or Uppingham). My gut feeling is that Driff's 80s guides were not as comprehensive as the poster believes, and that the advent of the internet has made it much easier to compile complete, crowdsourced directories such as thebookguide.info.

bombcar 4y ago
I suspect this may be part of the case; though doesn't the UK have some master list of companies? Maybe that could be searched. In my local experience in the US Barnes and Noble and Borders killed all the non-second-hand bookstores, and then Amazon mostly killed those, but some of the second hand bookstores have survived. Also, do you count Goodwill as a "second hand bookstore"? They have usually two or three aisles of books, after all.
- lambertsimnel 4y ago
  > doesn't the UK have some master list of companies? Maybe that could be searched. Companies House has a publicly searchable list of incorporated companies: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/ https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/ The Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code for "retail sale of books in specialised stores" is 47610: https://resources.companieshouse.gov.uk/sic/ https://resources.companieshouse.gov.uk/sic/ You can search the list by "nature of business" (i.e. SIC code): https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/advanced-search https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/a... It returned 3,437 results for me, but this will include inactive companies and chains, and exclude unincorporated shops. Tax records might be more thorough, if there are a lot of unincorporated companies or sole traders that file tax returns, but I don't think those records are public.

motohagiography 4y ago

Was just thinking about the economics of those "spirit of halloween" stores being a short term tenant of last resort for REITs and other property management firms, and if there were a way to do it for used and returned books, it could improve street life and sustain or raise the property value of the locations. Instead of promoting them as garbage outlets like discount book stores do, it could be somewhere welcoming.

gumby 4y ago
The term for these is "pop up shops". Books sound like an intriguing idea as the cap ex may be low (some shelves, plus of course the stock). It would be a way to feel out the local market as well.
- motohagiography 4y ago
  So if your shop kit was a stack of shelved books sorted in categories that you could do in a single warehouse, in modular tall shelves full of a category, which fit on dollies, can get shipped to the location and loaded through a standard sized door, maybe some shelf-top warm lighting, some basic furniture (that would also be for sale as floor models), an integrated pos and inventory system, it could be a thing. The only hitch is that the magic of bookshops is the staff, so you may need to source them from acting and theatre programs where people train and specialize at being interesting, so it wouldn't fly with basic cashiers, they would need to be booksellers. Customer and local market data collection might be one of the main sources of margin as well. Can do that easily with wifi and NFC tag recievers and other sensors as part of the external signage.

underscores__ 4y ago

[flagged]

macintux 4y ago
So you’re just stealing word-for-word content from other sources and pasting it on HN? https://www.uplifting24.com/2022/10/a-study-finds-that-reading-fiction.html https://www.uplifting24.com/2022/10/a-study-finds-that-readi...