8 ms·

Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

70 points by fogus 1y ago

DadBase 1y ago
They shelve by author; we shelve by likelihood the book causes déjà vu.
AStonesThrow 1y ago
Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? Lately if I really must put hands on dead trees, the shelves of library sales, churches, and ordinary thrift stores are overflowing. Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? No reason to waste real estate on any sort of dedicated seller. Goodness gracious.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  > Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? Not really. Plenty of people still read, and they still read hard copies of books. I don't think you will get argument that business isn't as good as it used to be, but that's a long way away from not being viable at all. > Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? You haven't spent much time around secondhand book stores, I'm guessing? Yes, there are absolutely diamonds out there. And even outside of that, there are lots of perfectly good used books. Books don't go bad over time, so unless they're damaged (which isn't most of them) they are still perfectly saleable.
- voxadam 1y ago
  Powell's here in Portland seems to be doing pretty well with 68,000 square feet (6,300 square metres) sales floor space and millions of customers a year. https://powells.com https://powells.com
  - jrmg 1y ago
    It’s a bit of a unicorn. It is of course a great book store - but it’s also a tourist destination. People travel to Portland just to see Powells. And it’s worth it!
    - relistan 1y ago
      This is true but I still can’t figure out why more stores don’t copy Powell’s used and new on the same shelves model. In retrospect it seems so obvious that this is a good idea. And Powell’s has been doing it for decades.
- jacobgkau 1y ago
  > secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged Fiction books don't really become "outdated" to the point of being useless. That's only an argument for encyclopedias/technical manuals/etc. > the shelves of library sales, churches, and ordinary thrift stores are overflowing. I'm sure the same could be said about furniture, but I'd expect more luck finding interesting/quality second-hand furniture at a used furniture store than I would from a general dumping ground of miscellaneous used items. For that matter, since you're asking about all brick-and-mortar book shops, I'd also expect better new furniture from a brick-and-mortar furniture shop than from a thrift shop. And while books may not require seeing them in person as much to know what they are, the act of discovering them for fun based on what happens to be there is (possibly) easier to understand than discovering a particular piece of furniture.
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    Okay, well, the article in the OP describes a situation in Great Britain, and I'm unsure how accurately it describes the bookshop industry in the United States. Here's what I've seen: Amazon.com came online as a bookseller, chiefly, and began to eat the lunch of every brick-and-mortar. Then in turn, independent sellers began shopping in those stores in order to snap up inventory and sell it in their cottage-industry online shops. My cousin noted, back around 2010, that many antique, thrifts, and secondhand stores were clogged not with consumers, but shoppers and arbitrators and pickers, just scavenging for anything they could sell. Between 2016-2019 I was in ministry with a small "lending library" at church. We had two bookshelves full of books that parishioners might enjoy reading. We had just lost our entire inventory when I started, and so it was up to me to sift through donations, especially estates of the deceased, to build up the collection again. I destroyed a lot of bad titles in those days. I noticed that there wasn't a lot of demand to borrow, nor theft, except for the non-book media such as DVDs. There was someone interested in messing up all my organizational work, though. I began to realize there was no good way to recycle or donate the unwanted titles, and eventually I was sort of forced out when a deluge of Spanish-language books came in, and I couldn't keep up with the evaluations and the shelves were full anyway. I've also hung out in libraries for a long time. Now if you have visited libraries over the last 5 decades, you've noticed dwindling shelf-space for physical books, as computer labs and other tech takes over. It's plain to see in action: nobody really wants to check out books on such a scale as in the 1980s. eBooks are hot properties, along with CDs, DVDs and video games, oh man the shelf space given over to electronic media now! Ask any librarian and they will tell you about the proportionate need for space in this regard. Furthermore, there's this quiet revolution in "libraries" known as "Little Free Library". My municipality and many others sponsor and encourage them. They're essentially little residential kiosks where any passerby can take a book or leave a book. Essentially many become dumping grounds for unwanted titles and real junk, I suppose, but perhaps have some utility for bookworm types who stroll through neighborhoods, walking dogs, jogging, and hob-nobbing with suburban neighbors. Many cafés also have such library shelves for customer sharing. Books are often useful for very small children to have and pass down. Going to college in 2017-2023, I noticed a lot of classes where students carried no books, no notebook, and not even a backpack! They'd bring in their phone to class! The eBook could easily be accessed online from an app, so why carry those hella-heavy books around? Many students in I.T., coding, and other tech subjects would have negative use for dead-trees and we regarded them as pure anathema, because it was all about the online access to edu materials. Books and the bookstore did exist, and there were mandatory titles in many disciplines, but always had eBook counterparts. (And yes, I saw The Half-Blood Prince and I understand the value of a well-loved secondhand text!) Lastly I managed to divest my home of every single book I own, save for a few personal titles and a Bible or two. I found that I never sit down and read a book except in power-outages or trying to drift-off to sleep. Books are too heavy to carry on the bus, and impractical to store on a shelf when I'm not home. Every resource is vastly more useful when loaded into cloud storage for me. I've been unsuccessful in eliminating paper, and I still use a printer, and I still receive paper email in the USPS, but as for books, they're history. So all this above stuff makes me shake my head at this OP. When I hung out in the libraries I read some classic fiction and got some good learning, but the library situation itself is pointing to a book-free future IMHO. I've known some great bookshops in my day, and cats to go with them, and they were anchors in the community for people to just chill and sit around, but I still regard them as Apatosaurs in this digital age.
- karaterobot 1y ago
  I don't want to just downvote and move on without an explanation. You're basically offering some of the arguments this article brings up and then dismisses, with evidence, so it seems like you didn't read the article and are offering your personal opinion as an argument.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  > secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged This is an odd take, to me. When I was still in school, I’d seek out texts with as many handwritten notes in them as I could find! That was an added value for sure and one only available second-hand. Now that eBooks are a thing I use them almost exclusively for schlock-type books: mass market paperbacks for well known SciFi franchises, for example, are all eBooks now. I wouldn’t buy these any other way now, but when I did buy paperbacks they went right to secondhand. The value for those was that they were cheaper. But for any other type of book, if I am buying it, its a classic book. Maybe it won some awards, maybe it is even out of print! None of this feels like a waste to me in any way, and I will admit I do not read a lot by the standards of folks here.
- rendx 1y ago
  > secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors I buy up to 10 (mostly non-fiction) books on paper a month, always secondhand if available, via bookfinder. You typically get a very accurate description of their state beforehand; I don't mind most levels of use, I actually like it when they have history to them. Markings, notes of previous owners, etc, are all fine for me. Even if one prefers "clean" books there are usually plenty of copies available. I like how it is both much cheaper than new, and even more the reuse aspect.
- csdvrx 1y ago
  > Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? Secondhand stores offer in general "better" products because of the double curation: - someone found the good interesting enough to buy it in the first place (1st curation) - the store found it good enough to buy it again from the first owner (2nd curation) > Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? No, it's even better because of the limited space they have to display the goods they want to sell: while online stores can show their full inventory, brick-and-mortar need to select what's most likely to sell. This adds yet another level of curation: the store found the good valuable enough to be exposed to buyers, instead of keeping it in the back (3rd curation) I find great music by randomly buying second-hand CDs from brick-and-mortar secondhand stores, thanks to this triple-curation,
  - SpaceManNabs 1y ago
    > someone found the good interesting enough to buy it in the first place (1st curation) I wonder how this is offset by someone finding an item not worth enough to keep. But maybe I underestimate the generosity (or need for income) of the typical person visiting secondhand stores to offload their stuff.
    - alabastervlog 1y ago
      Some (many?) book stores do a lot of their intake via estate sales, not just buying from walk-ins. That gets them access to lots of interesting and well-cared-for, if sometimes niche, collections at low prices.
- SpaceManNabs 1y ago
  > Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? Growing up poor, second hand book stores were how I found some of the best math books that I wouldn't have been able to afford. And they were often quite good or better (at least in offering diverse perspectives and angles) than the books I could have bought at the time. I often liked the notes people left.
- alabastervlog 1y ago
  > Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged This is true if you take any book whatsoever that someone wants to give or sell to you. It is not true of any book store I've ever seen. They reject or recycle the crap. It's sometimes true of shelves of books in flea markets. Rows of forgotten once-popular authors from the 1910s or whatever, that likely (for those particular copies, anyway) no human will ever read again, you do sometimes see.
- toofy 1y ago
  im not sure this is at all accurate. the book stores around here that carry a good selection are always packed.
- bpshaver 1y ago
  > Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? Not at all. Many of them are doing very well and have rebounded from the hit they took when Amazon entered the scene. Not as many of them as there used to be but they're far from dead. In many cities they're thriving. > Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? Yes they do, but your premise is incorrect. Many secondhand books are undesirable, sure. Most are. But that doesn't mean there aren't millions of books out there that are valuable either for a collector or to individual buyers. > No reason to waste real estate on any sort of dedicated seller. Ugh.
fidotron 1y ago
There's a subtext to this post that may not be obvious to non British people: UK High Streets (Main Streets) have in the last 20 years experienced an incredible explosion of charity shops (thrift stores) including many locations specific to books. Quite why this has occurred is a subject of occasional argument, but I've never heard a definitive theory on it, and it partly overlaps with the general decline motivated by ecommerce. They do compete on some level with existing businesses, as debated here, but the more curious impact is they completely alter the character of an area. Ten years ago they used to be fantastic for obscure finds because it seemed people had not caught on, but these days they tend to be subpar, which is probably a major edge the non charitable enterprises have exploited.
- NoboruWataya 1y ago
  I think a lot of people get the causal relationship the wrong way around when it comes to charity shops and the decline of the high street. It's not (IMO) that charity shops move into otherwise thriving areas and lead to a decline in local business by competing, but rather that they move into spaces that would otherwise lie empty, and therefore are more likely to be found on high streets that were already dying. Where I live we have a few charity shops but it's mainly chicken shops, vape shops and the occasional barber that are cannibalising the local high street.
  - squidsoup 1y ago
    Very much the case in New Zealand as well.
- jdietrich 1y ago
  It's a symptom of the decline of high street retail and high long-term vacancy rates for many retail properties. For commercial landlords, a charity shop paying little or no rent is usually better than no tenant at all - the property is less likely to be smashed up by vandals, burned down by arsonists or occupied by squatters if it's occupied. The landlord would be liable for business rates after three months of vacancy, but not if there's a tenant. Charity shops get an 80% relief on business rates, pay nothing for their stock and get some or all of their staff for free; obviously this allows them to operate profitably in circumstances where no normal business could. As I understand it, the landlords are holding on mostly in the hope that their properties will either be compulsorily purchased as part of a regeneration scheme, or granted planning permission for redevelopment as housing.
neilv 1y ago
> But bricks-and-mortar booksellers can sell via the internet too, and booksellers can migrate to lower rent areas. Indeed, there is some evidence of this: there are fewer city centre bookshops and more in smaller, less expensive towns. There was a hip university neighborhood used bookstore here, and even 20+ years ago they were also selling online. Their online inventory included a large amount of stock in a warehouse nearby that wasn't accessible to brick&mortar shoppers. Software automated the online listings and price adjusting. > [...] contemporary book trade and book-collecting directories [...] there were 523 second-hand bookshops in the UK in 1955 [...] and 1,140 in 2014. There are 1,282 now, in April 2025. Anyone know whether these all have a walk-in retail presence, appointment-only (like for rare books), or are a lot of those online-only sellers?
stevage 1y ago
Interesting. I'm in Australia where I would also say that the number of second hand bookshops has greatly decreased in the last 20 years. New bookshops too for that matter. But I'm curious whether I'd also be wrong. We don't, afaik, have charity run bookshops, though. Lots of op shops, and they all sell books, but not exclusively.
- 9283409232 1y ago
  Sounds like the problem with book shops in Australia is just Amazon.
  - sien 1y ago
    Books in Australia are really expensive. This is because Australian publishers have managed to extract their own big cut from Australian consumers. Part of this is because they publish memoirs from any politician and partly because the printing industry is concentrated in some swinging electorates. https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/cheaper-books-but-at-what-price/8139436 https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/cheaper-books-b... What Australians often do instead is get ebooks through other means. Libraries are also more attractive for cost reasons.
amiga386 1y ago
My experience has been that the second-hand bookshops have had thin times but nonetheless survive because of the internet. They tend to have a better selection compared to charity shops, i.e. not just cast-offs of holiday novels and celeb bios. Shout out to https://www.tillsbookshop.co.uk/ https://www.tillsbookshop.co.uk/ and https://www.armchairbooks.co.uk/ https://www.armchairbooks.co.uk/ There has also been a growth in first-hand bookshops, especially specialists/curators (e.g. only selling sci-fi, only selling books by women, etc.) to distinguish themselves from the Waterstones and Blackwells of this world.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  I've noticed a few book stores which intermingle new and used stock and they're great. (it's obvious when something isn't new stock but it's all pretty good condition regardless)
- whartung 1y ago
  > only selling sci-fi Ah, memories of the late “A Change of Hobbit” in LA. A dedicated sci-fi/fantasy bookshop. I distinctly recall getting a towel signed by Douglas Adams during one of his signings, I may have met Ellison there once. Been a long time.
  - jamiek88 1y ago
    I will give you literally all my money for that towel!! You lucky, lucky man, you hoopy frood. Please tell me you aren’t gonna say you don’t know where you towel is?
shadowgovt 1y ago
Possibly, but gosh would it be hard for me to care. In unrelated news, access to a pure, unfiltered spring drives out local bottled-water sellers. We are in an era where even manufacturing physical copies of books is incredibly cheap. I'm not going to stress about charity bookshops disrupting scarcity in that ecosystem any more than I'm going to worry about libraries or the Internet doing so.
kayo_20211030 1y ago
What's the fundamental difference? They're stores with old books; someone makes a few cents. I honestly don't understand the question.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  If you’re in the uk, I think you’d understand the question. Charity shops have sprung up all over on high streets, even while businesses around them fall. It’s not hard to imagine that the economics are different and that non-charity shops can’t compete due to lack of special tax treatment.
- jrmg 1y ago
  It can of course vary considerably by store, and I’ll happily spend time in both but, generally: Second hand bookshops are curated actively - like, they’ll only stock desirable books. They’re owned and run, usually, by people who love books. The staff tend to be knowledgeable. Charity book shops are much less curated - to the extent that some just stock whatever is donated (which, of course, is largely made up of books people don’t want), so they tend to have a large collection of random books of not as high quality. They’re run by volunteers - which generally means enthusiastic staff, but it does not mean knowledge about books.
  - m463 1y ago
    I wonder if #1 comes over and culls through #2
    - bpshaver 1y ago
      1000% yes, at least with the help of book scouts that cull #2 and sell what they find to #1 for ~40% of retail. If you want a fun fictional take on this, John Dunning's Booked to Die is a biblio-mystery about a Denver detective / book-lover investigating the murder of a book scout within the 1980's Denver used bookstore scene.
charlie-83 1y ago
Interesting analysis. I'm somewhat confused by why anyone would think charity bookshops replacing secondhand bookshops would be a bad thing (if that were to actually be happening as the article suggests there isn't much evidence of this). Surely, to the shopper, they are exactly the same except one helps a charitable cause as a bonus.
- SpaceManNabs 1y ago
  I have found that second hand shops tend to have a more diverse and rich selection and charity shops can have very rare gems. Support both, and I wouldn't want to give up one for the other. Also a bit of an aside, but charity shops are also more often part of national or international orgs so a lot of the "gain" isn't localized as the article discusses. Good or bad on a case by case basis. Not sure how it edges out.
- Affric 1y ago
  Charity bookshop workers in my experience know nothing about books and have no taste. But charity bookshops have different motivations and appeal to different shoppers. Essentially it’s only bad if you like reading good, hard to find books. Or believe that others finding them when they might not particularly be looking for them is a common good.
- asciimov 1y ago
  “Charity” shops in my area are for profit businesses. Sure someone is getting a small donation, but their board members pull large salaries. Never mind their free inventory and usually underpaid labor.
  - danparsonson 1y ago
    The directors getting paid doesn't make a charity for-profit - that's dependent on what they do with the remaining money after paying salaries. For-profit businesses distribute surplus (i.e. profit) to shareholders. It's a common complaint that donations should not be used to pay salaries, but the important question should be how much leverage those paid staff can extract out your donation. Skilled people usually don't want to work for free, but they can magnify a donation by reaching more potential donors via advertising, more appealing shops, etc.
detourdog 1y ago
My experience is that if one collects books they want as many stores as possible as close together as possible. NYC in the 1990’s used to have a few neighborhoods full of bookstores. My favorite was just around 16th street in between 6th and Broadway.
- sexy_devil 1y ago
  There's a neighborhood in Tokyo called Jinbōchō, which built an entire town out of different specialist second-hand book shops. If you ever need a specific book on a specific thing, you bet you can find it there. It's pretty sweet.
  - rootsudo 1y ago
    And to ride on Jimbocho/international reference, they have the same in Manila, Philippines in Recto, which is a university area, tons of english university text books, around 100-200 pesos, "international editions." Jimbocho has limited English text. Now Hong Kong, Quarry Bay Street has a few but they're all on south island I see and accessible via the metro.
  - detourdog 1y ago
    I'm fortunate enough to have that experience. I also thought there were many specialized districts. The few towns I visited all had a very sophisticated electronics district that included ancient machines, simple home A/V switching boxes and cutting edge parts.
cafard 1y ago
Not in my experience. I have a few feet of books that I bought at Carpe Librum in Washington, DC. But the odds one one finding something there are lower than at Second Story Books or Lost City Books, the two nearest used book stores.
protocolture 1y ago
Just checked, I like to visit "Elizabeths" when I go to sydney, they have a nice cosy store and a great selection. They apparently have a website, and 2 other stores. I had no idea. Certainly doesn't appear to be a business in decline. And considering that being a bookshop in Sydney they compete with some absolute giants I am quite impressed tbh.
asciimov 1y ago
In my area, charity shops have terrible selections tons of fad diet books from the 80s and 90s and religious related texts.
- bombcar 1y ago
  You forget all the horrible fad investment books; Rich Dad’s Guide to Whole Life and Timeshares
- jccalhoun 1y ago
  For years I joked that it was a law that every Goodwill store had to have a copy of a Twilight or Hunger Games book on the shelves at all times. Every time I go to one I check and nearly every time they still do all these years later. Or one of the Left Behind books.
  - encrypted_bird 1y ago
    Hey, the Hunger Games are actually really good. I derided it for years until one time I was in the hospital for a few weeks, I got immensely bored and decided to try it out. I was hooked.
    - bawolff 1y ago
      The main issue is that pretty much everyone who wants to read it has already.
      - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
        It's young adult focused which means there a new crop of readers every year.
        encrypted_bird 1y ago
        Also, even if it had run out of readers, how is it the story's fault? That's what happens to most long-running series. Not every story has to be among the legends to be considered good.
FridayoLeary 1y ago
shout out to haye on wye in wales where almost all the shops are second hand bookstores. that being said i bought no books there while i have bought a dozen or so from charity shops, the main reason being the price is so low they are basically being given away.
benoau 1y ago
Anecdotal but I haven't seen a 2nd-hand bookshop in years however those little "tiny libraries" where people just donate their books are in abundance. What I've seen other used-item shops are doing these days is checking online what things are worth and selling them for very slightly less and it seems like this has to be a death-knell for secondhand stores in general. And I know they have to do this, everything donated has to be checked to ensure safety and cleanliness, it costs them money to keep the shop open and staffed. But if you can't actually save money by buying secondhand goods there then why would anyone shop there?! It's a 10 - 20 percent discount on goods that may be years old when Amazon rotates these discounts through new goods 24/7.
- Suppafly 1y ago
  We have two second hand bookstores in my area. One of them has changed hands a couple of times over the years, so I don't think they make a ton of money, although they are in a large, albeit older, retail space so they must do ok. The other keeps expanding in adjacent spaces, but seems to make a lot of their money selling book adjacent stuff (socks, bookmarks, pins, candles) instead of actual books. In fact the owner regularly stocks several of those free libraries around town and always has free books outside of her store.
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  One benefit could be curation and discovery. Sometimes a bookstore's displays will show me a book that I might have not otherwise thought to read, selected by their readers, and I'm happy to pay a modest premium for that service.
xhevahir 1y ago
I get almost all of my books from charity thrift stores and Friends of the Library shelves. If you read widely you generally can find something interesting for a dollar or so. I almost never go to a bookstore looking for something specific, though.
trod1234 1y ago
The article primarily draws on the fact that the number of bookshops hasn't driven other second-hand bookshops out of business because the number of bookshops has grown over the measured number of years. The reasoning it follows and suggested is quite dubious. A bookshop is a business. Any business naturally has a loss function in the form of constraints, after which point it necessarily must go out of business and close. That loss function also determines how many people can be served by that bookstore insofar as the revenue earned goes to capital reserves and operations. The second-hand bookstores have remained almost constant over decades, while population growth and the number of people being served has grown dramatically. The charity bookshops involved have special tax status, they receive free stock, they get to choose which stock they receive goes to the paper mill or gets resold, and they can continue as long as their charity can continue. While they must keep accounting records, those records need not be public, and may involve donations that may further subsidize destructive behaviors without the public's knowledge. They need not make a profit, whereas all other non-charity bookstores must make sufficient profit. No business that has natural constraints can compete with an unconstrained entity in the same market. The money printer without constraint will always win, suborn, and drive out other businesses that do not have the same constraints. It is just a matter of time and economic circumstance, and by the time anyone notices its too late. There is also the possibility that many of the secondhand shops may also be propped up through loans, despite the ever tightening dynamic of ponzi that must be paid back (as it works for all debt in general). There is great harm that state propped apparatus can do to business and the market in general, as well as to society. Rather than being open about it, these things have been happening in the shadows and that's something that needs to be revisited. If there is not a comparable loss constraint, the accounting records should be public to safeguard cultural history, and hold to account malefactors. When the state wants objectionable material out of the general population's hands it just silently removes it from a pipeline they created, having learned from history, more specifically Hitler that burning books in public isn't a good thing. Goodwill follows this practice of removing objectionable material from its pipeline in the US, and library budgets in many places are dictated by how often the book is circulated. Low circulated classics that are objectionable according to some undisclosed person, may just disappear once the library donates the low circulation books to the charity, that then removes that content without fanfare before it ever hits a shelf. Ever wonder why many books from the 80s or earlier are often quite uncommon? Yes they are old, but the circulation was massive for a lot of these, and what's available now doesn't account for the natural difference of time, especially considering many of the books received from libraries were rebound to library bindings. Food for thought.

70 points by fogus 1y ago

They shelve by author; we shelve by likelihood the book causes déjà vu.

Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? Lately if I really must put hands on dead trees, the shelves of library sales, churches, and ordinary thrift stores are overflowing. Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? No reason to waste real estate on any sort of dedicated seller. Goodness gracious.

bigstrat2003 1y ago
> Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? Not really. Plenty of people still read, and they still read hard copies of books. I don't think you will get argument that business isn't as good as it used to be, but that's a long way away from not being viable at all. > Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? You haven't spent much time around secondhand book stores, I'm guessing? Yes, there are absolutely diamonds out there. And even outside of that, there are lots of perfectly good used books. Books don't go bad over time, so unless they're damaged (which isn't most of them) they are still perfectly saleable.
voxadam 1y ago
Powell's here in Portland seems to be doing pretty well with 68,000 square feet (6,300 square metres) sales floor space and millions of customers a year. https://powells.com https://powells.com
- jrmg 1y ago
  It’s a bit of a unicorn. It is of course a great book store - but it’s also a tourist destination. People travel to Portland just to see Powells. And it’s worth it!
  - relistan 1y ago
    This is true but I still can’t figure out why more stores don’t copy Powell’s used and new on the same shelves model. In retrospect it seems so obvious that this is a good idea. And Powell’s has been doing it for decades.
jacobgkau 1y ago
> secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged Fiction books don't really become "outdated" to the point of being useless. That's only an argument for encyclopedias/technical manuals/etc. > the shelves of library sales, churches, and ordinary thrift stores are overflowing. I'm sure the same could be said about furniture, but I'd expect more luck finding interesting/quality second-hand furniture at a used furniture store than I would from a general dumping ground of miscellaneous used items. For that matter, since you're asking about all brick-and-mortar book shops, I'd also expect better new furniture from a brick-and-mortar furniture shop than from a thrift shop. And while books may not require seeing them in person as much to know what they are, the act of discovering them for fun based on what happens to be there is (possibly) easier to understand than discovering a particular piece of furniture.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
  Okay, well, the article in the OP describes a situation in Great Britain, and I'm unsure how accurately it describes the bookshop industry in the United States. Here's what I've seen: Amazon.com came online as a bookseller, chiefly, and began to eat the lunch of every brick-and-mortar. Then in turn, independent sellers began shopping in those stores in order to snap up inventory and sell it in their cottage-industry online shops. My cousin noted, back around 2010, that many antique, thrifts, and secondhand stores were clogged not with consumers, but shoppers and arbitrators and pickers, just scavenging for anything they could sell. Between 2016-2019 I was in ministry with a small "lending library" at church. We had two bookshelves full of books that parishioners might enjoy reading. We had just lost our entire inventory when I started, and so it was up to me to sift through donations, especially estates of the deceased, to build up the collection again. I destroyed a lot of bad titles in those days. I noticed that there wasn't a lot of demand to borrow, nor theft, except for the non-book media such as DVDs. There was someone interested in messing up all my organizational work, though. I began to realize there was no good way to recycle or donate the unwanted titles, and eventually I was sort of forced out when a deluge of Spanish-language books came in, and I couldn't keep up with the evaluations and the shelves were full anyway. I've also hung out in libraries for a long time. Now if you have visited libraries over the last 5 decades, you've noticed dwindling shelf-space for physical books, as computer labs and other tech takes over. It's plain to see in action: nobody really wants to check out books on such a scale as in the 1980s. eBooks are hot properties, along with CDs, DVDs and video games, oh man the shelf space given over to electronic media now! Ask any librarian and they will tell you about the proportionate need for space in this regard. Furthermore, there's this quiet revolution in "libraries" known as "Little Free Library". My municipality and many others sponsor and encourage them. They're essentially little residential kiosks where any passerby can take a book or leave a book. Essentially many become dumping grounds for unwanted titles and real junk, I suppose, but perhaps have some utility for bookworm types who stroll through neighborhoods, walking dogs, jogging, and hob-nobbing with suburban neighbors. Many cafés also have such library shelves for customer sharing. Books are often useful for very small children to have and pass down. Going to college in 2017-2023, I noticed a lot of classes where students carried no books, no notebook, and not even a backpack! They'd bring in their phone to class! The eBook could easily be accessed online from an app, so why carry those hella-heavy books around? Many students in I.T., coding, and other tech subjects would have negative use for dead-trees and we regarded them as pure anathema, because it was all about the online access to edu materials. Books and the bookstore did exist, and there were mandatory titles in many disciplines, but always had eBook counterparts. (And yes, I saw The Half-Blood Prince and I understand the value of a well-loved secondhand text!) Lastly I managed to divest my home of every single book I own, save for a few personal titles and a Bible or two. I found that I never sit down and read a book except in power-outages or trying to drift-off to sleep. Books are too heavy to carry on the bus, and impractical to store on a shelf when I'm not home. Every resource is vastly more useful when loaded into cloud storage for me. I've been unsuccessful in eliminating paper, and I still use a printer, and I still receive paper email in the USPS, but as for books, they're history. So all this above stuff makes me shake my head at this OP. When I hung out in the libraries I read some classic fiction and got some good learning, but the library situation itself is pointing to a book-free future IMHO. I've known some great bookshops in my day, and cats to go with them, and they were anchors in the community for people to just chill and sit around, but I still regard them as Apatosaurs in this digital age.
karaterobot 1y ago
I don't want to just downvote and move on without an explanation. You're basically offering some of the arguments this article brings up and then dismisses, with evidence, so it seems like you didn't read the article and are offering your personal opinion as an argument.
Henchman21 1y ago
> secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged This is an odd take, to me. When I was still in school, I’d seek out texts with as many handwritten notes in them as I could find! That was an added value for sure and one only available second-hand. Now that eBooks are a thing I use them almost exclusively for schlock-type books: mass market paperbacks for well known SciFi franchises, for example, are all eBooks now. I wouldn’t buy these any other way now, but when I did buy paperbacks they went right to secondhand. The value for those was that they were cheaper. But for any other type of book, if I am buying it, its a classic book. Maybe it won some awards, maybe it is even out of print! None of this feels like a waste to me in any way, and I will admit I do not read a lot by the standards of folks here.
rendx 1y ago
> secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors I buy up to 10 (mostly non-fiction) books on paper a month, always secondhand if available, via bookfinder. You typically get a very accurate description of their state beforehand; I don't mind most levels of use, I actually like it when they have history to them. Markings, notes of previous owners, etc, are all fine for me. Even if one prefers "clean" books there are usually plenty of copies available. I like how it is both much cheaper than new, and even more the reuse aspect.
csdvrx 1y ago
> Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? Secondhand stores offer in general "better" products because of the double curation: - someone found the good interesting enough to buy it in the first place (1st curation) - the store found it good enough to buy it again from the first owner (2nd curation) > Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? No, it's even better because of the limited space they have to display the goods they want to sell: while online stores can show their full inventory, brick-and-mortar need to select what's most likely to sell. This adds yet another level of curation: the store found the good valuable enough to be exposed to buyers, instead of keeping it in the back (3rd curation) I find great music by randomly buying second-hand CDs from brick-and-mortar secondhand stores, thanks to this triple-curation,
- SpaceManNabs 1y ago
  > someone found the good interesting enough to buy it in the first place (1st curation) I wonder how this is offset by someone finding an item not worth enough to keep. But maybe I underestimate the generosity (or need for income) of the typical person visiting secondhand stores to offload their stuff.
  - alabastervlog 1y ago
    Some (many?) book stores do a lot of their intake via estate sales, not just buying from walk-ins. That gets them access to lots of interesting and well-cared-for, if sometimes niche, collections at low prices.
SpaceManNabs 1y ago
> Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? Growing up poor, second hand book stores were how I found some of the best math books that I wouldn't have been able to afford. And they were often quite good or better (at least in offering diverse perspectives and angles) than the books I could have bought at the time. I often liked the notes people left.
alabastervlog 1y ago
> Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged This is true if you take any book whatsoever that someone wants to give or sell to you. It is not true of any book store I've ever seen. They reject or recycle the crap. It's sometimes true of shelves of books in flea markets. Rows of forgotten once-popular authors from the 1910s or whatever, that likely (for those particular copies, anyway) no human will ever read again, you do sometimes see.
toofy 1y ago
im not sure this is at all accurate. the book stores around here that carry a good selection are always packed.
bpshaver 1y ago
> Aren't brick-and-mortar bookshops, generally speaking, as viable as Apatosaurus today? Not at all. Many of them are doing very well and have rebounded from the hit they took when Amazon entered the scene. Not as many of them as there used to be but they're far from dead. In many cities they're thriving. > Also — secondhand books are generally outdated, undesirable, and/or damaged — do collectors still find diamonds in the rough? Yes they do, but your premise is incorrect. Many secondhand books are undesirable, sure. Most are. But that doesn't mean there aren't millions of books out there that are valuable either for a collector or to individual buyers. > No reason to waste real estate on any sort of dedicated seller. Ugh.

fidotron 1y ago

There's a subtext to this post that may not be obvious to non British people: UK High Streets (Main Streets) have in the last 20 years experienced an incredible explosion of charity shops (thrift stores) including many locations specific to books. Quite why this has occurred is a subject of occasional argument, but I've never heard a definitive theory on it, and it partly overlaps with the general decline motivated by ecommerce. They do compete on some level with existing businesses, as debated here, but the more curious impact is they completely alter the character of an area. Ten years ago they used to be fantastic for obscure finds because it seemed people had not caught on, but these days they tend to be subpar, which is probably a major edge the non charitable enterprises have exploited.

NoboruWataya 1y ago
I think a lot of people get the causal relationship the wrong way around when it comes to charity shops and the decline of the high street. It's not (IMO) that charity shops move into otherwise thriving areas and lead to a decline in local business by competing, but rather that they move into spaces that would otherwise lie empty, and therefore are more likely to be found on high streets that were already dying. Where I live we have a few charity shops but it's mainly chicken shops, vape shops and the occasional barber that are cannibalising the local high street.
- squidsoup 1y ago
  Very much the case in New Zealand as well.
jdietrich 1y ago
It's a symptom of the decline of high street retail and high long-term vacancy rates for many retail properties. For commercial landlords, a charity shop paying little or no rent is usually better than no tenant at all - the property is less likely to be smashed up by vandals, burned down by arsonists or occupied by squatters if it's occupied. The landlord would be liable for business rates after three months of vacancy, but not if there's a tenant. Charity shops get an 80% relief on business rates, pay nothing for their stock and get some or all of their staff for free; obviously this allows them to operate profitably in circumstances where no normal business could. As I understand it, the landlords are holding on mostly in the hope that their properties will either be compulsorily purchased as part of a regeneration scheme, or granted planning permission for redevelopment as housing.

neilv 1y ago

> But bricks-and-mortar booksellers can sell via the internet too, and booksellers can migrate to lower rent areas. Indeed, there is some evidence of this: there are fewer city centre bookshops and more in smaller, less expensive towns. There was a hip university neighborhood used bookstore here, and even 20+ years ago they were also selling online. Their online inventory included a large amount of stock in a warehouse nearby that wasn't accessible to brick&mortar shoppers. Software automated the online listings and price adjusting. > [...] contemporary book trade and book-collecting directories [...] there were 523 second-hand bookshops in the UK in 1955 [...] and 1,140 in 2014. There are 1,282 now, in April 2025. Anyone know whether these all have a walk-in retail presence, appointment-only (like for rare books), or are a lot of those online-only sellers?

stevage 1y ago

Interesting. I'm in Australia where I would also say that the number of second hand bookshops has greatly decreased in the last 20 years. New bookshops too for that matter. But I'm curious whether I'd also be wrong. We don't, afaik, have charity run bookshops, though. Lots of op shops, and they all sell books, but not exclusively.

9283409232 1y ago
Sounds like the problem with book shops in Australia is just Amazon.
- sien 1y ago
  Books in Australia are really expensive. This is because Australian publishers have managed to extract their own big cut from Australian consumers. Part of this is because they publish memoirs from any politician and partly because the printing industry is concentrated in some swinging electorates. https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/cheaper-books-but-at-what-price/8139436 https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/cheaper-books-b... What Australians often do instead is get ebooks through other means. Libraries are also more attractive for cost reasons.

amiga386 1y ago

My experience has been that the second-hand bookshops have had thin times but nonetheless survive because of the internet. They tend to have a better selection compared to charity shops, i.e. not just cast-offs of holiday novels and celeb bios. Shout out to https://www.tillsbookshop.co.uk/ https://www.tillsbookshop.co.uk/ and https://www.armchairbooks.co.uk/ https://www.armchairbooks.co.uk/ There has also been a growth in first-hand bookshops, especially specialists/curators (e.g. only selling sci-fi, only selling books by women, etc.) to distinguish themselves from the Waterstones and Blackwells of this world.

colechristensen 1y ago
I've noticed a few book stores which intermingle new and used stock and they're great. (it's obvious when something isn't new stock but it's all pretty good condition regardless)
whartung 1y ago
> only selling sci-fi Ah, memories of the late “A Change of Hobbit” in LA. A dedicated sci-fi/fantasy bookshop. I distinctly recall getting a towel signed by Douglas Adams during one of his signings, I may have met Ellison there once. Been a long time.
- jamiek88 1y ago
  I will give you literally all my money for that towel!! You lucky, lucky man, you hoopy frood. Please tell me you aren’t gonna say you don’t know where you towel is?

shadowgovt 1y ago

Possibly, but gosh would it be hard for me to care. In unrelated news, access to a pure, unfiltered spring drives out local bottled-water sellers. We are in an era where even manufacturing physical copies of books is incredibly cheap. I'm not going to stress about charity bookshops disrupting scarcity in that ecosystem any more than I'm going to worry about libraries or the Internet doing so.

kayo_20211030 1y ago

What's the fundamental difference? They're stores with old books; someone makes a few cents. I honestly don't understand the question.

deleted 1y ago
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shermantanktop 1y ago
If you’re in the uk, I think you’d understand the question. Charity shops have sprung up all over on high streets, even while businesses around them fall. It’s not hard to imagine that the economics are different and that non-charity shops can’t compete due to lack of special tax treatment.
jrmg 1y ago
It can of course vary considerably by store, and I’ll happily spend time in both but, generally: Second hand bookshops are curated actively - like, they’ll only stock desirable books. They’re owned and run, usually, by people who love books. The staff tend to be knowledgeable. Charity book shops are much less curated - to the extent that some just stock whatever is donated (which, of course, is largely made up of books people don’t want), so they tend to have a large collection of random books of not as high quality. They’re run by volunteers - which generally means enthusiastic staff, but it does not mean knowledge about books.
- m463 1y ago
  I wonder if #1 comes over and culls through #2
  - bpshaver 1y ago
    1000% yes, at least with the help of book scouts that cull #2 and sell what they find to #1 for ~40% of retail. If you want a fun fictional take on this, John Dunning's Booked to Die is a biblio-mystery about a Denver detective / book-lover investigating the murder of a book scout within the 1980's Denver used bookstore scene.

charlie-83 1y ago

Interesting analysis. I'm somewhat confused by why anyone would think charity bookshops replacing secondhand bookshops would be a bad thing (if that were to actually be happening as the article suggests there isn't much evidence of this). Surely, to the shopper, they are exactly the same except one helps a charitable cause as a bonus.

SpaceManNabs 1y ago
I have found that second hand shops tend to have a more diverse and rich selection and charity shops can have very rare gems. Support both, and I wouldn't want to give up one for the other. Also a bit of an aside, but charity shops are also more often part of national or international orgs so a lot of the "gain" isn't localized as the article discusses. Good or bad on a case by case basis. Not sure how it edges out.
Affric 1y ago
Charity bookshop workers in my experience know nothing about books and have no taste. But charity bookshops have different motivations and appeal to different shoppers. Essentially it’s only bad if you like reading good, hard to find books. Or believe that others finding them when they might not particularly be looking for them is a common good.
asciimov 1y ago
“Charity” shops in my area are for profit businesses. Sure someone is getting a small donation, but their board members pull large salaries. Never mind their free inventory and usually underpaid labor.
- danparsonson 1y ago
  The directors getting paid doesn't make a charity for-profit - that's dependent on what they do with the remaining money after paying salaries. For-profit businesses distribute surplus (i.e. profit) to shareholders. It's a common complaint that donations should not be used to pay salaries, but the important question should be how much leverage those paid staff can extract out your donation. Skilled people usually don't want to work for free, but they can magnify a donation by reaching more potential donors via advertising, more appealing shops, etc.

detourdog 1y ago

My experience is that if one collects books they want as many stores as possible as close together as possible. NYC in the 1990’s used to have a few neighborhoods full of bookstores. My favorite was just around 16th street in between 6th and Broadway.

sexy_devil 1y ago
There's a neighborhood in Tokyo called Jinbōchō, which built an entire town out of different specialist second-hand book shops. If you ever need a specific book on a specific thing, you bet you can find it there. It's pretty sweet.
- rootsudo 1y ago
  And to ride on Jimbocho/international reference, they have the same in Manila, Philippines in Recto, which is a university area, tons of english university text books, around 100-200 pesos, "international editions." Jimbocho has limited English text. Now Hong Kong, Quarry Bay Street has a few but they're all on south island I see and accessible via the metro.
- detourdog 1y ago
  I'm fortunate enough to have that experience. I also thought there were many specialized districts. The few towns I visited all had a very sophisticated electronics district that included ancient machines, simple home A/V switching boxes and cutting edge parts.

cafard 1y ago

Not in my experience. I have a few feet of books that I bought at Carpe Librum in Washington, DC. But the odds one one finding something there are lower than at Second Story Books or Lost City Books, the two nearest used book stores.

protocolture 1y ago

Just checked, I like to visit "Elizabeths" when I go to sydney, they have a nice cosy store and a great selection. They apparently have a website, and 2 other stores. I had no idea. Certainly doesn't appear to be a business in decline. And considering that being a bookshop in Sydney they compete with some absolute giants I am quite impressed tbh.

asciimov 1y ago

In my area, charity shops have terrible selections tons of fad diet books from the 80s and 90s and religious related texts.

bombcar 1y ago
You forget all the horrible fad investment books; Rich Dad’s Guide to Whole Life and Timeshares
jccalhoun 1y ago
For years I joked that it was a law that every Goodwill store had to have a copy of a Twilight or Hunger Games book on the shelves at all times. Every time I go to one I check and nearly every time they still do all these years later. Or one of the Left Behind books.
- encrypted_bird 1y ago
  Hey, the Hunger Games are actually really good. I derided it for years until one time I was in the hospital for a few weeks, I got immensely bored and decided to try it out. I was hooked.
  - bawolff 1y ago
    The main issue is that pretty much everyone who wants to read it has already.
    - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
      It's young adult focused which means there a new crop of readers every year.
      - encrypted_bird 1y ago
        Also, even if it had run out of readers, how is it the story's fault? That's what happens to most long-running series. Not every story has to be among the legends to be considered good.

FridayoLeary 1y ago

shout out to haye on wye in wales where almost all the shops are second hand bookstores. that being said i bought no books there while i have bought a dozen or so from charity shops, the main reason being the price is so low they are basically being given away.

benoau 1y ago

Anecdotal but I haven't seen a 2nd-hand bookshop in years however those little "tiny libraries" where people just donate their books are in abundance. What I've seen other used-item shops are doing these days is checking online what things are worth and selling them for very slightly less and it seems like this has to be a death-knell for secondhand stores in general. And I know they have to do this, everything donated has to be checked to ensure safety and cleanliness, it costs them money to keep the shop open and staffed. But if you can't actually save money by buying secondhand goods there then why would anyone shop there?! It's a 10 - 20 percent discount on goods that may be years old when Amazon rotates these discounts through new goods 24/7.

Suppafly 1y ago
We have two second hand bookstores in my area. One of them has changed hands a couple of times over the years, so I don't think they make a ton of money, although they are in a large, albeit older, retail space so they must do ok. The other keeps expanding in adjacent spaces, but seems to make a lot of their money selling book adjacent stuff (socks, bookmarks, pins, candles) instead of actual books. In fact the owner regularly stocks several of those free libraries around town and always has free books outside of her store.
BobaFloutist 1y ago
One benefit could be curation and discovery. Sometimes a bookstore's displays will show me a book that I might have not otherwise thought to read, selected by their readers, and I'm happy to pay a modest premium for that service.

xhevahir 1y ago

I get almost all of my books from charity thrift stores and Friends of the Library shelves. If you read widely you generally can find something interesting for a dollar or so. I almost never go to a bookstore looking for something specific, though.

trod1234 1y ago

The article primarily draws on the fact that the number of bookshops hasn't driven other second-hand bookshops out of business because the number of bookshops has grown over the measured number of years. The reasoning it follows and suggested is quite dubious. A bookshop is a business. Any business naturally has a loss function in the form of constraints, after which point it necessarily must go out of business and close. That loss function also determines how many people can be served by that bookstore insofar as the revenue earned goes to capital reserves and operations. The second-hand bookstores have remained almost constant over decades, while population growth and the number of people being served has grown dramatically. The charity bookshops involved have special tax status, they receive free stock, they get to choose which stock they receive goes to the paper mill or gets resold, and they can continue as long as their charity can continue. While they must keep accounting records, those records need not be public, and may involve donations that may further subsidize destructive behaviors without the public's knowledge. They need not make a profit, whereas all other non-charity bookstores must make sufficient profit. No business that has natural constraints can compete with an unconstrained entity in the same market. The money printer without constraint will always win, suborn, and drive out other businesses that do not have the same constraints. It is just a matter of time and economic circumstance, and by the time anyone notices its too late. There is also the possibility that many of the secondhand shops may also be propped up through loans, despite the ever tightening dynamic of ponzi that must be paid back (as it works for all debt in general). There is great harm that state propped apparatus can do to business and the market in general, as well as to society. Rather than being open about it, these things have been happening in the shadows and that's something that needs to be revisited. If there is not a comparable loss constraint, the accounting records should be public to safeguard cultural history, and hold to account malefactors. When the state wants objectionable material out of the general population's hands it just silently removes it from a pipeline they created, having learned from history, more specifically Hitler that burning books in public isn't a good thing. Goodwill follows this practice of removing objectionable material from its pipeline in the US, and library budgets in many places are dictated by how often the book is circulated. Low circulated classics that are objectionable according to some undisclosed person, may just disappear once the library donates the low circulation books to the charity, that then removes that content without fanfare before it ever hits a shelf. Ever wonder why many books from the 80s or earlier are often quite uncommon? Yes they are old, but the circulation was massive for a lot of these, and what's available now doesn't account for the natural difference of time, especially considering many of the books received from libraries were rebound to library bindings. Food for thought.