[HN Gopher] The demise of the second-hand bookshop
___________________________________________________________________
The demise of the second-hand bookshop
Author : pseudolus
Score : 100 points
Date : 2020-08-23 12:30 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thecritic.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (thecritic.co.uk)
| mushufasa wrote:
| Lots of second hand bookshops are combined with coffee shops.
| When consumers become comfortable going to coffee shops again,
| those places will likely return. Meanwhile, current
| owner/operators will lose.
| pasabagi wrote:
| From personal experience, what has made me rarely go to second-
| hand bookshops (or bookshops of any kind) is they typically have
| a really bad selection. The amount of trash printed is insane,
| and not only do people tend to keep the gems, but they also tend
| to suck them out of second hand bookshops, so only really useless
| books are left.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| The problem with used books stores is they always have book two
| of a series, but never book one :)
| WalterBright wrote:
| Book publishers do the marketing all wrong. They publish the
| first in a series as a tease to buy the rest. They should
| start with the _second_ book in the series, then people would
| be haplessly impelled to buy the first one!
| karaterobot wrote:
| I've found that it's hard to find specific books you know you
| want, unless they were really popular, but it's easy to find
| something interesting you've never heard of before.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| That, the chance to happen upon something you didn't know you
| wanted, is what adds to the charm of second-hand bookshops.
|
| A few weeks ago I picked up Umberto Eco's _Misreadings_ in
| the second-hand section of our local bookshop. It 's a
| collection of short stories from the mid twentieth century
| translated in English in the nineties. I grabbed it for a
| closer look because the author was known to me ( _The Name of
| the Rose_ , _Foucault 's Pendulum_), and because the back of
| the book introduced one of the stories therein as a pastiche
| of Nabokov's _Lolita_ , wherein a certain _Umberto Umberto_
| (heh) pines for an elderly lady referred to as 'Granita'
| (incidentally, 'Nonita' in the Italian original).
|
| That story was a delight to read and totally worth it.1
|
| I also would never have found, never mind purchased that book
| online. My biggest source of books is a yearly book-fair (in
| Deventer) where I will gladly spend hours trawling through
| banana boxes for cheap paperbacks and random chance finds.
| (Except this year due to bloody _you-know-what_.) So hurray
| for the serendipity of second-hand bookshops!
|
| 1: Anyone who has read and enjoyed _Lolita_ ought to read
| this short Umberto Eco story:
| https://thefloatinglibrary.com/2008/08/24/granita/
| pasabagi wrote:
| I think this very much depends on where you are. In
| england, culture has always been a dirty word, so second
| hand bookshops have the kind of books english people read,
| which are dismal. In germany, I've had much better luck -
| packed shelves of reclam-edition books, for instance.
| biophysboy wrote:
| One thing I appreciate about second-hand bookshops and libraries
| is that they are not curated for me.
|
| I read a lot of non-fiction, and I find that websites like Amazon
| and Goodreads do give decent suggestions, but they are books
| about topics I already know, sharing ideas I am already familiar
| with, in a style I like. I can feel the customer profit gradient
| descent maximization breathing down my neck. Looking at you,
| books with sans-serif titles, white backgrounds, and clever
| illustrations!
|
| Algorithmic websites prioritize the new and the popular, whereas
| bookshops and libraries still feature the old and obscure (I
| realize that libraries have 30 copies of Harry Potter, but you
| get my point).
|
| So, in my opinion, while these vicious market forces are
| currently destroying bookshops, I think it'll get to a steady
| state where bookshops serve a smaller, more loyal and niche
| audience.
| [deleted]
| toyg wrote:
| I agree, but I can also see a future of smaller web-based
| bookshops with specialised algorithms based on more uncommon,
| specialized parameters. Think "books about philosophy that used
| to be popular in the '70s".
| jb775 wrote:
| I actually really appreciate second-hand books. It sounds weird,
| but it makes it feel like there's more life to a book knowing
| others have read that exact copy. I also find it interesting and
| often helpful reading notes or underlined/highlighted parts of
| the book.
|
| I recently purchased a few books from thriftbooks.com and noticed
| they shipped from different locations....I'm not sure if they're
| run as a marketplace where individual sellers can post books, or
| if they have multiple warehouses.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| I also enjoy buying used books where one can tell that the
| previous owner treasured the book over the years and made notes
| or highlights. However, the demise of the sewn binding -
| publishers have shifted to shoddy glued bindings even for
| prestige titles like the collected works of many poets - means
| that there will probably be less well-used and loved books
| around, since the binding is likely to give out already within
| the time that the first owner has the book.
| mrmanner wrote:
| This! Also books are like wine - they smell better when they're
| aged.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > I actually really appreciate second-hand books.
|
| Do you think this is some kind of controversial or unusual
| opinion?
|
| Almost everyone loves second-hand bookshops. They just don't
| buy many books in them. And when they do the profit for the
| shop is tiny. So it's hard for them to keep going.
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| Another problem is that retiring boomers are keen on downsizing,
| and are flooding the market with used books, for which there is
| little demand.
| sbuccini wrote:
| The big second-hand bookseller in my town has a huge collection
| and several locations in multiple metro areas. Yet they have no
| way to search for a specific title!
|
| I was shocked. If you have no idea of your current inventory and
| sales history, how do you know how much to pay for people's
| books? Their books are about $0.50 a title -- I would gladly pay
| that price for a book I would otherwise get from the library if I
| knew it was available. They would be able to do a serious
| business selling required titles to local college students. And
| they could have a robust online presence through 3rd party
| sellers like Amazon and Ebay.
|
| Yes, some beloved used bookstores are falling victim to "market
| forces". But if those same market forces inject some modernity
| into these businesses that badly need it, I'd be very grateful.
| contingencies wrote:
| All books in the last ~50 years have a barcode already printed
| on them, and an ISBN printed inside. Any phone camera can read
| these. If you assume 15 seconds per book at pace, 40 books per
| shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases in the average
| store, complete digitization of a collection should take only
| ...
|
| Edit: Responding comment is quite right, original calculation
| mistaken. It's 4AM here. 40 x 6 x 30 = 7200 books x 15 seconds
| / 60 / 60 = 30 hours, so <4 days assuming 8 hour days. Or 1 day
| if you can speed up to 5 seconds per book.
| SECProto wrote:
| > If you assume 15 seconds per book at pace, 40 books per
| shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases in the
| average store,
|
| Everyone else commenting on the math, but I take issue with
| the starting assumptions. A bookshelf fits approximately 10
| books per foot. A used bookstore, in my experience, tends to
| have a huge amount of books - shelves to the ceiling (8
| shelves high, 5 feet wide). Taking as an example some used
| bookstores near me, I would estimate a used book store at
| minimum would have 100 such shelves. 8x5x10=400 books per
| shelf, x100 = 40000 books. Using your scan time estimate,
| that gives us 40000x0.25min = 10000 minutes, or 166 hours to
| scan the isbn (21 days)
| klelatti wrote:
| I get 7200 books and 30 hours. Am I missing a factor
| somewhere?
| davidro wrote:
| When we do inventory of books, about 7000 of them, it takes a
| team of 3 or 4 people scanning labels on the back of books,
| about 5 hours to scan them all. Add 3 or 4 more people in to
| watch the computer(s) for errors as scans come in. Then add
| an hour or two to pur things back to normal.
|
| For a used bookstore with no pre made labels and books
| stacked and crammed I'd double the time. Then add some more
| for books that don't have a barcode on them...
|
| This is with laser barcode scanners and dedicated machines
| per device. Phone scanners are much slower.. either way, give
| me a crew of people, scanners, etc and we could scan about
| 10K books a day.
| davidro wrote:
| For a used bookstore inventory could be done once a year
| like we do to avoid drift in our data.. but more
| realistically everything would be scanned as it comes in
| and out. Why that doesn't already happen baffles me too!
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| It does. In the past, there were cards in the backs of
| books with date stamps.
| bjo590 wrote:
| Assuming ~600 man hours (your numbers) to digitize an entire
| used book store, at $15/hr cost for labor it would cost ~$900
| to digitize a bookstore. I think you're shy a factor of 3 or
| 4 on the amount of labor it would take to digitize a book
| store, given my experience with running inventory at retail
| shops. Maybe it could be worth it if there was an inventory
| management system that could automatically post the books for
| sale on an internet platform, but if every used book store
| posted their entire inventory online the market for many
| titles would be flooded and it would be a race to the bottom.
|
| Ultimately all physical retails spaces have the same common
| problem -- why should someone go into your store when they
| can get the same products online. This problem is even bigger
| during covid-19. I personally think there are two answer, one
| is to move the core retail business online, and the other is
| to create experiences people will keep coming back for. If
| you're making unique products it might be best to pivot
| online. If you're into the classic buy wholesale sell retail
| business than the online market can be very competitive.
|
| A used book store can be a great place to have experiences.
| Authors can come and talk, you can have children story time,
| book clubs can meet, coffee shops pair well with book stores.
| You have to clear inventory to make space for experiences,
| but you can use it as an opportunity to remove inventory that
| wasn't selling anyway.
| ninjinxo wrote:
| You may want to run those numbers again, you're shy a
| factor of ten.
|
| Edit: the parent comment's calcs are wrong too
| bjo590 wrote:
| I won't run the numbers again, because I think the meat
| of my comment is in paragraph 2 and 3.
| ninjinxo wrote:
| I take issue with those sections too; you completely
| ignored that often customers won't know exactly what they
| want, importance of browsing, and the expert service
| provided that is the salesperson giving book suggestions
| and advice to customers.
|
| Your points about alternative revenue streams by
| providing alternative services are directly covered in 20
| year old tv show (black books) where a 'dysfunctional'
| bookstore either has them already implemented or trials
| them. For example, coffee is about keeping the customers
| in the store and browsing, people leave if they get
| hungry or thirsty. If you're actually deriving
| substantial profit from your hot drinks, then you're
| running a niche cafe, and you're in competition against
| legitimate baristas with fancier machines. It also takes
| up a large amount of space, and can cause volume issues
| otherwise.
|
| Most secondhand bookstores are small, and items have a
| large volume-time footprint i.e. the turnover of any
| individual item is low. Get rid of all the low margin
| books for dining, and you ruin the browsing experience in
| multiple ways. You're just suggesting the secondhand
| bookstore should ditch it's secondhand books, and instead
| sell only high turnover popular stuff i.e. compete with
| modern normal bookstores, which are already doing beyond
| what you've suggested.
| billjings wrote:
| "Ultimately all physical retails spaces have the same
| common problem -- why should someone go into your store
| when they can get the same products online. ...I personally
| think there are two answer, one is to move the core retail
| business online, and the other is to create experiences
| people will keep coming back for."
|
| This is a great observation. I think that every business
| looking at option 1 would run away in terror, as that would
| mean competing directly with Amazon. My local bookstores
| have pursued this to some degree out of necessity in covid
| times, but it doesn't seem sustainable, and I never got the
| impression that they prioritized it.
|
| The bookstores local to me that have thrived have pursued
| the latter strategy with events, but primarily by having an
| opinionated selection that is a joy to browse. Amazon
| cannot compete on this for two reasons:
|
| First, they cannot have a uniquely opinionated selection.
| They can have an "Amazon" selection, which will by its
| nature be the lower common denominator, or they can have a
| "personalized" selection, which will by its nature play to
| the customer's pre-existing interests and the generic
| global recommendation insights from Amazon's ML models.
| People do have lists on Amazon, but this isn't a
| profitmaking endeavour worth a full time commitment. No
| single perspective will be rich enough to engross the
| consumer for more than a minute or two, or call them to
| return regularly.
|
| Second is that Amazon does not provide the physical
| experience of browsing physical books.
|
| As you said, this still leaves the problem: even given all
| the above, why wouldn't someone just browse the in person
| bookstore and buy the books online? Thankfully, the
| survival of these stores shows that there enough buyers are
| "non-rational" to financially support the experiences they
| enjoy.
| petra wrote:
| If you're looking for interesting, opinionated
| selections, Amazon isn't your competition.
|
| There are many, many affiliate based places online to
| looks for book curation. It's really not that hard to
| discover interesting books.
| bjo590 wrote:
| > This is a great observation. I think that every
| business looking at option 1 would run away in terror, as
| that would mean competing directly with Amazon.
|
| I don't think pivoting online is a suicidal move for many
| business, but it takes a different type of mindset to
| make it work. I'd like to highlight heatonist.com as an
| example of someone doing it right. It's a NYC based hot
| sauce boutique with a web presence. They create quality
| web content and use it as advertising (https://www.youtub
| e.com/playlist?list=PLAzrgbu8gEMIIK3r4Se1d...). Their
| inventory is a curated list of high quality products.
| Their web reviews are all from people in the same tribe
| of hot sauce fans. Their website and shipping practices
| are all _good enough_.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > Assuming ~600 man hours (your numbers) to digitize an
| entire used book store, at $15/hr cost for labor it would
| cost ~$900 to digitize a bookstore.
|
| $9,000
| layoric wrote:
| And at $0.50 a book would take 18000 sales to just recoup
| assuming 100% profit. Starting to understand why they
| don't.
| romanoderoma wrote:
| > one is to move the core retail business online, and the
| other is to create experiences people will keep coming back
| for.
|
| Agree
|
| I think that's the reason why IKEA stores are so popular
|
| You get the full experience of living in a house and can
| have a feeling of the different setups
|
| The furniture per se are not great, but the experience is
| way more satisfying than the average furniture store, at
| least in Italy
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| > you can use it as an opportunity to remove inventory that
| wasn't selling anyway
|
| If you don't have a database of your inventory, you don't
| know what's selling and what's not, apart from hazy
| memories of employees and the amount of dust on the shelf.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _why should someone go into your store when they can get
| the same products online_
|
| Easy answer: because they'll walk out with the book they
| were going to buy and the book next to it. We used to have
| second-hand bookstores that would send you catalogs that
| you would peruse (by subscription, you'd actually pay for
| the catalog), and you could order from that. It was worth
| the money, no recommendation engine comes close to browsing
| a well-curated store.
| xaqfox wrote:
| This is similar to the use case that OPDS is marketing itself
| with. It was featured on HN a week ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24178548
|
| https://opds.io
| throwawaysea wrote:
| There's https://bookshop.org for injecting modernity into
| supporting independent bookstores. It doesn't help specifically
| for _used_ book stores however.
| gxqoz wrote:
| I find the bookshop.org model a bit weird. There's no real
| reason that independent bookshops need to be part of it,
| apart from a marketing angle to court people who want to
| "help local bookstores" over Amazon.com.
|
| From a recent NYT article on the site:
|
| "Orders are fulfilled through Ingram, a large book
| distributor, and mailed directly to customers, so stores
| don't have to have the books in stock or process inventory.
| Bookstores get 30 percent of the list price -- less than they
| would typically make from a direct sale -- but don't have to
| pay for inventory or shipping."
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/books/bookshop-
| bookstores...
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Yea I don't fully understand it either, to be honest. Also
| it's interesting because in a recent HN discussion about
| Jeff Bezos courting early investors, the second employee of
| Amazon showed up in the comment section
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24245909) and he
| mentions Ingram:
|
| > I remember that not long after we "opened the doors" to
| the public, we had a visit from some reps from either
| Ingram or Baker & Taylor, the US's two biggest book
| distributors (I forget which). Part of the reason Jeff had
| picked Seattle was that it was within the 1 day delivery
| radius for both companies. These guys came over to see what
| we were doing and they were completely flabbergasted. They
| could not believe that a few people in a small commercial
| building in Seattle had built what we had already done by
| that point. They had no idea of the technologies involved,
| they had no grasp of the vision. But we never had to
| convince companies like this - we just ordered books from
| them, as their customers, and then sold them to ours.
|
| In some ways it's like Ingram is striking back at Amazon,
| and sharing part of the proceeds with independent
| bookstores. My current feeling is that it has its place. I
| don't want Amazon to accumulate even more control and kill
| the diversity of businesses that make up our society.
| chmaynard wrote:
| Many used bookshops are managed by people who could never run a
| successful business. They love what they do but are not
| particularly good at it. These shops probably deserve to fade
| away. I purchase used books frequently. I almost always find what
| I want on Amazon, usually from multiple booksellers, and I have
| the book within a week. It's hard to compete with that level of
| service.
| ghaff wrote:
| Browsing a used bookstore (or any other bookstore) when I have
| some time to kill is still fun. [And my local library has a
| booksale every year.] But with the exception of maybe looking
| through cookbooks or art books or something like that, it's not
| really how I buy or even browse books any longer.
|
| In the "bad old days" when new books were mostly sold at list
| price and there really wan't a whole lot of independent
| information about books out there, it often made a lot of sense
| to buy used books at half off based on serendipitous browsing of
| the shelves. But that's not really true any longer.
|
| I used to go into Harvard Square on a Saturday afternoon every
| month or two in no small part to browse books and CDs at a
| variety of stores (many of which are long gone). I haven't done
| that in years.
| elliekelly wrote:
| The Original Book Barn in Connecticut (I think they've since
| opened many "satellite" locations) is one of my favorite places
| in the world. Carefully curated for quality but just messy enough
| to make it fun to hunt around for treasure.
| acdha wrote:
| Several used bookstores by us have had business pick up during
| the pandemic with subscription services. As long as the USPS
| media rate survives, anyway.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Nope. There are several reasons why individual secondhand
| bookshops are on the way out, but Oxfam is not a particularly
| significant one.
|
| I am honestly puzzled by the author citing the Oxfam shop on St
| Giles as an exemplar, because it's a poor shop full of tat and
| tired old guidebooks to Greece in the 1960s. Even the Oxfam
| bookshop 15 miles up the road in little Chipping Norton has more
| interesting stock. But it's interesting that he cites an Oxford
| example, because independent retail in Oxford generally has been
| on the decline for 20+ years, and I suspect the woes of the
| secondhand bookshops in Oxford are the same as those of small
| retailers generally.
|
| Abebooks and Amazon, eBay etc. are a more significant cause. You
| can now order the rare book you want from a dealer somewhere in
| the countryside without them needing to pay for retail premises.
| One of my favourite secondhand bookshops, Sedgeberrow Books in
| Pershore, has recently gone that way - the shop has closed but
| the operation lives on as an Abebooks dealer. Pershore still has
| a secondhand bookshop, which is a lovely relic that doesn't even
| take debit/credit cards. Many of the survivals seem to fit that
| mould: intentionally arcane dealers who've chosen not to move
| with the times.
| fsckboy wrote:
| fwiw, Abebooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008
| ghaff wrote:
| I find it somewhat interesting that Amazon has kept Abebooks
| separate. The latter certainly seems to me to be a better
| source for relatively obscure titles.
| frereubu wrote:
| I'm torn when I read articles like this. On the one hand, I've
| spent many happy hours browsing round second-hand bookshops (a
| particular favourite memory was discovering the unabridged Gulag
| Archipelago while on a trip to NYC). On the other, the
| democratising effect of publishing leads to things like this -
| https://www.theguardian.com/focus/2020/aug/16/literary-world... -
| which, while potentially problematic on the surface, means that a
| much larger number of people can be published, no matter what
| their social status or connections. I've recently been reading
| Bruno Schulz - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Schulz - and
| if it wasn't for the intercession of someone powerful in the
| Polish literary world we would never have read his work (and,
| thanks to the Nazis, unfortunately we had even less than we might
| have had). What gems by marginalised authors might we not have
| read without this "excess" of publishing? Personally, I think
| this abundance of new published writing (including really
| interesting examples of self-publishing like Your Name Here by
| Helen Dewitt) is part of what makes second-hand bookshops less
| attractive. There is simply so much great stuff being written now
| by people who would never previously have had an audience, as
| well as unjustly-neglected authors being rediscovered. I used to
| feel like I knew most fiction authors' names in second-hand
| bookshops, even if only by reputation, but I'm not sure that
| would be the case any more. On balance I think I'd rather have a
| broader set of voices than a limited selection of second-hand
| books. And when you also have access to older titles that you
| might be interested in on abebooks, you can follow your own
| literary path rather than be guided by someone else's opinions
| about what's "important".
|
| Edit: Thinking about this more, maybe it's because I'm in my late
| 40s now, but I get a lot of good recommendations from friends who
| have been reading all their lives, so I don't feel the need for
| anyone else to recommend things. My "to read" pile is huge as it
| is! I guess one thing second-hand shops were good for was
| suggesting things to me that I might not have read otherwise. But
| personally I think the internet, particularly Wikipedia and niche
| blogs, gives me a really good route to the next thing I want to
| read. After reading Bruno Schulz I've started delving into Polish
| fiction, and it feels like I've struck yet another goldmine.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Most new books are not that expensive compared to how much time
| people put into reading them and the value they derive, and
| libraries provide a free alternative. I think the middle is just
| getting squeezed.
| pratio wrote:
| Setting aside the damage done by the advent on internet which
| helps with search and deliveries, i feel that there's a change in
| the attitude of people today. I used to walk into the bookshops
| near my home and university, walk around and browse, the people
| who worked there were passionate and would recommend titles to
| you. One of them even helped connect people to book-clubs, i miss
| those connections. It doesn't seem that people want to spend that
| kind of time. Browsing UBS, checking titles and finding those
| with notes marked in pencil and messages for the next reader
| across books is an experience i would like my children to have.
| chris_st wrote:
| Well, for whatever it's worth, PaperbackSwap [0] has become my
| go-to place for getting rid of books and (often) finding ones I
| want to read.
|
| Just cleaned out a bookcase and put up a bunch that people
| want... glad to get them to good homes (where they might actually
| be read, rather than collecting dust on my shelves).
|
| [0] https://www.paperbackswap.com/
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Used bookstores are a lot like gardens -- they must be tended
| daily and grown in 100 ways, year after year. The city I grew up
| in was legendary for used bookstores, and they sit all but empty
| now, decades later. The 'modern' people chiming in about how to
| "search faster" are missing an aspect of the experience that is
| literal and measureable, as well as partially undefineable simply
| because the portion of the mind and senses that is exercised is
| non-linear -- file that under "non-linear thinking"
|
| I have a Powells bookstore bookbag, and know others that do, too.
| Bookstores were a destination across counties or states. The loss
| of these local bookstores has 1000 unintended consequences.
| People see the absence the same way they see the absence of a
| blooming meadow where there is now only pavement and some litter
| -- in other words, not at all.
|
| I am literally disheartened by the loss of local bookstores, in
| any size town.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| Like all the things I cared about, it is going.
|
| I'm starting to lose interest in the world.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You do realize that time will eventually grind down even the
| memory of every last thing you have ever known or loved,
| right?
| umvi wrote:
| Not necessarily... this rests on the assumption that God
| does not exist. And not everyone believes that assumption
| is true.
| skissane wrote:
| It relies on more assumptions than just that. It relies
| on the assumption that naturalism and materialism are
| true, and hence an afterlife is very unlikely (if not
| impossible).
|
| You can reject naturalism and materialism without
| agreeing that God exists. Consider the late 19th / early
| 20th century British idealist philosopher John McTaggart
| Ellis McTaggart (who at Cambridge acted as the mentor of
| Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore) - McTaggart insisted
| that God did not exist, that he _knew_ God did not exist,
| that God 's existence was impossible - but he also
| claimed that time and matter are illusions, and the true
| reality is timeless immortal souls and their eternal love
| for one another.
|
| Conversely, it is possible to believe in God without an
| afterlife. The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus denied
| an afterlife, but he did not deny the Gods of ancient
| Greek polytheism. (Probably, if he had lived in a more
| monotheistic culture, he would have dropped the plural.)
|
| The ancient Jewish Sadducees, who controlled the office
| of High Priest up until the destruction of the Second
| Temple in 70 CE, they rejected the Pharisees' belief in
| resurrection of the dead. (The Pharisees are the
| historical progenitors of contemporary Judaism; and,
| while Christianity conflicted with the Pharisees a lot,
| witness how much they are criticised in the Gospels, one
| can't deny that Christianity took a lot from them,
| including the belief in a future resurrection of the
| dead). It isn't entirely clear what exactly the Sadducees
| believed about the afterlife, but certainly by some
| accounts they believed that death was extinction. (Part
| of it depends on whether they understood "Sheol", the
| grave, to simply be a symbol for extinction, or an actual
| place where the dead are conscious.)
| Teever wrote:
| This is needlessly reductionist and pessimistic. It is
| wholly reasonable to pine for the simple joys of life and
| their passing.
| shallowthought wrote:
| Don't worry - it's fine.
| toyg wrote:
| That's what growing old looks like, friend. The world we knew
| is going away, to be replaced by a new world for new people
| who care about different things.
|
| I'm sure people who genuinely loved tending to mules and
| horses "lost interest" when regular folks started using
| trains and cars to travel. It's just how it is - humanity
| goes forth, as it will.
| et-al wrote:
| I'm curious what percentage are sales from merch for
| "destination" bookstores like Powell's and Strand these days.
| WalterBright wrote:
| On the other hand, I can get _any_ book I want, including long
| out-of-print books. I remember years looking for a copy of
| Clarke 's "The Deep Range". Now getting a copy is as trivial as
| pushing a button.
|
| And I have indulged myself, acquiring a small mountain of books
| :-)
|
| I also browse the books at thrift stores. It's how I've
| obtained a ton of strange books I never would have discovered
| otherwise. For example, I found an encyclopedia of electronic
| circuits I never knew existed. Goodwill is a book gold mine, I
| wound up getting a nearly complete set of the Star Trek novels
| (and cheap as dirt, too!).
| beowulfey wrote:
| Getting a book like that is possible, but for me a huge chunk
| of the value of my collection is the journey to getting it.
| Finding it randomly in a tiny bookshop while on a trip is way
| more memorable than buying it on amazon. It's the same with
| buying records for me. Sure I could buy most of the long out
| of print records I'd want to own... but the search is most of
| the fun.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| I think Goodwill's selection depends on it's area. Their book
| selection at the stores where I live aren't that good. The
| prices of books vary between stores. But you can count on one
| thing: Each store will always have at least one complete set
| of Twilight novels.
| xtiansimon wrote:
| I too get any book I want and don't have to store it in my
| house, And it's all free--just saying. :)
| peferron wrote:
| If you're talking about piracy, do you only read books from
| dead authors? Or do you pay them via alternate channels? Or
| are you just fine with enjoying their content without
| paying them back a cent?
| ghaff wrote:
| If it's obscure, it's certainly not readily available on
| torrents (or in local libraries) if that's what you're
| suggesting.
| derbOac wrote:
| I think part of OPs point is that you _think_ you can get a
| copy of any book. I don 't mean to sound snarky at all; it's
| just that you know what you see online now, which is not all
| that is offline. You don't miss what you don't know.
|
| My experience is of numerous out of print books that might
| have had small publishers in small editions. Even an unusual
| edition of an well known book can be unique in various
| valuable ways.
|
| One year the university I was at was in danger of flooding.
| The priority was moving books that as far as they could
| determine were the only remaining copies of. You wouldn't
| believe the numbers of them that were moved. Many used
| bookstores I've visited were similar, with books selected
| because they were unusual.
|
| It's hard to know what you don't know.
| smoe wrote:
| For me, the most magical thing about the small local bookstores
| is the people working there.
|
| Just getting into one, chatting with people genuinely and
| deeply passionate about what it is that they are selling.
| Having a coffee, talking about a book I read, what aspects I
| liked, philosophizing about the topic in general and getting
| recommendations what to read next based on that has beaten at
| least 10x any 'modern' and automatized approach I have ever
| seen.
|
| But I think that is a situation where a lot of small shops,
| whether they sell books, music instruments, clothes, food, etc.
| are in. If they grow too big, the immense value of personal
| advice and interaction gets lost and if they are too small the
| people might not be able to make a living.
| brightball wrote:
| Yep. My little town still has a bookstore downtown that's
| been there for years. Run by a retired English teacher who
| seems to know everything about every book in the store.
|
| I believe they ended up working a supplier deal with some of
| the local schools that helps with consistent revenue.
|
| Ever since the pandemic started I've gone there so much that
| we're on a first name basis. :)
| addled wrote:
| Growing up, my hometown wasn't big enough for a dedicated
| bookstore (~1400 residents), but there was a small gift shop
| on Main Street. It had lots of little knicknacks and other
| things associated with giving gifts. Past the cards and
| stationary, the boxes of chocolate, the little porcelain
| figurines, the bags of potpourri and scented candles, all the
| way at the back, were a couple small bookshelves. Mostly
| books for young children, or large format books you'd set on
| your coffee table with nice pictures in them.
|
| What I remember most fondly was that even though the in-store
| selection was meager, if you were looking for a particular
| title, the owner was happy to look it up and order from her
| wholesale catalog. And she'd take 10% off the MSRP! Me and my
| other teenage nerd friends became some of her most regular
| customers, coming in to order sci-fi books.
| op03 wrote:
| Isn't that what we get out of aggregating here tho at HN or
| slashdot? Some banter and the browsing of random subjects.
|
| I'd like the coffee though if someone cld please figure that
| part out.
| vr46 wrote:
| What could well be the very last truly independent bookshop in
| London, will be gone soon. And I don't mean Henry Pordes on
| Charing Cross Road, which I love, but Anthony Hall in Twickenham.
| He owns his entire building outright, and even though he is a
| specialist book dealer, has always maintained a small bookshop as
| a luxury addition to his main office, if you like. At one point,
| all nine rooms of the building were filled with books, but he's
| in his 80s and is selling up. Most of his business is on the
| internet, as he says now. No need for the bookshop.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yet the japanese second hand book/game/CD/DVD/hadware company
| Book Off is as successfull as ever, with stores pretty much
| everywhere in Japan and starting to expand overseas:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Off
|
| Its really an amazing rxperience there - clean orderly stores
| with bright illumination jam packed by books at lidiculously low
| prices & you can find total gems there if you look for a while -
| like the first artbook of Masamune Shirow in perfect state for
| abou 1500 yen (~13$ ?)! I dont even want to think how much that
| would have cost on Ebay...
| pm215 wrote:
| I would be interested to know how much the Book Off model
| depends on the fact that manga is a huge market in Japan. Every
| time I've been into a Book Off, there's always been a huge
| manga section and it's always packed with people because (a)
| manga is really popular and (b) they don't shrinkwrap the manga
| to prevent people reading them in the shop the way a lot of
| places do. In a market like the UK or US where (comics being
| more niche than manga) there isn't that huge part of the store
| that's driving footfall and turnover, would the same model but
| working primarily with books do as well ?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If you like second-hand bookshops, visit Hay-on-Wye. I'd
| recommend crossing the Atlantic to see it even. It's in south
| Wales, and it's a whole village of second-hand bookshops. Many
| are huge, some are tiny and very specialist (horror, detective
| fiction, etc.) Every year I spend three or four days there
| browsing and reading, and doing some walking in the mountains as
| well.
| simplesleeper wrote:
| In the UK, I've helped run some of the ninja bookshop crawls.
| There are usually guided routes that take you through independent
| bookshops - they are always interesting and great for discovering
| bookshops and the cities themselves.
|
| Independent and second hand shops have really benefitted from
| these events and they usually offer discounts and gift bags for
| crawlers
|
| https://www.ninjabookbox.com/london-bookshop-crawl
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| That's a wonderful initiative - I'm really intrigued by that,
| and might sign up for one of the subscriptions. Thank you for
| posting.
|
| (Could you have words with your site designer, though? I
| honestly haven't seen Safari struggle with a site like that for
| months, even including the worst excesses of UK local newspaper
| sites or the Independent.)
| dylz wrote:
| It's a SaaS WYSIWYG site builder, the page is 300 requests
| and 20MB with aggressive adblocking turned on, and over a
| thousand requests with adblock turned off.
|
| Almost every element is hard-positioned with absolute onto
| the page, or misusing flexbox in weird, overlapping,
| z-indexed ways
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Same thing is happening in Montreal. There are at least two
| bookshops closed because the owner was too aged to take care of
| the business and no one wanted to do it. Wish I could do it but I
| don't have the expertise.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| In my small town, we have a game store that sales used sci-fi
| books, a tiny used books store with a small selection, and two
| thrift stores with decent selection of books. Nevertheless, I do
| not feel any of these constitute a real used-book store with any
| real breadth or depth. I'd love to visit one.
| briga wrote:
| In my hometown I've seen about half of the used book stores
| disappear within the last 10 years. There are a few still hanging
| on, but with rising rents and fewer people reading it seems like
| their days are also numbered. Which is a shame because to me
| aimlessly perusing through old stacks of books is very enjoyable
| and somehow comforting. I love the rush you get when you come
| across some rare book you've spent years looking for, or when you
| find some new book you didn't know you wanted. Going on Amazon
| and ordering the exact book you want is easy and convenient, but
| I don't think it can replicate that feeling of discovery.
| glangdale wrote:
| I love second-hand bookshops, but you can see the death spiral.
| The neighborhood in which I live used to have about 7 bookshops;
| they are down to about 3.5 and some of the remaining ones look
| none too healthy.
|
| One problem with a lot of 2nd hand bookstores is that they have
| stuffed their shelves with remainders - these are not a
| interesting stock choice as they are really just "what was
| selling - or more likely not selling - on mainstream shelves a
| few months ago". They can't compete on price moving those
| remainders compared to "Downtown Book Barn" places, and it crowds
| out genuine used stock (which will provide more surprises).
| aurizon wrote:
| At the heart of this is the indisputable fact:- People save
| books!!. This led to many millions of tiny isolated and
| undocumented collections of assorted books. People who wanted a
| particular book had one option - a Used Book Seller(UBS). These
| UBS's would open a retail spot and gather books from estates or
| the public or library disposals of un-demanded books etc. As time
| passed, they would create a viable business. Time passed and most
| cities had UBS shops. Then the internet happened, craigslist
| EBAY, etc., which enabled anyone +dog to list all they had as
| line items, author, date, condition etc - often with photos. This
| enabled the collector to select what he wanted at very low prices
| compared to the UBS stores, as there was a huge overhanging mass
| of books that people wanted small $$ for - competition soon drove
| the prices down. True rare books maintained a higher value - but
| the mass of pulpable junk swamped the market. USB could not
| easily bulk buy from these Ebayers or Craigslisters because their
| business model required them to offer lowball offers. One by one
| these UBS died off. Killed by rents/taxes etc. A few who owned
| their own stores had a degree of immunity to these market forces,
| but their income fell as well, and after a while they could make
| more $$ by going online from a cheaper warehoused list and they
| rented their high street shops to a Starbucks or ??, and never
| looked back. I travelled in Northern Ontario (Canada) and there
| was a huge rambling UBS in Cobalt Ontario, with zero rent on
| owned land - even they eventually ceased =
| http://www.highwaybooks.ca/ they still operate online in some
| manner. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Book_Shop
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Rings true to me. I have a lovely used bookstore in my area
| which has a variety of extremely eclectic stuff, and even he
| lists his whole inventory online now, as well as maintaining
| the in-person shop:
|
| https://www.abebooks.com/old-goat-books-waterloo-on-canada/1...
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