As retail premises have become vacant, many of them have been snapped up by national and local charities which have taken advantage of the opportunity to trade donated goods for much-needed funds. Many High Streets, especially in smaller towns, now seem to have more charity shops in them than any other kind of business premise, and the growth trend seems set to continue.
Charities have certain advantages that ordinary retailers do not have. For one thing, all the stock they offer for sale has been donated, so the prices they charge their customers can undercut those of their commercial competitors. Added to that, they do not have to levy VAT (value added tax) on their sales. They are staffed mainly by volunteers, so there are few salaries to be paid (the shop manager is often a paid employee, but is likely to be the only one). Although charity shops must pay rent to the landlord of the property, they will get relief from most, if not all, of the business rates that they would otherwise have to pay.
One of the categories of business enterprise that has almost disappeared from town centres is the second-hand bookshop. Well-established concerns that had been going for generations have found that they can no longer make a profit in times of rising costs and falling sales. They have fallen victim to Internet sales and to national chains such as “Works” that sell nearly-new remaindered stock at second-hand prices. The Internet has dealt them a double whammy by killing off the book-reading and book-buying habit that once sustained the second-hand book trade. Many people prefer to read books on a Kindle than in hard copy.
So where does the dedicated book buyer (there are still a few left!) go when the urge takes him or her to browse for a bargain? Increasingly, the answer is the charity shop.
The general stock-in-trade of most charity shops is clothing, but most also have at least a few shelves of books in them, usually tucked away towards the back of the shop. There are even some charities, such as Age UK and Oxfam, that have set up complete second-hand bookshops of their own.
So what are the advantages of visiting charity shops when searching for books?
As might be guessed from the preceding comments, books sold in charity shops are likely to be cheaper than those in traditional second-hand bookshops. Without all the expenses that a traditional bookseller must meet, not to mention the fact that the purpose of a charity shop is to benefit a good cause rather than offer a living wage to the shop’s owner, prices can be kept very low indeed.
Charity shops are used to people offering to pay more for an item than the price marked on it, or to say “keep the change” at the till, so they can easily afford to offer low prices. The charity is unlikely to suffer from setting prices too low. Besides, it is in the shop’s interest to clear space on the shelves as quickly as possible in order to make room for other stock that is sitting in a box somewhere. If a book does not sell, at any price, it is quite likely to be thrown out, simply so that something else can be displayed in its place.
Due to this rapid turnover of stock, the book buyer will find that revisiting a shop on a regular basis will mean viewing a whole new collection of books to choose from. If there is nothing of interest one week, there may very well be something the week after.
And the disadvantages?
Except in the specialist charity bookshops mentioned above, it is unlikely that the staff will know an awful lot about books. They are unlikely to have much idea about how to arrange the books in a logical way, except maybe a general division between fiction and non-fiction. The browser may therefore have to scan all the shelves in the book area of the shop in order to find items of interest.
More importantly, a “real” second-hand bookseller is in a position to talk to customers about items that he knows might be coming along, or he can promise to look out for specific titles or editions that a customer wants to find and put them to one side as and when they turn up. He is a buyer as well as a seller, and will match what he buys (from house clearances or auctions, for example) to what he knows about the requirements of his clientele. This is not the sort of service to be expected from a charity shop, where what you see is what you get.
In conclusion, if you want to buy second-hand books in Britain today you may have little choice other than to explore what the charity shops have to offer. The experience of exploring the dimly lit recesses of a second-hand bookshop, spending hours getting covered in dust in the hope of unearthing something that might have been there for years just waiting for you to find it, is probably one that will only rarely be enjoyed in future. In its place is the excitement of seeing what has just appeared on the shelves of the charity shop, and then visiting all the other similar shops that may be close by.
It must not be forgotten that charity shops exist for one purpose only, which is to raise funds that will be used to alleviate poverty, fund research into killer diseases, or provide services that cannot be supplied out of public funds. Buying from a charity shop is therefore a good thing to do. And there is also the thought that, if you don’t like what you have bought, you can always take it back so that someone else can buy it next week!
As might be guessed from the preceding comments, books sold in charity shops are likely to be cheaper than those in traditional second-hand bookshops. Without all the expenses that a traditional bookseller must meet, not to mention the fact that the purpose of a charity shop is to benefit a good cause rather than offer a living wage to the shop’s owner, prices can be kept very low indeed.
Charity shops are used to people offering to pay more for an item than the price marked on it, or to say “keep the change” at the till, so they can easily afford to offer low prices. The charity is unlikely to suffer from setting prices too low. Besides, it is in the shop’s interest to clear space on the shelves as quickly as possible in order to make room for other stock that is sitting in a box somewhere. If a book does not sell, at any price, it is quite likely to be thrown out, simply so that something else can be displayed in its place.
Due to this rapid turnover of stock, the book buyer will find that revisiting a shop on a regular basis will mean viewing a whole new collection of books to choose from. If there is nothing of interest one week, there may very well be something the week after.
And the disadvantages?
Except in the specialist charity bookshops mentioned above, it is unlikely that the staff will know an awful lot about books. They are unlikely to have much idea about how to arrange the books in a logical way, except maybe a general division between fiction and non-fiction. The browser may therefore have to scan all the shelves in the book area of the shop in order to find items of interest.
More importantly, a “real” second-hand bookseller is in a position to talk to customers about items that he knows might be coming along, or he can promise to look out for specific titles or editions that a customer wants to find and put them to one side as and when they turn up. He is a buyer as well as a seller, and will match what he buys (from house clearances or auctions, for example) to what he knows about the requirements of his clientele. This is not the sort of service to be expected from a charity shop, where what you see is what you get.
In conclusion, if you want to buy second-hand books in Britain today you may have little choice other than to explore what the charity shops have to offer. The experience of exploring the dimly lit recesses of a second-hand bookshop, spending hours getting covered in dust in the hope of unearthing something that might have been there for years just waiting for you to find it, is probably one that will only rarely be enjoyed in future. In its place is the excitement of seeing what has just appeared on the shelves of the charity shop, and then visiting all the other similar shops that may be close by.
It must not be forgotten that charity shops exist for one purpose only, which is to raise funds that will be used to alleviate poverty, fund research into killer diseases, or provide services that cannot be supplied out of public funds. Buying from a charity shop is therefore a good thing to do. And there is also the thought that, if you don’t like what you have bought, you can always take it back so that someone else can buy it next week!
© John Welford
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