About SecondHand-BookShop.co.uk
Offering a selection of over thirty thousand secondhand, out of print, rare, scare and hard to find paperbacks and hardbacks the site offers easy search and secure ordering through my partner site BookLovers.co.uk
SecondHand-BookShop.co.uk is owned by me, David Gower-Spence, and I am responsible for:
- Buying the books
- Listing the books
- Packing the books
- Posting the books
- Filing the accounts
- Site design
So, you can guess that this is a one man band then!
I started the business from my spare bedroom in March 1994 based at Milton Heights, near Abingdon in Oxfordshire. Within a year I had rented some space from my mum's business (Verco.) to accomodate the stock. I then rented a much larger unit near Wantage, a disused car showroom in fact and my final home in that area was the upper floor of a bric a brac shop in Abingdon itself.
In 2003 my wife and I decided that we wanted a change of life, so we purchased Peasedown Post Office. My wife, Heather, runs this with the assistance of a part time "girl" and yours truly! Despite the doom and gloom surrounding much of what is left of Royal Mail / Post Office our business here goes from strength to strength.
Within the Post Office I keep a range of 200 50p paperbacks (you know, romance, chick-lit, action fiction) that turn over nicely along with 400 or so selected hard backs. All the books are offered at a substantial discount before they make their way on to this site.
I now have some 35,000 (with another 10,000 boxed and waiting to be listed of course) in a 2,000 sq. ft. unit near Oakhill in Somerset.
Over the years that I have been selling books I have noticed much "dumbing down" of our trade. The appearance of mega-listers who list books that they don't own (at offensive prices, or simply at 1p) is a particularly unpleasant feature of our trade. All my books have been handled by me personally and, whilst I do use some automation tools of course, are all graded conscientiously and conservatively. I expect you to be pleasantly surprised rather than faintly disappointed when you receive a book from me.
|
