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Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

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Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#71

Post by vintermann »

danparsonson wrote: post #43
asciimov wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.

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…

Legally you are of course right, but there are certainly charity shops out there which are exploitative and even designed to enrich their owners. One well-known example is Humana People to People which is run by something probably best characterised as a person-worshipping political cult (Tvind).

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#72

Post by ZeroGravitas »

bawolff wrote: post #60
encrypted_bird wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

The main issue is that pretty much everyone who wants to read it has already.

It's young adult focused which means there a new crop of readers every year.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#73

Post by HansardExpert »

Suppafly wrote: post #54
jdietrich wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vaca…

>It's a symptom of the decline of high street retail and high long-term vacancy rates for many retail properties. Do you guys not have pawn shops, smoke shops, and check cashing shops over there?

Not so much Check-cashing (although they do exist in some parts of larger cities) and I haven't seen a pawn-shop outside of London in ... forever.

We do have Vapeshops (before that 'Legal High' shops) but apart from those Charity Shops you get a lot of 'Gambling' (aka 'High Street Bookies') chains in those areas where the footfall has gone away to the out of town supermarkets or where the landlords are sitting on what they hope will get turned into flats so they can make a profit.

What I would say regarding Oxfam, at least in the area I live is that the book selection is suprisingly good, both in Oxford and Chipping Norton's where the second hand book selection has given me some great reads and I have seen them refuse the 'Celeb/Sports star' biogs and bundles of Harry Potter cast offs from people while waiting to be served.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#74

Post by fidotron »

vintermann wrote: post #70
Suppafly wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a symptom of the decline of high street retail and high long-term vacancy rates for many retail properties. Do you guys not have pawn shops, smoke shops, and check cashing shops over there?

In my touristy experience, it's more gambling shops, payday loan shops (surpised UK had these) and real estate agents.

Yeah the bookmakers (gambling shops) are a huge industry in the UK.

A surprising amount of the UK tech industry has history connected to the gambling sector one way or another, be it sports tv, online related, making parts for pub slot machines etc.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#75

Post by fidotron »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #56
fidotron wrote: post #3

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 b…

> but the more curious impact is they completely alter the character of an area. Could anyone elaborate on this?

In small towns or villages once you have a couple of them the general pace of everything around them tanks, partly because they can get away with far less revenue per sq metre due to the difference in taxation and reliance on volunteers. As others have mentioned the alternative might well be nothing there at all, which would be worse, but it has converted the central section of whole villages into feeling like they are in fact the outer buildings of nearby old people's homes.

Aesthetically they are, at best, a sort of British twist on the cheapest Ikea stylings which can be OK in small quantities but when they become everything it is depressing.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#76

Post by detourdog »

sexy_devil wrote: post #61
detourdog wrote: post #27

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.

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.

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.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#77

Post by relistan »

jrmg wrote: post #40
voxadam wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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!

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.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#78

Post by t_luke »

fidotron wrote: post #3

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 b…

It’s not that complicated. Business rates (commercial property tax) are very high for shops in the UK, and Charity shops are exempt. The rates really are high — about 50% on top of the rent. Plus a lot of the staff work for free. Their cost base is just vastly lower.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#79

Post by Suppafly »

samarthr1 wrote: post #57
Suppafly wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's a symptom of the decline of high street retail and high long-term vacancy rates for many retail properties. Do you guys not have pawn shops, smoke shops, and check cashing shops over there?

Wait, why do you need a shop to cash a cheque? Isnt that one of the last few things you go to a bank for? Also, how do you cash a cheque without validating signature (from whichever bank)? Here in India atleast, cheques are cashed only at banks, and often are a/c payee only (no cash disbursed, only account transfer). They get truncated at the bank (basically scanned), and cleared overnight as a part of the CTS (a NPC…

>Wait, why do you need a shop to cash a cheque? Isnt that one of the last few things you go to a bank for?

In the US, a lot of poor people (and illegal immigrants) are unbanked. But also check cashing places also tend to do title loans (turn over your car title for a temporary loan) and other sorts of "fast cash" loans with usurious rates. They and pawn shops are they type of businesses that show up in areas of town where the cost of retail spaces drop.

Re: Do charity bookshops drive out other second-hand bookshops?

#80

Post by jccalhoun »

encrypted_bird wrote: post #58
jccalhoun wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 .

I'm not judging. I read them and enjoyed them. I'm just observing that they sold so many that they are very common.
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