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Explaining History

Second Hand Bookshops - a secret history

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In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we are joined by Shaun Bythell, proprietor of one of Scotland's largest secondhand bookshops and author of the bestselling bookshop diaries, to discuss his new volume, The Return of the Bookshop Diarist – and the strange, stubborn resilience of the secondhand book trade.


Shaun's bookshop in Wigtown holds a catalogue of some 100,000 titles. He bought it 25 years ago, at the age of 30, on the strength of a bank loan and the previous owner's reassuring words: "Don't worry, banks have money." That 25-year loan has only just been paid off.


The conversation begins with the origins of the diaries – how everyone who worked in the shop said somebody should write a book about it, because things that happen in secondhand bookshops simply don't happen in other shops. Shaun started keeping a diary because his memory is dreadful, and the rest is history.


We explore the landscape for secondhand bookselling in the UK. Unlike new bookshops, secondhand shops have largely weathered the storms of the internet age – partly because their customer base is older and slower to migrate online, and partly because there are simply books in secondhand shops that you will never find on the internet, because nobody has bothered to list them.


Shaun provides a fascinating history of the net book agreement – the system that stabilised the book trade for nearly a century by preventing booksellers from undercutting one another. It was first torn up in the 18th century by a bookseller named James Lackington, who bought remainders at knockdown prices and sold them cheaply, proudly declaring that "even chimney sweeps buy books in my shop." It was formalised again in the 1890s, then circumvented by Waterstones and Borders – who deliberately damaged books so they could be sold at a discount – before being challenged in the courts and deemed an unlawful cartel.


We also discuss the distorting effect of charity bookshops on local high street economies, the siloing of book purchasing culture through supermarkets and celebrity bestsellers, and the role of the secondhand bookseller not as an arbiter of taste but as a guide – someone with a mass of information who can point you towards Dorothea Sayers, Agatha Christie, or Margery Allingham without ever judging what you choose to read.


Above all, this is a conversation about serendipity – the joy of walking into a secondhand bookshop and coming out with a book you never knew existed, on a subject you never knew existed. It is something the internet cannot reproduce.


Topics covered:

- The origins of the bookshop diaries

- Buying a bookshop at 30

- The internet's impact on new vs. secondhand bookselling

- The history of the net book agreement

- James Lackington and the democratisation of literature

- Waterstones, Borders, and the deliberate damaging of books

- Charity shops and unfair competitive advantage

- Supermarkets, celebrity authors, and the siloing of reading culture

- The secondhand bookseller as guide, not arbiter of taste

- Serendipity and the joy of browsing


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Shaun Bythell's *The Return of the Bookshop Diarist is available from all good bookshops. You can also order a signed copy directly from the bookshop. Please consider buying from an independent retailer or directly from the publisher.

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