“SOMETIMES, YOU READ A BOOK AND IT FILLS YOU WITH THIS WEIRD EVANGELICAL ZEAL, AND YOU BECOME CONVINCED THAT THE SHATTERED WORLD WILL NEVER BE PUT BACK TOGETHER UNLESS AND UNTIL ALL LIVING HUMANS READ THE BOOK.
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our story
Hi! My name is Sam and I’m the (constantly-changing-hair-colour) owner and person behind all the scenes at SCNDHNDBKS. I run the business with my boyfriend from our tiny little flat in Cheshire, UK and this is kind of the start of a giant dream for us!
For the longest time we talked about eventually starting up a bookshop that focused on Young Adult and Children’s literature only - this is because every single bookshop we go into has the smallest section of these books and they seem to be getting smaller. As a kid reading was a GIANT part of my life and it still is today so I wanted to create a space where we could sell books for that specific target market! Of course, setting up a full sized book shop is… crazy. And expensive. And not a good time for us in the slightest. So I put on my giant thinking cap which looks a lot like the sorting hat and tried to find a way to make it happen in a way that wouldn’t bankrupt me and also take into account the fact that, like me, a lot of people don’t have a lot of money to spend on books!
One main concern was how to stand out in the crowd - how to create a bookshop that has a unique selling point? The answer became obvious when I thought about it. How do I combine my passions for young adult books, book shopping and sustainability? A second hand book shop specialising in Children’s and Young Adult books, obviously!
A lot of our stock comes from people looking to thin out their own collection or charity shops. Both me and my boyfriend believe in circular economy! We’re lucky enough to live in an area surrounded by a lot of charity shops - we buy a lot of our books second hand and, during our own shopping experience, we found a lot of great books stuck on shelves, not being bought! It made us very sad to see the same books week after week and rather than allow the books to end up in a landfill (yes, that happens, even in charity shops!) we decided this would be the most ethical way to source books! It also means that a large percentage of what you’re paying has actually been donated to charity - win/win!
Our hopes and dreams for the future is that we will be able to let YOU swap books for books or store credit, thus creating a swirling vortex of second hand delights for our new community to share… but that’s just a little dream we have! The bigger dream is to eventually set up a real life book shop but that is most definitely a future event!!
We hope that this site becomes your go-to for finding second hand gems. The exciting part of this shop is that you never know what you’re going to find. We don’t know what we’re going to find when we’re sourcing stock… it’s an adventure. Won’t you join us?