The George Street Loft

Interesting second-hand books
bought, sold and exchanged 

31 George Street, GLOSSOP, Derbyshire SK13 8AY
Telephone: 01457 863413

- Opening hours: Wednesday to Saturday 10.00am - 5.00pm

Welcome to George Street Books, one of the more interesting secondhand bookshops in northwest England.

We are just off the main A57 road through Glossop (gateway to the Peak District), which is about 12 miles east of Manchester and three miles from the end of the M67 motorway. The shop is five minutes walk from Glossop railway station, which is only  25 minutes from Manchester Piccadilly (see map ).

Please note that we are open on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday only, from 10.00 am to 5.00 pm. We close on Bank Holidays and the Saturday of the Glossop Victorian Weekend, which  is usually the first Saturday in September. Please check with us, on 01457 863413, before coming a long way.

Background

The shop was started in 1986 as an adjunct to our other business - multifuel stoves , but since then has grown to be an independent business. Although we have a web site, the shop is in fact an old-style, low-key browsers' bookshop - an increasingly rare phenomenon thanks to high overheads. We love books and take pleasure in offering a really wide choice of interesting fiction and non-fiction.

Policy

We aim to stock a lively selection of books and, while we offer some popular fiction, most of our books are aimed at the serious reader, students and academics. There is something to suit most tastes.

Casual browsing is definitely encouraged and you may sit in comfort and read before buying.

We are always looking to acquire books. We give good prices but charge moderately, our business depending on a rapid turnover in the stock. Few things are as dull as a bookshop where the stock moves slowly - we reckon if it's the same the second time you visit, you won't come a third time.

Much of our stock has been sold to us by our customers, which is good for them and for us, saving huge amounts of time in that we very rarely have to buy at auctions or from other shops. We are happy to make house calls anywhere in the north west of England or north Wales for large quantities or particularly interesting collections.

Book exchange scheme

We operate a very good book exchange scheme. If you sell us books we will pay cash or, if you prefer, you may have an extra 50% value if you take books in full or part exchange - eg: £20 cash or £30 on exchange - or you can have a mixture of cash and exchange, which effectively gives you one third off the price of any books you choose.

This gives you best value; eases our cash flow; and most importantly, it changes the stock.

You do not have to use the exchange value all at once but may hold it in credit against future purchases.

Whilst on the subject of 'our ever-changing stock' it is worth mentioning that we have to do some 'weeding' of slow sellers, so there is always a good selection on our £1 shelves - good books which, if space were unlimited, would still be on the shelves but economics means we can't wait five years to get a few extra pounds for.

So - bargains are to be had! And we share the delight when you find that odd book you've been looking for for years.

Incidentally, if you have large quantities of less interesting books that you just need clearing, please contact us. We may be able to place them with a charity, rather than you just tipping them.

The Books

As you have read so far, we hope you have now decided you absolutely must visit us as soon as possible, so we will just give you a brief tour round the shop, so you know what to expect.

The ground floor (which has wheelchair access) is home to the £1 bargain shelves, books for children, CDs and over 130 feet of soft-back fiction shelves (mostly quality modern and classic literature, plus a reasonable choice of thrillers, crime, fantasy etc.).

We have a small selection of CDs we'd like to expand - please sell us some!

The bulk of our stock is upstairs - over 7,000 books, all non-fiction except for about 500 hardback novels which are mainly first editions or nice copies of mostly 20th century works. The non-fiction is biased towards the arts and humanities, with paricularly good choice in literary criticism, poetry, drama, biography and history.

If you are a student you stand to save a serious amount of money . We always have student texts and inexpensive works by standard authors.

There is a good selection of travel and topography and science and technology are not neglected, plus - the unusual, the unexpected, the odd! See the list of section headings (right).

Remember - hundreds of fresh books, including recent titles, come in every week!

Contacting us

Sorry, but we don't do email and we don't do booksearch either.

You can fax us a list of wants on 01457 853413 but it will take us time to respond, especially in busy periods in autumn and winter.

So the best thing is to come and visit us - we think you'll not be disappointed! When visiting, please let us know you found us on the web. Looking forward to seeing you!

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