After 19 years TheBookGuide has called it a day and ceased publication on March 31st

For the past couple of years I had been trying to devise a sustainable future for this website, which might resolve the conflicting realities of its growing popularity and diminishing advertising revenue.

On the one hand visitor numbers and engagement levels continued to steadily grow. This was particularly true of the Bookshop Guide - which as a result of the dedication of its readership - became a more accurate and reliable resource than I ever dared hope for.

On the other hand, persuading more booksellers and in particular, bookshop keepers, to advertise remained an intractable problem. However, I’m most grateful to those relatively few advertisers whose staunch support helped keep the site alive for as long as it did.

My sincere thanks to all of you for your encouragement and support over the years, it was fun and you were great. But I must say I've been looking forward to doing more of the things one’s supposed to do in retirement :)

And finally, I'm happy in principle to pass our data on to anyone who can make use of it. A number of readers are actively working on ways to keep aspects of TheBookGuide alive and I will continue to post details here.

Mike Goodenough
Editor
31.03.20
email

News

17.07.21 After nearly 18 months a new version of TheBookGuide is now up and running. The bookshop listings are currently being updated and your help in achieving this would be would be most welcome.

01.05.20. Roger Blake has now setup a site at thebookguide.info, which he is continuing to work on.

Jon Morgan has set up a FaceBook Page to try and give the Bookshop Guide new life. He deserves your support.

The Booksellers Association have waived the 2020 subscription fee and hope it will encourage secondhand bookshops to join. They currently have around 80 sellers of second-hand books in their membership and you can search for them here.

Neil Rennoldson points out that some old content from TheBookGuide is still archived on WayBack Machine.

Fine Books & Collections - TheBookGuide, online compendium of UK’s secondhand bookshops, folds