Books are my business: Secondhand bookshop owner Jim Reid

Running a bookshop was a lifelong dream for Reid and he thought that his hometown of Waterford deserved a good secondhand bookshop

Owner of the Little Lane Bookshop Jim Reid: 'I tell people they will always find a bargain in my shop.' Picture: Davi Matheson @dgmphotographic

Jim Reid recently opened the Little Lane Bookshop at Spring Garden Alley, off the Apple Market, in Waterford city. it sells secondhand books.

How did you get into bookselling?

I left school before the Leaving Cert and I ended up working in call centres. I did my time there and after about seven years, I had this mad notion that I would go to college.

I didn’t have any career in mind so I did an arts degree in UCC, which opened up the world to me and showed me that I could do something I enjoyed and still make a living. I then went on to postgraduate studies in UCC and later in Galway.

I was considering a career in academia but I became somewhat disillusioned with the way academic publishing works, and the way that the people who provide the content are not rewarded.

All of that coincided with covid, which led me to think about where I was going and what I wanted to do.

Running a bookshop has been my lifelong dream and I said to myself, I think I can make this work. 

I came back to Waterford during covid and I reconnected with the city; I fell in love with it all over again.

I had lived in Cork, which has the wonderful Vibes and Scribes, and in Galway, which has the phenomenal Charlie Byrne’s. 

Waterford is the equal of any of those cities and I thought that it deserved a good secondhand bookshop.

How has it being going so far?

I’m over two weeks in and my instinct has been proven completely correct. It has been phenomenal.

I can put it into three words — Waterford loves books. The Book Centre here has been going for many years, selling new books, and there is also a Dubray which opened in the last while.

Now, I am joining the circular economy, giving people another choice and somewhere to buy and trade books they have bought in other shops, to keep the books economy running in Waterford city. 

People have been very generous, we have been inundated with books already.

What is the bookshop’s philosophy?

I tell people they will always find a bargain in my shop. As I run it myself, I don’t always have time to check the true value of a book, so I say get in there and get it before I figure out how much it’s really worth.

I come from a thrifty background, I was a little punk rocker when I was in my teens and 20s and I err on the cheaper side of things, so when I’m marking up books, I get a nosebleed above €5.

If I do eventually get a chance to look it up and I see a book is actually worth €10, then I’ll mark it at that, but there will always be an opportunity to get in there before I do.

What do you like most about being a bookseller so far?

I love meeting the people. You can live in a city your whole life but there are some people you will never meet and I feel like in the last two weeks, I have met a hundred people that I wish I knew all my life.

What do you like least about it?

I wasn’t quite prepared for how empty the shelves would be after a busy Saturday and the work required to fill them up again by the time the shop reopens on a Tuesday morning.

It is an enjoyable learning curve, and it’s good to be learning more about something I’m passionate about — books and literature.

Three desert island books

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami because on a desert island, reading something as strange as that would take you to another place.

My favourite author at the moment is the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk — I would take The Books of Jacob, which is her huge saga, I would probably die before I’d finish it.

The last one would be To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, my favourite book of all time.

• Little Lane Bookshop can be found on Instagram @littlelanebookshop

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