The new Astrolearn bookshop for vintage second-hand astrology books is now live. It has been stocked with just over 880 book listings to begin with. These are nearly all out-of-print editions, but I’ve divided them up into categories according to age of printing, with modern books (printed 1961 or later) separately categorised from antiquarian ones (printed 1960 or earlier).
It’s my belief that our new shop houses one of the best ranges of second-hand astrological books in English available from any bookseller worldwide, with over 385 copies of modern English-language astrology books and over 315 copies of antiquarian English-language astrology books. Over 175 copies of classic 20th-century astrological books in German are also included at launch. [These numbers will reduce as books sell.]
As a matter of policy, I do not plan to list these books on any of the third-party bookselling sites, so they will remain exclusive to the Astrolearn website. This should result in slower sales, meaning that on average, the rarer books will remain available for longer for dedicated collectors who are looking for them than they would be if they were sold via third-party sites. However, if you see something you really want, please don’t wait on the assumption that nobody else will buy it, because there could be another collector after it who finds it too and purchases it first.
The individual copies for sale are all one-of-a-kind second-hand copies, with their own specific pages, photos and condition descriptions (please read these carefully if you are thinking of buying so you know what you’ll be getting). Once they are sold, they are gone.
To constitute the stocks for the shop, I have primarily extracted nearly all the duplicates within the library and placed them in their own dedicated shelf space. Additionally, I have bought in a couple of small collections as well as cherry-picking individual titles of importance from other sources, in order to improve the range of collectible antiquarian and rare books.
At this point, my start-up budget for book stocks is all spent, so I am not currently buying collections. If enough books sell, I may change this message to indicate that collections are being considered for purchase again. It may be a while before the bookshop becomes visible enough in search engines for sales to pick up, however.
As the shop is new, and no purchases through it have been completed yet, it is possible that some early buyers may experience teething issues with the check-out system. If you find anything is not working as expected, please don’t hesitate to email me on my direct email address at [email protected]. I’ll also keep an eye on system messages through [email protected], which is where I’ll be notified of purchases.
Please bear in mind that I’m not expecting to live on the net income from this shop on its own. While I hope it will supplement my income from time to time when books sell, and offer a valued service to astrologers and collectors, it is not my main work, and I’ll still be busy with a lot of other work, so please allow time for me to process, pack and send your orders, but you’ll get a reliable service and very careful packing, even if it sometimes takes me a week or two to pack everything and get it in the post to you. On rare occasions, I may be away for between a few days and a few weeks, in which case I’ll put up a holiday notice on the shop pages and disable the adding of books to the cart until it expires. Any pending orders will be on hold during such times and fulfilled on my return.
Not all countries are served by the automated shop (see shipping policy page). If you are not in one of the countries served, please contact me directly with a list of your wants and to discuss the feasibility of secure shipping to your country.
Thank you,
Philip
Leave a Reply