University Book Shop Otago

“UBS Otago - my favourite bookshop as a student,” mused Booksellers web editor Emma McCleary when this store profile was planned.

“They used to run a permanent sale room upstairs but I don't know if they still do? That was a student's dream!”

Current students can still live the dream, because the answer is yes, there is a constantly refreshed sale on the first floor of the store. A couple of container loads come from America each year with remainder fiction and non-fiction. That adds to the special end of line hardback buys and heavily discounted ‘past their use by date’ discards from the main stock.

And it is not just a few hundred available: there are usually 5000 books on offer in the sale at really good prices.

The permanent sale room upstairs should be on a list of Dunedin tourist attractions!

University Book Shop Otago has the luxury of space rare in a book store.

In 1962, 16 years after its beginnings in much smaller premises, it moved into the triple brick two story building, at 378 Great King Street (pictured below).

Originally built in 1888 as a factory for Regina Confectionery used until the 1920s, it was a rough old garage when the bookstore moved in.

IMAGES: The Regina Confectionery factory. Image source: Rainbow Confectionery website.

One relic of those days, a hydraulic hoist, is still in use for moving trolleys of books between floors!

Today the footprint is 920 sq metres, with downstairs about 520 sq metres of retail space, plus the delivery bay, receiving warehouse and offices.

Upstairs: the sale room has slightly less retail space, there are more offices and storage, and a large text book warehouse that is only open for the first few weeks of the academic year.

There is also a staffroom on that level (pictured below) with associated literary history.

“It is where Janet Frame used to do the typing for Charles Brasch's Landfall!” says one of UBS Otago buyers Bronwyn Wylie-Gibb.

Charles Brasch left his own mark – a still-visible signature written in chalk on the fuse box.

UBS Otago has always been in the city, rather than on campus. This gives it a different skew to most university bookshops.

In Auckland or Wellington you wouldn’t go up the hills unless the University bookshop was the only one that had a much wanted title. In Dunedin, the store is only one block from the main shopping street, so passerby and downtown traffic are constant.

Consequently, this is probably the only uni bookshop where Christmas is as important as text sales. In fact, the general stock carried year round is about three times the size of texts. The store is owned by the Otago University Students’ Association, who administer it as a separate board.

The long standing staff and their knowledge are also a ‘value add’ for their general book customers.

One staff member, Anne Clark the store’s stationery buyer, has been with the store for 33 years, and manager Bill Noble is also a 33 year veteran.

“He was only in his early twenties when he became the manager here,” says Bronwyn helpfully.

IMAGE: Bill Noble. Image source.

Bill tells The Read that three other staff members have been with UBS Otago for 20-plus years, and a further eight of our 21 staff have done 10-plus years. “Maybe it's due to a fear of the real world!” he jokes!

Bill (for those few people who don’t know him or know of him) is a book trade identity, a former Booksellers councillor and hugely respected for his knowledge of New Zealand and international literature and the wider book trade.

He says one of the favourite highlights of his bookselling career was the refit of the shop in 1997. The natural wood and dark green shelves with the new layout has worn really well and still looks fresh and interesting, he believes.

Bronwyn agrees, “Often you hear first time visitors telling each other ‘this looks just like a real bookshop.’”

Dunedin publisher Wendy Harrex calls UBS Otago “One of the best bookshops in New Zealand for all ages and tastes - whether you visit it in person or online.”

Like all of UBS Otago’s front line booksellers, Bronwyn enjoys talking with customers about books, introducing them to the author or title ‘they didn't know they needed’ and discovering their recommendations in return.

Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector is UBS Otago’s fiction best seller of recent weeks.

Bronwyn says they have also sold a lot of A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor, described by one critic as a brilliant, engagingly written, deeply researched survey.

And despite it not being a new release, UBS are finding it hard to keep up with the demand for Otago University professor Jim Flynn’s The Torchlight List. It had its beginning when Professor Flynn approached Awa Press’ Mary Varnham with another book idea, says Bronwyn. Mary, who had attended the prof’s lectures as a student, persuaded him to move in this direction, with brilliant results: this book shop has sold over 500 copies.

UBS Otago is full to bursting at the start of each academic year, with around 52,000 books in stock – though it never dips lower than around 44,000.

General books are about two thirds of the overall total, though that varies with the academic year.

The store may be reaching pensioner years at 65, but it has always kept up with the times and the technology. They have a buy back scheme for texts, informing students at the end of the academic year what prices they will pay for current texts in good condition.

They use the e-Bility computer system and with new books from rep orders and special customer orders, and add about 200-250 new titles a week to the system.

UBS Otago also contributes to the community that sustains it, donating books to schools for fairs, sponsoring Books for Babies - every baby born at Dunedin hospital goes home with a book and a library enrolment - and the Dunedin Public Library's Summer Reading Programme.

Bronwyn enjoys the various events they do with authors and books - launches and talks and reviews. Coming up on 9 June – the launch of novel The Larnachs by Owen Marshall. That’s the Larnachs as in Larnach Castle, based on the real love triangle between William Larnach, his third wife Constance and Dougie, his son from his first marriage.

On 15 June it’s Pamela Stephenson-Connolly’s time to star in the city with her new book, Sex Life. UBS Otago is definitely set on warming up winter in Dunedin!

Post Script: UBS Otago have another author anecdote they treasure.

“We are the shop where a customer came in and asked for copy of Michael King's Penguin History of New Zealand - when she was given it she was surprised, she was just picking it up for someone, and had thought it was a New Zealand History of Penguins as opposed to a History of New Zealand published by Penguin!” says Bronwyn.

“We love that Michael King story – the best thing was we sent him and Penguin an email about it, and they were all most amused. Then when Michael died, we heard the story doing the rounds amongst his friends and colleagues.”