The secondary book market in Poland

Abstract

The text is a concise outline of the functioning of the secondary book market in Poland, which was shaped on the basis of the network of public and private secondhand bookshops, which operated before 1989. This market includes the institutions and processes that are linked to turnover of already produced and introduced at least once in trade assortment of antiquarian bookshop, or otherwise – any library materials that have been previously sold or issued by the widely understood manufacturer. Although most of the objects that are the subject of this trade are books, but next to them the same product range includes all library materials, also manuscripts, official documents etc. Today, the market is developing in three areas – stationary institutions (antiquarian bookshops), extramural (booksellers and other forms of occasional trade) and the Internet. The analysis of those phenomena was based on press reports and the Internet, broadly defined market offer observations, and interviews with the participants, carried out through several years, especially in the period of 2012–2015, when I made a research program NCN no. 2011/03/B/HS2/03908.