Best Second Hand Textbook Shops In Melbourne Near Me

4worldlovers: Alice’s Bookshop is a general secondhand bookshop, with approximately 18,000 books housed in four rooms on the ground floor.

4worldlovers:
We are passionate about books and the absolute pleasure, joy and comfort that reading a good book provides and we value the personal connections with other booklovers that we make through our bookstore.


For over 17 years we have been offering an eclectic collection of quality secondhand books at great prices, across most genres with an emphasis on contemporary literary fiction and interesting non-fiction titles.

Please note our trading hours have changed and we are currently only operating on

4worldlovers:
Books are still deeply valued by many of us, as is the experience of searching for and discovering these treasures in a physical bookshop. With this in mind, we have chosen to view the decline of the second-hand bookshop as an opportunity to transform the old model and create a new and unique bookshop experience.


Our shop is consciously designed to honour both the books themselves and the pleasure of the search. We have tried to create a peaceful, relaxing, expansive and beautiful space. A place to come and browse, sit, think, dream, talk, read and recharge amongst the giants of the world’s literary traditions. It is our hope that you will only ever be limited by what you choose to spend, rather than what you can find.


Our main emphasis is on curation, we consistently try to maintain a high level of quality, depth and diversity in our stock. We hunt all over Melbourne every week to gather the gems we all seek and bring them together in one place. Then you can simply browse our shelves to your hearts content and find the treasures that inspire and bring you joy.

Often a book is simply a lovely retreat from the world, fantasy and entertainment. Sometimes it’s an opportunity to expand our consciousness, to put new and old ideas together in a different combination that opens a new door. Whatever the object of your treasure hunt, we look forward to meeting you and hope that all booklovers, new and old will feel at home in our shop.

If you have books you wish to sell, we’re always interested in taking a look.

We are firm believers in trying to reduce the carbon emissions of our business.

If you’re stuck for a great gift idea for a booklover, look no further.

A place to come and browse, sit, think, dream, talk, read

And recharge amongst the giants of the world’s literary traditions

If you have books you wish to sell, we’re always interested in taking a look. We can be quite picky though, depending on what stock we need at any given time. The best thing to do is contact us first and organise a time to come into the shop or text us some photographs of the books (spines only in stacks is best). In this way, we can give you an initial indication of our interest and save you carting around books unnecessarily. If you have a large quantity or a house lot/deceased estate, we will be very happy to organise a visit to assess your collection.

We generally pay 30% of our intended sale price for most books.

Our intention is that you get 30%, we get 30% and the remaining 40% goes to the cost of running the shop, merchant fees, GST etc.

We are very happy to receive donations if you do not wish to sell your books. We must still be selective though and can only take books if there’s a reasonable quantity present that we can sell.

We are more than happy to distribute anything we can’t sell to local charities.

What we love about the physical book is that it can be read and re-read and loved and re-loved

By person after person for decades if not hundreds of years

We are firm believers in trying to reduce the carbon emissions of our business. One way that we have done this is by offsetting the emissions of our vehicles with Greenfleet for the past ten years. Greenfleet is a not-for-profit Australian company that offsets carbon emissions for a very reasonable cost by restoring native forests. This is a terrific organisation making a very important contribution and we strongly recommend them to anyone with a polluting vehicle.

Our shop is a rented property and as such, we cannot install solar power as we have in our home. Instead we access 100% green energy from our power supplier and would also strongly recommend everyone else with the means and requirement to do the same.

4worldlovers:

We've recently updated our hours so we're open later in the evening!