We sell books

We sell books.
All the books you can see as you enter the shops (over 130,000 of them).
All the books in the glass cabinets that are old and precious.
All the yummy new books.
All the books we have listed on the website.
OK so not quite all of them as we are a little too attached to the Bizarre Books, but all the rest of them definitely.

Now I imagine that to many of you that "We sell books" may seem like a superfluous comment but, as it's a rather important point to our existence, we thought we would mention it for good measure.
And because it always astounds us when a hapless first-timer enters the shop with a perplexed look on their face and innocently asks, "Is this a Library?"
Now, many people may consider this fundamental lack of second hand bookshop life-experience a fatal character flaw. But that's not true at Arty Bees Books.
We take pride in helping people from all walks of life to find their true inner bibliophile.
Repeat after me... "READING IS GOOOOD... READING IS GOOOOD... READING IS GOOOOD!"... "SO IS CHOCOLATE"...

So in order to propagate our worthy cause and enable those of you who are already hopelessly addicted (and, of course, to help us pay the Landlords*, not to mention keeping our hard-working bees in honey) we keep a range of over 130,000 books, old and new, on almost every topic, and they are all for sale to good and loving homes.

So you see, it's a bit like re-homing puppies.

The large majority of the books we stock are used books

Now, many people have an image of dusty, musty, second hand bookshops, but at Arty Bees we have, as a goal in life, decided to eradicate this erroneous view.

Simply because a book is pre-loved does not mean that it is smelly, dirty, dog-eared or covered in a layer of dust that would shield you from a nuclear detonation. We make a point of keeping all the books in the shop clean and tidy, and definitely free of unpleasant odours.
In fact we often receive books from nice customers that look nearly new, and they make fabulous presents. And heck, so do the others. And at roughly two-thirds the price of a new copy (bearing in mind condition, inflation, and rarity) you'll have cash left over to buy more presents. Possibly even for yourself. Or us.

So if you are looking for a specific book and it is out of print, or you're on a budget, don't be scared, it's easy, and environmentally friendly — try pre-loved first.

Be it a reference book on rhododendrons, a biography of a famous NZ mountaineer, a how-to manual on building your own sauna, a treatise on indigenous Himalayan cave painting in neolithic times, an obscure novel by a Nobel Prize winner (aren't they all?) or a trashy piece of fiction by your favourite author, we may have it.
As we often have between 1000 and 3000 new titles come in every week, you'll probably find something that you're after. If you can't, then Murphy's Law means that it will, in all likelihood come in about 30 minutes later, so keep trying. We also run a fairly well organised "Wants List", for those hard to track down titles, if you want to leave your name and details with us.
We don't have all our books on a database (see why here) but we do have a fantastic manual search engine so fill in a Book Query and we'll see what we can find for you. (i.e. we go and look on the shelf for you.)

Rather like a car, after some time an old book stops being simply old and becomes Antiquarian

We have a large range of Antiquarian and Rare titles at Arty Bees.

The most precious of these are located in the large glass cabinets which are peppered throughout the shop.
We hope to add them to the Arty Bees Online shop when we get it back up and going, but they are currently listed on the international book dealers' website abebooks.com, (check them out - new titles are going up weekly) and of course they can all be seen in the shop if you can make it in, in person.

If you find something at abebooks.com that you are interested in and would rather contact us directly, you can email us or use our handy Book Query.

Just because a book is Antiquarian doesn't mean it has to be expensive and we have lots of curious, charming and beautiful books in the shop that are precious simply because of their age and beauty.
These can range from Antique versions of your favourite poetry, to endearingly melodramatic 19th century novels with swooning heroines and unerringly polite heroes. Maybe early scientific, medical and engineering books are more to your taste (according to a 1849 surgical encyclopedia, amputation was pretty much the cure for everything!), or perhaps you're after pictorial history and geographical books of the world as it once was. See the world as your grandparents did!

What all of these have in common is a sense of holding a small piece of history in your hands that is, in this day and age of throw-away commodity items, (as Keats said), "a thing of beauty and a joy forever".

Included in the huge collection of used and Antiquarian books is a fabulous selection of New Zealand, Maori and Pacific books

We have a large range of New, Used & Rare New Zealand titles at Arty Bees.

New Zealanders definitely love books, especially books about ourselves, and we have a spectacular range of local titles, new and old, on all varieties of local history, flora and fauna, geography, biography, early exploration and innovation, Maori heritage, politics, sociology and fiction.
And for those of you interested in our friends and neighbours in the South Pacific, Australia and Antarctic we have an extensive range on them too.

Unfortunately even with our very large collection it can be hard to track down some titles.
This is predominantly because with the smaller NZ population base many books are traditionally printed in very small print runs.
This means that many sought after titles are increasingly hard to come by, and finding that particular book all about Great-Uncle Joe can be a lifelong quest.
We have some cunning plans for solving this problem:

• Firstly, we try to have lots and lots of different titles in stock, all the time. And keep them in good order so that you can actually find what you are after.
  
• Secondly, we run a book search through the web site and if we don't currently have a copy, we have a quite efficient "Wants List" service. This means that we can keep your name on file and contact you when a copy comes into one of the stores.
  
• Thirdly, we try to support the small local publishing industry, particularly the local historians, by stocking their publications, and by promoting them here.
  
• And lastly our very rare or fragile NZ books that are held for safe keeping in our glass cabinets, are in the computer, and you can now see a these here in our online shop NZ catalogue - this page is updated weekly, with new titles and current stock information. Many of these titles (but not all) can also be seen in more depth in our abebooks.com, listings.

Check out our handy list of New Zealand Authors and Their Pseudonyms

Which brings us to our small selection of various types of New Books

Ok, so when I say "small selection of various New Books", it is all totally relative to the rest of the books in the shops.
Obviously we can't compete with the big chain bookstores on general new books (and don't want to — where would we put them?) What we have been able to do is to pick and choose a few areas (like the Local Histories) in which we feel we can add to the range of stock and services which are available to our local customers.

We have Wellington's largest range of specialist new and imported Science Fiction and Fantasy.
In fact it is probably one of the two or three largest selections in the country, so not small in as much as, vast and possibly unsurpassed. And this is backed up by the already legendary second hand SF section we have been nurturing for nearly twenty years.**

Not so large, but impressive none the less is the section devoted to new and imported Detective novels that also graces the shelves at Manners Street.
As with the new SF, we have specifically tried to stock authors that we felt other larger bookstores were unjustly neglecting, so hard-to-find authors are our specialty.

We also stock a random selection of remaindered new non-fiction. Mostly these are just pretty and we couldn't resist them at the fabulous discounted new prices, and we also tend to pick books on subjects that we don't see as often as we would like.

And finally, we stock the Taschen Art, Architecture, and Photography range.
Recognised the world over for the quality of the reproductions, affordability and the wide choice of artists and topics they cover, these books are yummy, and have proven very popular with our customers for many years. They celebrated their 25th anniversary last year, the up side of which for us was the special edition reprints of many of their best titles, at even better prices.

And lastly we stock a few other odd items

We have a well sorted selection of Sheet Music, much of it for piano, but with quite a bit of vocal and instrumental material and lots of fun old single sheet peices in easy to look at folders.

And lastly Matt takes care of a very popular pre-loved RPG section.
That's 'Role Playing Games' of the Dungeon Master variety not 'Rocket Propelled Grenades'.
That would violate our OSH regulations and several City Council bylaws. And it would be quite absurd...

*Bring on Henry George! Back

**And Matthew's equally legendary brain, but I can't take credit for that! Back