Still Out-of-Print is one of the only second hand book shops still open in Merseyside
Naomi Frisch opened Still Out of Print in 2022(Image: Liverpool Echo)
After her partner’s bookshop closed down, Naomi Frisch, 76, said she was eager for his two storage crates full of antique and second hand books not to go to waste. Seeing a range of shops had become available on Smithdown Road amid the Coronavirus pandemic, she took the leap and took over number 282 Smithdown Road, turning it into her own bookshop – Still Out-of-Print.
Despite running the shop entirely on her own, she doesn’t take a single penny out of the business.
She told the ECHO: “In 2021, I started saying we should look for a shop and get the books out of storage. I found this shop in early 2022. During lockdowns, I was the trustee of a frontline charity, so I was up and down on the 86 bus every day supporting the staff.”
“I saw four shops within a five-minute walk on this stretch of Smithdown Road, and this ended up being the best one for a rent I thought we could manage. We’ve been here ever since.
“I naively thought I wouldn’t do very much—just get the shop, put the books in, and do the admin. It hasn’t worked out like that; I am a sole trader and I seem to be doing the bookshop business seven days a week.”
She opened the shop after seeing that it was one of many that had become vacant in the area (Image: Liverpool Echo)
Open five days a week, a typical day begins at midday, although Naomi admits customers have become accustomed to her opening hours being somewhat up in the air.
She said: “Shop hours are Monday to Friday, noon to 6pm, but I’m not a very punctual person. I come on the bus and I am often known as “the late Naomi”. I don’t mind staying after six if people come in after work. I am a sole trader, so it’s just me. I don’t pay myself anything from the business.”
Running the businesses entirely on her own means she has to oversee every aspect of its operation.
She said: “I spend a lot of time on the computer checking Facebook and Instagram for messages, or sourcing books on second-hand internet sites for customers. I also try to rationalise the shelves.
“People browse and put books back upside down or backwards, which makes me feel nauseous, so I tidy them so the titles all go one way. I try to group things, like putting all the “authentic science” sci-fi publications together so people don’t have to wander through the whole fiction shelf.
“The best part is meeting people. Everyone wants to tell their life story, and we end up in long, personal conversations. Some people have had very interesting lives, and others have had a lot of hardship or tragedy. Finding a place to share that is unusual. It’s like going to visit a friend. I value that human contact. I’m a “people person” and much of my previous work was about communities.”
Naomi had been a passionate reader from a young age (Image: Liverpool Echo)
While her Smithdown Road bookshop is somewhat of a continuation of where her partner left off with his book enterprise, Naomi has her own connection and reasons for running the bookshop.
She said: “I haven’t always been a collector, but I’ve always been a reader. I come from a family of readers, there were always books around. We’d get books given to us as presents. In school, I took education for granted. I think I pretty much have always been a reader of fiction. I don’t often for pleasure a book that isn’t fiction.”
Another reason for opening the book shop in a residential area such as Smithdown Road was to try and provide children with easy access to the world of literature, something which she craved herself as a child.
She said: “It [reading] doesn’t happen automatically. It has to be part of their childhood. It develops the imagination, it gives them tools that then shape their brains.”
Still Out of Print is open five days a week(Image: Liverpool Echo)
“The world of books is 360 degrees, it helps validate their inherent talents or their potential talents. You see a young child that is only just beginning to get language, and you know, some of them really respond to art and painting and colouring and using materials in that way, some of them just seem geared to construct, some children can bond to nature. But if these things aren’t on the doorstep books can be their way of finding out that they’re interested in those things.”
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