Bookstores in London

Bookstores reward the browsers. London, ON has 18 mapped right now, and 1 of them deal in used books. That's 18 bookshops mapped around London, each with its own shelves and specialties. The used sections are where the real bargains hide.

This guide covers every bookstore we could verify in and around London (within about 40 km), built from OpenStreetMap's community-maintained data. Names you'll run into include Library Used Book Stall and Goodwill bookstore, plus Indigo. If a bookshop's missing from London's list, it probably just hasn't been mapped yet.

The London bookstore lineup

18 mapped within about 40 km:

What the map tells us about bookstores in London

5 of the 18 list their opening hours on the map, which is genuinely useful — bookshops keep civilised hours, so the listed ones are usually reliable.

7 have websites listed. Worth a look for events — readings and signings get announced there first.

The London bookstore crawl

Plot these on a map and the day plans itself: Library Used Book Stall, Goodwill bookstore, Indigo, Chapters, BookMarks the Spot, Goodwill Bookstore, CityLights on 356 Richmond Street, and Heroes on 168 Dundas Street. That's 18 stops on the London bookstore crawl. 10 more are listed below.

Bookstore tips for London

Browsing in London? A little strategy helps:

• Kids' sections are goldmines at Library Used Book Stall. Even without kids. The picture-book art alone is worth the browse, and the middle-grade shelves hold genuine classics.
• Read the first page in the shop at Goodwill bookstore. The first-page test never lies. If it doesn't grab you standing there, it won't grab you at home.
• Don't overlook the classics wall. Every shop has one. Cheap editions of the books everyone claims to have read — your chance to actually read them.
• Bring a tote bag. Bookshops and tote bags are a natural pair. You'll need it — nobody leaves with the one book they came for.

Good to know

We searched about 40 km around London — that covers the town itself plus the surrounding communities you'd reasonably drive to. Listings come from OpenStreetMap, mapped by local volunteers, so a brand-new bookstore in London can take a while to appear. The 18 above are only as current as the community map. A bookstore that's shut, or a new one nobody's added yet, gets fixed with a single OpenStreetMap edit.

We don't list prices — they change constantly and vary by edition. What we list is the where: real shops, verified by real mappers, in alphabetical order with no favourites.

If you run one of the 18 listed here and something's wrong — a closure, a move, new hours — the fix is the same: update the shop on OpenStreetMap and the correction flows through to this page on the next daily refresh.