Catholic Church closes Hard to Find
'I am devastated, heartbroken, stressed, pissed-off, and disappointed,' said Warwick Jordan, one of the great heroes of the New Zealand book trade. He has managed Hard To Find for 45 years and is the custodian of over half a million books. He employs five full-time staff and two part-time. They will be out of a job, and Jordan will lose his business, when the lease expires in February 2026.
After 37 years operating the store in Onehunga, Jordan moved it to a former convent in St Benedicts St in downtown Auckland in 2017. It was opened with a formal blessing from St Benedict's parish priest, Monsignor Paul Farme. High rents had forced Jordan out of Onehunga; he wrote to Bishop Patrick Dunn, the Bishop of Auckland, with the message: 'I'm looking for a miracle – I've heard you guys do them.' As Jordan told the media at Xmas 2017, in a widely covered good-news story that made the church look benevolent, 'And he provided!'
The miracle has had a short life. James van Schie, general manager at the Catholic Diocese of Auckland, evicted Jordan in a terse 83-word letter on May 22. The church wants to put the building on the market.
ReadingRoom approached the church for comment. The Diocese would not permit an interview, and ignored email questions in preference of a statement from van Schie, who wrote, 'The Diocese regularly reviews its property holdings. We make decisions based on how we believe the Catholic Church's mission across the region can best be carried out.
'We can confirm that the lease for the Hard to Find Bookshop will expire at the end of the year. It will not be renewed, but the Diocese did provide a two-month extension until February 2026 to support the business owners, with whom we have had a positive relationship.
'We hope that the business can continue trading at another location. This story may help bring this opportunity to the attention of interested landlords.'
Jordan doubts it. He said, 'I don't own a home or any real assets except lots of books, so I and my family will be homeless with no prospects or direction.' He moved into upstairs rooms above the shop after six months of renovating the whole building when he thought it had been leased to him in good faith.
The shop faced imminent closure in 2017 until the church stepped in. 'We spent a year looking in 2017 and couldn't find anything – it took a last-moment miracle from Bishop Patrick Dunn to save us. It gave me a misplaced faith.'
Jordan made a counter-offer to the Diocese.
'I tried to put a deal together that would have us taking full responsibility for all outgoings of the building. We already pay for all internal maintenance and we've spent north of $100,000 in money and time on the building beyond the rent. I paid for a partial re-carpeting only a few months ago. But the Church decided that isn't enough. They want the big lump sum that this wonderful lemon probably won't deliver.' Jordan means it's a Heritage 1 protected building, which will resist development, and is located in a dodgy part of town.
An irony is that Jordan is Catholic. He sent his sons to St Peters, and has bought and sold books to many priests in his long tenure with Hard to Find. He is right now praying to Saint Mary McKillop. Australasia's only saint was the instigator, founder and owner of the property at 2 St Benedicts Street. The original title to the property was in her name.
'I have a huge amount of respect for St Mary McKillop and this building she funded and created and its importance to the community. I think it is a travesty that it is being disposed of by the Church. How will she feel if it becomes the St Mary McKillop Bar and Grill?'
He continued, 'I believe St Mary McKillop approves of us – we fit right in with her views and sense of community – so she must be pretty brassed off at what is happening to her legacy. What might an angry Saint do? We shall see.'
In the temporal world, Jordan has to focus on moving out. 'Business as usual will continue from the public perspective until late February next year. For me full panic mode kicks in around late July or early August.' It will take six months to wind down.
Auckland secondhand bookstores have been hit hard these past few years. Jason's in High St shut down in 2024, and Dominion Books in Herne Bay closed its doors in 2023. Rent increases killed off both stores.
Jordan said, 'Both owners chose retirement rather than face trying to rebuild elsewhere. There are several small bookshops in the suburbs, all supported by friendly landlords and cheap rental deals, but the true book dealers, people who have been career booksellers for life with real in-depth experience and who buy and knowledgeably collate collections, are nearly gone. The only one I can think of is already semi-retired.
'Long term this is a disaster for all the community. We are losing the people who can help save and curate worthy books for future generations. Opshops mean well but don't have a clue, and many great books will end up in landfill. You won't be able to sell a book collection because there won't be anyone to buy it.'
Another irony: just as he faces having to lose his business, Jordan has been internationally recognised for his expertise. He travels to London this month where he will be awarded the 2025 International Antiquarian Bookdealers' IOBA Study Scholarship to the University of London.
'I have a mountain of books but no money to retire on, so I have to figure something out. I just don't know what. I naively thought our miracle made us safe here.'
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Otago Daily Times
23-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
No book is entirely useless — let's support all of them
Warwick Jordan in his Hard To Find Books bookshop. Photo: Linda Robertson When Rudyard Kipling wrote "a man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition" he probably had me in mind — apart from the ammunition, of course. Thus, I almost choked on my pinot noir when I heard the National Library plans to destroy half a million books. Mark Crookston, encumbered with the title "National Library director of content services", informed us "most books haven't been requested in decades", which tells us more about the acquisitions policy of the National Library than about the quality of the books themselves. With a number like 500,000 in the firing line I feared that some of my works would be on the bonfire. However the books facing the death sentence "cover a range of topics like bibliography, religion, philosophy and computer science". Intellectual stuff — nothing of mine there. But is any book so unwanted that it should be pulped? Warwick Jordan, the standard bearer for second hand books, thinks not. Jordan started his second-hand book business from his Auckland garage in 1983 and eventually had nine outlets. His Hard To Find Books (But Worth the Effort) book stores were book lovers' meccas. The big move south came in 2013 when Jordan found just the place he needed to house 250,000 books. It was the 1873 Hallenstein building in Dowling St where once three hundred workers toiled making about 3000 garments each week "I love Dunedin: the people, the architecture and the climate," Jordan enthused. "I'm able to get a central-city location, the kind of space that would cost me $1million in Auckland." Container loads of books arrived in Dowling St and row upon row of shelving was gradually filled with thousands more books to now total 500,000. Among them were the personal libraries of Edmund Hillary, Robert Muldoon and David Lange. When my own big shift from Dunedin to Patearoa came along it was Jordan who turned up, offered a fair price and most of my books found a home at Hard To Find, including a few I should have held on to and may have to buy back. Many a university-type's library has found its way to Hard to Find and thus the lifetime collections of a professor of English or a highly respected historian await your perusal. Before long, the word spread and Dunedin's book lovers were making regular visits to the Dowling St treasure trove, using the irresistible chair lift at the front steps if they were getting on a bit. On cruise ship days you'd see the visitors happily clutching parcels of books they'd never find elsewhere. There's usually about three staff working at the Dowling St shop and when there's a vacancy applications flood in like the books themselves have. If you can talk your way into a guided tour behind the public area, you'll be in a bibliophile heaven. Stretching before you in every direction books, books and more books. Not arranged as you might find in a library but shelved as they arrive in an efficient system known only to the staff. Thus, the joy of tumbling upon the unexpected. But Jordan's David and Goliath battles with two formidable adversaries, the Catholic Church and the National Library, are making times tough for a man dedicated to books. Over 20 years ago the National Library was also in disposal mode and Jordan tendered successfully for about 30,000 books. More recently the library offered 45,000 books to Lions clubs to sell as fundraisers. Jordan believes only about 5000 books were sold and the library gave him the leftovers. Now, with another 500,000 books on death row, Jordan knows what type of book is involved. He believes about two-thirds of them would find a buyer and admits the rest could be junk which no-one wants. He knows his books and I wish him success. On the other hand, troubled waters for Hard To Find Books in Auckland could benefit the Dowling St treasure house. Jordan told the ODT last week he was looking at relocating all the Auckland shop's stock to Dunedin even though Dowling St was "already pushing it for space". If that happens it's "highly likely" Dunedin would become its sole retail outlet. Meanwhile Jordan is off to London to pick up an International Antiquarian Bookdealers' Study Scholarship to the University of London. Dunedin has been home to the country's largest second-hand book shop in the past when Newbold's in George St reigned supreme. Hard To Find Books in Dowling St carries the banner today and may yet be even larger, thanks to Jordan, the man who believes too many books is never enough. I'll drink to that — a red, of course. - Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
Otago Daily Times
16-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Shop set for influx of half a million books
Hard To Find Books Dunedin manager Blaze Forbes peruses the aisles at the Dowling St second-hand bookshop. PHOTO: GERARD O'BRIEN Half a million books could be bound for Dunedin if the closure of a prominent second-hand bookshop goes ahead, its owner says. While the possible closure of Auckland-based Hard To Find Books had plunged its future into "total chaos", owner Warwick Jordan said he expected its Dunedin store would continue "business as usual". "If anything, it could boost it in the longer run if we end up coming down there." The Auckland bookshop's lease is scheduled to lapse at the end of February next year. Housed in a former convent, the building is owned by the Catholic Church, which decided not to renew the lease as it intended to sell it. The bookshop had occupied the building since 2018 but has had a presence in Auckland for more than 40 years. Mr Jordan said he had wanted the bookshop located somewhere it could stay forever as it was "just too much of a mission to move". "I thought that was the case with where we are. Turns out I was wrong." The contents of the Auckland store could fill an estimated 20 shipping containers — roughly half a million books, he said. It would cost $100,000 alone to move the books and, because he lived above the bookshop, Mr Jordan would also need to look for a new home. "I just don't want to have to go through this again. I'm getting old, but I have no retirement plan whatsoever." He did not believe there was another suitable building in Auckland to house the bookshop. Renting a larger premises was also out of the question. Another option he was looking at was relocating all of its stock down to Dunedin, but they were already "pushing it" for space. "We've got 30,000 square feet in Dunedin pretty much packed already. "We'd be bringing down about half a million books, but we've got over half a million in Dunedin already." While anywhere with enough space was open to consideration, it was "highly likely" the Dunedin store would become the sole retail outlet, Mr Jordan said. Whether they moved everything to Dunedin was a separate issue. Their Auckland stock would at the least end up being sold from out of storage units, which could still get shipped down to Dunedin anyway. He also floated the idea of storing the books in a woolshed at a rural property on the outskirts of Dunedin, or in Milton.
Otago Daily Times
12-06-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Dealer sickened by plan to destroy half a million books
The country's largest second-hand book business wants to save half a million books from being disposed of by the National Library of New Zealand. The National Library claims they've been trying to re-home them since 2018, that there's no demand, and that most haven't been requested in decades. They say the process of shredding and recycling them, via a commercial service, has started. Book dealer and Hard To Find Books owner Warwick Jordan says he couldn't sleep last night and felt physically sick. His various offers over the years to take all the books himself haven't been accepted. 'To give you some context, this issue actually goes back to the 1990s. In the late 1990s, the National Library wanted to get rid of about this number of books. Initially, what they did was they started putting them up in small groups in tender. They put two tenders out. I won both of them, a total of about 30,000 books.' The process of dealing with the remainder was stalled when the issue became political, he says, until 2018 when only 5000 out of 45,000 were sold via a Lions Club book sale. Jordan labelled the book sale idea as 'dumb' because the books - although valuable to him - wouldn't be of interest to the average person. The library ended up giving him the leftover from the sale. 'I know what kind of books these guys are destroying. I know that two thirds of them I can use. There's about one third that really is just junk. I mean, it's just no one wants it. It's just out of date.' The books are international, mostly non-fiction and cover a range of topics like were bibliography, religion, philosophy and computer science. Jordan says one example of a book that was going to junk was a two-volume set bibliography of UFO books from the 1950s. He believes it could retail for $300-$500. 'I'm not saying they're all worth that kind of money. But there's a lot of interesting and unusual things that wouldn't sell to the average Joe public. But there are people out there who are interested, specialised interest.' Jordan says he continued to make offers for the remainder, including packing, delivery, and paying money for them. Although now he longer can afford to make the same financial offer as he did back then, he's willing to find a way to make it work. 'I mean, if I want to make money, I'd go and sell something that actually sells. I want to save the books. It's a disgrace. There could be books in there that is the only copy in the world. Who knows?' National Library director of content services Mark Crookston told Afternoons they had undertaken a range of considerations before reaching this decision. 'We've found homes for about 100,000 items and haven't found home for about 500,000 items. The sale option is one of those options that we considered and we discounted in this instance.' Rules of disposal of public assets suggest they could not make a deal like this unless it was run through auction or 'time consuming and expensive' tendering process, he says. Another reason was the costs required to stamp every book as 'withdrawn' and remove the sleeves, Crookston says. 'We'd have to either employ our existing people away from doing things that they're currently doing or employ additional people to do this … That's quite a considerable, many hundreds of thousands of dollars undertaken.' Jordan was baffled, saying there's no logic to it because he believes the service doing the disposal would charge a lot to be remove the sleeves and all the materials on books that can't be recycled. 'I don't understand because we could do that for them.' Crookston rebutted that saying 'collection management 101' principles mean they couldn't allow that. 'We think what's in the best interest of New Zealanders via the National Library is for these books to be destroyed. That's the most cost efficient and cost-effective way to deal with this issue. 'Library leaders around New Zealand and the world know that when there's large disposal projects or processes undertaken with books is that there's strong views held about it because a lot of people just don't like books being destroyed. But in collection management, that's just what a lot of libraries have to go through.'
