Leura Books

Leura Books was started in the early 90's, when Donna and Philip Israel took over the Manly Book Exchange, located in Manly, one of the world's most famous beaches in Sydney, Australia. Having spent 5 years on the beach, the business was moved to a bit of a colder climate, up in The Blue Mountains - Katoomba and Leura. With two shops supplying the needs of the locals as well as the tourists and day trippers from Sydney, and with a very large inventory, it was decided to take the jump and get involved in selling books on the internet. After dabbling on and off for a period of 12 months with Abebooks, it became quite clear that the time had come to make a choice. Either keep the 2 shops and continue with Abebooks on the side, as an extra way of selling books - which would work well- or bite the bullet. We chose to bite the bullet, which meant we had to sell the 2 shops, sell the house in The Blue Mountains, and move down south in NSW. We bought a farm with acreage and chanced our whole lifestyle, to sell books exclusively on the Internet. It was a gamble, and the hardest part was to be able to buy books in bulk - we worked out that we would need somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 books to make a very good living out of it all. Today we are located on 25 acres of farm land, no animals, except for one mad cat, and just over 30,000 books. The aim is to get to 50,000 books within 2 years - a lot of work, but very satisfactory.

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