Boffins Bookshop

I love that in the age of internet shopping, excellent bookstores like this still exist. This one stands out for having a great selection of more serious, specialised non-​fiction in areas like business, science and technology. It’s a refreshing change from bookstores flooded with light self help and dubious diet books. The store is very well organised and the staff were helpful. They had an impressive number of copies signed by well known authors available for sale.

This bookshop is a little gem in Perth!
It has a great range of books, and for a technical and reference advertised bookshop I was pleasantly surprised at the range of fiction, children’s and YA books in stock too.
They also have a quite a large range of adult colouring books, moleskine journals and my new favourites — the lechtturm1917 notebooks.
The staff are also extremely knowledgeable, friendly and willing to help you out whenever you need!

Best bookshop in Perth! And not just because it’s the only bookshop in Perth! Seriously it’s a fantastic bookshop which I’ve followed from its old location on Hay Street. Heaps of quirky reads and very well informed, helpful staff who actually read the books. Brilliant. Highly recommended.

Great customer service from my online order. Very prompt delivery and good communication. Highly recommend.

Wonderful book shop. A technical bookshop covering some many different topics you could fill a small book!
The staff were wonderful and more then happy to search the city or state or beyond to bring in the book you are after if they do not have it in stock
If you have an interest for a particular subject then this is the place to start looking for a book about it

David P.
Boffins Bookshop is a must visit shop every time I go into the city, handy to the rail station. Always has the latest releases of books on all subjects and has a great record for getting books from publishers that are not in stock, and the book signing events they have by the authors are sensational, to be able to meet the authors and to be able to talk with them makes the books I buy special and have an affinity to them. To give a signed book as a gift makes the recipient feel as if you care that bit more .
Thanks Boffins.
David P

This is my kind of bookstore. They have such a great selection of speciality books. No matter what your interests are, you can kill hours inside this store. The staff is friendly, and didn’t mind that I planted myself on the floor flipping through a stack of beautiful books. From travel to photography, cooking to maps, the books in this store are beautiful and unique. They also have a great selection of moleskin notebooks and datebooks, which I always have on hand and in every purse. If you ever want to kill a few hours or you are looking for inspiration for a new hobby, stop in to Boffins and start exploring.

The name ‘Boffins’ suggests that this bookshop would be full of complicated, hard-​to-​understand and (dare I say it) boring books on difficult subjects, as do the words ‘specialist’ and ‘technical’. However, the reality is different. It features all the same non-​fiction sections as most other bookshops, only here they are better-​stocked. The lower level seems designed to capture your attention, with the more glamorous and ‘fun’ subjects like photography, fashion and food featured prominently. This ploy works like a charm — I frequently find myself spending far too long flicking through the many, many interesting books that catch my eye. The upper level is where the more technical books are housed, with sections like maths, science and business. These sections all seem much too broad and small to really be truly ‘specialist’ as they claim, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff here nonetheless.

Boffins is an interesting place for a browse. Two floors of technically-​minded books means that Boffins is also a nerd’s dream, with a broad range of topics covered. The prices at Boffins are reasonable and with some books, are comparable to online prices [if slightly higher].
The staff are friendly and knowledgeable, and can easily direct you to where a certain book might be found.
The main disappointment with Boffins is while it stocks books of a broad variety, there are not that many books available within some categories. Boffins ends up seemingly like a dilettante of a book store — covering a broad base but with not much within each area.

Walking into this celebrated two-​story book store you cannot help but be overcome by the variety of books on offer. The credit card is sure to get a workout as you move from section to section. Boffins appeals to the more discerning literary consumer through their depth of various titles across a range of genres. In particular interest for me is the design section on the split level of the store. Many of the books have been imported and are not widely available through mainstream bookstores. It is easy to spend hours upon end reading through amazing publications and the best thing is that the staff don’t seem to mind. Although they seem a bit reserved, they are very knowledgable and approachable. The books are priced appropriately for what they are and would compete with the likes of Dymocks for best sellers. A great place to grab a gift for someone or grab something to add to your own library.

Boffins is a two floor technical and specialist bookshop. It covers every section of non-​fiction you can think of and has books to cater toward every whim or want, from to Antiques to Travel, and Gardening to Photography. They are a Perth based company and wanted to offer books that people couldn’t find elsewhere. They have strong relationships with publishing houses in Australia and overseas and are able to house a good selection of niche books across a wide range of categories. Of course they can’t quite have every single book you may have a fancy to read in store and so they’ll offer to order any book in for you if they don’t have it. The staff here are wonderfully helpful so feel free to ask any question and expect some quality service.

Boffins is one of the best bookshops in the city – and there’s not a work of fiction to be found in it. Rather it is a technical bookshop, focusing exclusively on non-​fiction and catering to specialty and niche interests. (I am a huge fan of maps and trains. Boffins stocks a book of antique and vintage rail maps. The ultimate niche.)
Of course, the store carries a lot of stuff that you will be able to find in bookshops elsewhere. There’s some Bill Bryson in the history section. There’s some Christopher Hitchens in current affairs. What sets the place apart is the fact that these sections are much larger than they are in almost every other store. The history section also includes an intellectual biography of Kemal Atatürk published by the Princeton University Press and the current affairs one a monograph on Aboriginal self-​determination published by a small printing press based seventy kilometres outside of Melbourne. The keyword is here is «depth». Or perhaps it’s «curiosity». (I remind you again of the book about rail maps.)
With sections also dedicated to science, psychology, visual art, cinema and more, spread out over two floors and a mezzanine, Boffins will take a serious browser a long time to explore thoroughly. But explore it they should. Scratch the surface of books that you’ve seen in other stores and you’re liable to discover something special.