A Dockyard institution, the Ships Inn Book Gallery, is closing down.

For 11 years the bookstore has been a treasure trove for antique book collectors.

Owner Sherlyn Swan specialises in out of print books and collectors items such as early editions of “The Wizard of Oz”. Some of her books date from the 17th and 18th century.

The store started off in the Clock Tower and for the past five years has been upstairs from Pirates Landing restaurant.

Now that the restaurant is being redeveloped, the Ships Inn is having to move homes again.

But having found that most of the spots in Dockyard are already occupied or allocated for redevelopment, Ms Swan has decided that the new home will be on the internet.

“It's a struggle to survive in Dockyard anyway,” she says.

Insteady she plans to start by selling books on E-Bay and abbooks.com and will also look at setting up her own website.

“I'm hoping to be up and running by Christmas,” she says.

Ms Swan says she is not too disappointed about what has happened: “I got to live a dream and I'm not actually out of the book business, I'm just out of the shop business.”

In any case, having a shop is no picnic, according to Ms Swan. She recalls a conversation with Jim Zuill of the Bermuda Bookstore when she first opened up the shop.

He said to her: “The first thing you need to know is that no-one gets rich in the book business.”

She asked him: “Will I be able to have a soup and sandwich for lunch?” and he replied: “Not in the first two years!”

Asked how she originally got into the antique book business, Ms Swan says: “I've always loved books.”

She started off by buying a private library of 14,000 books from an Italian collector.

Now the collection has grown to three times that size.

The Ships Inn Book Gallery is holding a closing down sale on Thursday, Friday and Saturday: “I've got 40,000 books to get rid of,” laughs Ms Swan.