The Big Bad Wolf has come to town
Huge spread: A feast for book lovers. Pix by Priyantha Wickramaarachchi
The books they have brought for the sale could cover 10 soccer fields or fill 3 Boeing 747s, and they are available from now till midnight on October 15. The Big Bad Wolf Book sale – a ‘24 hours a day for eleven days’ book sale with 1.5 million books is currently underway at the Sri Lanka Exhibition and Convention Centre in Fort, and organizers and book lovers alike are very excited at its debut in Sri Lanka.
The book sale, begun in Kuala Lumpur is brought to Sri Lanka by Pro-Read Lanka and the Big Bad Wolf team. As the name suggests, it started with a child-friendly theme to attract young readers and today offers books of many genres from fiction and non-fiction to recipe books, comics and much more in between along with a large selection of children’s books.
The books are sold at a discount of 60-80%. There is a customer storage area where people can store books for 24 hours and bulk buyers can store books for 30 hours. Thirty cashiers working at any time make purchasing relatively fast and porters are available to carry the books to the customers’ vehicles.
Founder and Managing Director of Big Bad Wolf Books, Andrew Yap is happy at the way the sale is progressing in Colombo. Speaking to the Sunday Times on Thursday evening, he said, “We came here not knowing what to expect but the response has been amazing so far. Profit is not the main goal for us. We try to get enough profit to keep the business going but we also want to make books affordable so that we make reading accessible.”
It is a complex undertaking. “There is a great cost involved when we hold this event. We have to pay tax and shipping charges, the rental for the venue, pay 450 staff and to cover that cost isn’t easy,” he says.
The sale is organised in a customer-friendly way. “We want to make sure that no one has an excuse not to come. People cannot say ‘oh there’s a traffic jam or I have to pick up my child from school’. We want to give everyone the chance to buy books,” he says. In fact, he says the busiest time for sales in the past has been from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. “At that time people are not bothered by other people calling them or having to run errands so they have time to choose books at leisure,” he explains.
Yujeen Chua is in charge of layout and finds the task both interesting and challenging. “I joined when Big Bad Wolf started going overseas and it’s a bit like a travelling circus where you have to pack everything and set things up at different locations,” he explains. Transporting millions of books in a cost-effective way requires smart solutions, he tells us. This includes flat packing and using cost effective fencing, transport etc. so that the operation cost is minimal. The carelessness of customers who take books and do not leave them back in their correct place seems to cause additional work for Yujeen and the rest of the team.
Overall, visitors seem very happy with the sale. Buddhima Rozario who had came on Thursday with her husband and five-year-old daughter was impressed by the selection of books, especially the children’s books. “There is a wide selection of books of high quality which you cannot find elsewhere and I think the prices are good for this quality,” she says.
Mohammed Wazaam, a university student from Sabaragamuwa University, though was dissatisfied with the collection of language books available. “I came to buy books on learning Chinese and I couldn’t find any and the staff informed me that there was only one CD available. I feel that in such a big book sale there should be a bigger selection of books on learning different languages,” he remarked.
Architect Roven Rebeira was also impressed by the sale, having come looking for books on Architecture. “There is a brilliant collection of books at prices we would probably never find elsewhere,” he said.
Director of organizational and people development firm DAASH Global, Harshana Dassanayake was there for the personal development books. “There is a large spread of books at 1/3 of the normal price and the options available are amazing. I have a library of books on education and training and there are lots of books which I can add from here,” he said.
Interior Design student Shiyangi Fernando from Gampaha was very happy at what she found. “At other book fairs, there are stalls from different publishers. The great thing here is that the books are divided into different sections and not according to bookshops which I found very helpful,” she said.
Laila Sulaiman, 12, a student of Methodist College was excited at the sale. “There are a lot of good books which I don’t usually find at really good prices,” she said while 10-year-old Omar Hazari, a student of Royal College said he had bought many books. “There are so many books at good prices and the staff is really helpful,” he added.
Andrew Yap and the Big Bad Wolf team hope people will visit the sale and buy books both to enjoy the pleasure of reading and also so that the sale is successful and can be held again in Sri Lanka in the future.
The Big Bad Wolf sale is on 24 hours a day till midnight on October 15 at the Sri Lanka Exhibition and Convention Centre in Colombo 1.