DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 05 Nov) – The biggest book sale in the world will be in Davao City soon.
The founder of the Big Bad Wolf, the firm behind the ten-day, 24/7 book fair here on November 23 to December 2, hopes the event will inspire more Dabawenyos to read.
“The mission that we have, the dream that we have is similar, we use books as a product, we use books to create dream, and we use books to bring forth hope. It all comes from love. Love not just between yourself and family, but love across mankind. That’s the love that we give but, for us, it’s through books,” Malaysian national Jacqueline Ng, founder of the Big Bad Wolf, the firm behind the book sale, told a press briefing at the Union Market in Azuela Cove on Monday.
Ng told reporters they partnered with Gawad Kalinga to bring the book fair here, the third destination this year after Manila and Cebu in February and July, respectively.
A portion of the proceeds will go to Gawad Kalinga to help build more communities and help farmer-beneficiaries.
She said the book fair will feature more than a million brand new books with 20,000 titles, featuring popular authors, novels, science fiction, business books, biographies, art and design at 50% to 90% discounts.
The book sale will be held in a 2,000-square meter area at the The Tent in Azuela Cove.
She said the company usually spends around $3 million to $5 million (159 million to P266 million pesos) to pull off a fair for each venue
She and husband, Andrew Yap, started the Big Bad Wolf in Malaysia in 2009 and has since become a landmark event in the country. They brought the book sale to Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, and Philippines.
Organizers are planning to bring it to 30 other cities in the world next year.
Aside from Manila, Cebu, Davao, Gawad Kalinga executive director Luis Oquiñena announced they are planning to stage 10-day book sale events in three more cities in the country next year due to a growing demand and to “create love for reading, inspire, and empower more people.”
He said a portion of the revenues will go to Gawad Kalinga to help build more communities and help farmer-beneficiaries.
“With this partnership, Big Bad Wolf is donating a portion of its proceeds to GK so we can continue doing our work organizing communities, helping the farmers. Every book that you actually buy, a portion of that will go to different communities,” he said.
Majority of the books are sourced from the United States and the United Kingdom, Ng said.
‘We believe it’s not just about the price of the books. It has to be affordable. We believe in the quality of the books, so we make sure that suppliers or publishers should be able to sell at a desired price point for our customers,” she said.
Over 10 millions books were sold last year, she said.
“Can you imagine how much worth that is to source and negotiate for 10 million books? We believe that a good book for someone, we are talking about non-readers here, readers would know what is good, but for non-readers, we need to give them very exciting, something very good quality for them to get first the interest of even start flipping through the first page,” she said.
Big Bad Wolf -Philippines marketing head Miguel Mercado added they want the less-fortunate to experience the joy of reading of books because “books today, good books cost a lot.”
“What we realize is when you drop the prices, the market comes. You drop the prices and you get quality books, the market comes. Wherever we go the book market gets bigger and the advocacy also spreads because more and more kids are reading,” he added. [Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews]
