DAVAO CITY — Malaysian book shop BookXcess is bringing the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale to Davao, the first time in Mindanao, with about a million books to be offered at 50%-90% discount.
“In Davao, the venue is quite small and we will be selling one million books compared to Jakarta where the venue is a 20,000-square meter area with up to five million books,” said BookXcess co-founder and Executive Director Jacqueline Ng during Monday’s press conference where the event was officially announced.
The sale, which will cost the company at least $3 million to stage, will be held at The Tent in Azuela Cove from Nov. 23 to Dec. 2.
BookXcess is bringing brand new books, including fiction, non-fiction and an extensive collection of children’s books, according to Ms. Ng.
Ms. Ng said the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale is not something they consider as a business-for-profit venture.
The objective, she said, is to provide people with better access to books at a cheaper price and just “make ourselves sustainable and we do not go bankrupt.”
“If we look at it in cents and dollars, then the company would not have started at all,” she said.
Big Bad Wolf Philippines Marketing Head Miguel Mercado, for his part, said the main challenge to organizing the event in Davao City was finding a venue that would be available for 24 hours a day for 10 straight days.
Mr. Mercado said they are optimistic that the Davao sale would be as successful as the others they have been staging since the first in 2009 at Dataran Hamodal, Petaling Jaya in Malaysia.
The first in the Philippines was held in Manila last February, with about 250,000 visitors.
The biggest number of visitors recorded was in Jakarta at 700,000, followed by Kuala Lumpur at 500,000, and Bangkok, 300,000.
“In the next year or two, we will be in 30 cities. Dubai Book Sale just happened, then Europe, South America and Central America,” Mr. Mercado said.
Part of the proceeds from the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale in Davao will go to Gawad Kalinga to help build more communities and help farmers.
At the launch, Ms. Ng and her husband, BookXcess Managing Director Andrew Yap, handed over P5 million to Gawad Kalinga Executive Director Jose Luis Oquiñena.— Carmencita A. Carillo

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