My Life...begins with my Journey

1.5 million books await readers at Malaysian Agro Exposition Park

By CHRISTY YOONG

metro@thestar.com.my

IT’S back, bigger and probably even better, but it was Lady Luck who made sure this year’s Big Bad Wolf Books sale will start on Oct 7.

The fourth edition of the sale will run for 10 days at the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang (MAEPS) in Selangor and offer a jaw-dropping 1.5 million books, five times the number at last year’s event.

Quite an achievement, considering that, initially, Big Bad Wolf Books founders, Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng, had decided not to organise a sale this year.

“We’ve been holding the Big Bad Wolf sale once a year because that’s how long we need to organise it properly – accumulating enough books, sorting them, and organising the event,” Yap said.

“Earlier this year, our biggest supplier to the previous sales told us they wouldn’t be able to provide us any more books.”

And, without this supplier, there was no way the husband-and-wife duo could justify organising a sale and, reluctantly, decided to skip the event this year.

“We were disappointed,” said Ng. “Although it is a lot of hard work, we always enjoy Big Bad Wolf and we’re proud of the impact we’ve made on the book-buying public with it.”

Then, Lady Luck stepped in.

On a trip to a book fair overseas, Yap and Ng, who also run Bookxcess at Amcorp Mall in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, were, literally, made an offer they couldn’t refuse and ended up taking possession of 500,000 books.

“A book distributor was renovating his warehouse and offered us the entire content at the kind of prices that we need to make Big Bad Wolf work,” said Ng.

“It was pure luck,” Yap added. “He heard about us and liked the idea and decided to make us the offer. And it was exactly what we needed to do another sale.”

Taking this as a sign, the couple decided to throw caution to the air.

“We weren’t sure if we’d ever get another chance like this, so we decided to make this sale as big as possible,” said Yap.

So, for the next few months, they travelled around the world, visiting distributors, selling their idea of promoting affordable reading – all the 1.5 million books will be sold at discounts of 75% to 95%, with fiction going for RM8 and coffee table books for RM25 – through a mega book clearance sale that has become “the biggest book sale in the world”.

“We were very fortunate,” Yap said, looking back at the months of begging, cajoling and, sometimes, arm-twisting.

It was all worth in the end – enough distributors bought into the Big Bad Wolf idea and the books started flowing in from July.

“Some of them barely covered their own costs when agreeing to the prices we need,” said Ng.

“I think some agreed just to get us out of their offices,” she said with a laugh.

While fortune might favour the brave, the couple admit they are taking a risk on this sale, especially since they hope to draw half a million visitors to MAEPS, which is unlikely to be familiar to many.

Yap, however, was enthusiastic about the venue.

“It’s a huge, pillar-less hall, 90,000 sq ft, which allows us to arrange the books properly and accommodate the number of visitors we’re expecting without overcrowding.

“The surroundings are green and relaxing and, in all, it’ll make the experience comfortable for our customers, which has always been our priority,” he said.

This year’s sale also sees the launch of the Red Readerhood programme that will donate books to selected orphanages and single-mother centres. Big Bad Wolf Books and OCBC Bank have started the ball rolling by donating 2,000 books and customers can make their own contribution by buying a book and dropping it into the Red Readerhood Box at the sale.

Ultimately, though, it is the hope of making Malaysians read that matter most to the couple.

“All through our involvement in the book industry, with Bookxcess and Big Bad Wolf, we’ve always kept in mind our goal: to encourage reading by making it as affordable as possible,” said Ng.

“To an extent, we have succeeded but we feel there is always more we can do, new audiences to reach out to, and we do our part by letting people know that you don’t have to bust your wallet to buy a book,” she said.

“And with the prices we offer, you’ll be able to afford more than one book,” promised Yap.

The Big Bad Wolf Books sale will run from Oct 7 to 16 at Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang (MAEPS) in Selangor . Opening hours are 10am to 9pm. For directions and more details, visit www.bigbadwolfbooks.com