Your Story - On Receipt

Here's a wonderfully quirky way of getting writers in print - stories on a book store till receipt!

BookXcess is inviting 100-word entries for its "receipt stories" - check out the website Jackie Ng and Andrew Yap (left) have set up to read some examples and submit your own.

The discount bookstore is going from strength to strength - last year alone they sold 200,000 books - so there's  whole lot of reading going on in this city!

World Book Day at Bookxcess

It's World Book Day tomorrow, April 23rd, and Bookxcess is in the mood to help you celebrate it :

Thanks BookXcess!

You may have noticed the little banner in the sidebar, linking to Bookxcess. It's there by way of a thank you to my friends Jacqueline and Andrew who own the discount bookstore that has made so many of us very happy.

They told me that they are so grateful for the news and information on this blog that they would like to donate towards sponsorship. I was happy about that because I have wanted more targeted advertising for some time. Also I guess I did not have the number of hits to make a decent amount on Nuffnang. (But the small income I made did pay for my air fare to a couple of literary events, which was good.)

I decided that BookXcess' sponsorship money should go towards the cost of the book I'm publishing based on our Readings/CeritAku events.

And if there are any more companies or organisations that would like to offer sponsorship, then I would be delighted to talk to you! (I reckon I will be spending about RM12,000 in total.)

BookXcess is in the middle of a major move, and I went by a few days ago to see what the new store would look like. There's so much space - I can't wait to see it all filled with books!

The new store (which is just next to the present one) opens Friday 19 March 2010! And if you need more information, then just click the banner in my side-bar.

(Thanks Su Lin for the photos.)

BookXcess is Spring-Cleaning!

The long weekend has arrived and what better way to spend it than stocking up on cheapy books. Here's some very happy news from BookXcess :

Hello dear bookworms

We hope you had a good holiday recently! For some, the spring cleaning began before the Chinese New Year festivities. For BookXcess, we're spring-cleaning now... because we're moving out. So we're throwing a Moving Out Sale!

There are over 200 selected titles going on sale at 3 amazing prices: RM3, RM5 and RM9.90! Fiction, non-fiction, children, young adult... with such variety of books, there's definitely something for everybody at this Moving Out Sale. If you're looking for some affordable good reads, come on down to our store this weekend. The sale period is from 26 February to 10 March 2010.

In our last e-mail to you, we mentioned we have some BIG news. If you haven't heard the rumours already, we now confirm it... BookXcess is moving into a BIGGER store! It is just two doors away from our current premises. In fact, it's the previous venue of The Big Bad Book Sale!

As we move into a store that's 4 times bigger than our current premises, we have plans to bring in more books for your enjoyment at prices that cost much less than other bookstores. Look out for another e-mail from us soon with details of the new shipment, as well as some great deals in conjunction of our moving into a bigger store!

Do visit BookXcess for the Moving Out Sale - you never know if you'll find a treasure of a book!

What's Big and Bad, but Actually Very Good?

It's BookXcess' Big Bad Book Sale, of course!


I was invited along to the preview yesterday, but couldn't make it, so decided to go along today.


It was a very weird Thursday anyway - the traffic was terrible for a weekday, and it took me a while to realise that since tomorrow is Hari Raya Haji and it's school holiday besides, many people had taken time off work to enjoy an extended weekend. A marvellous bit of timing for mad keen book buyers.

(Above - one indulgent dad with a pile of books for his daughter - and there was another full box at this feet!)

When I got to Amcorp Mall, and made my way up to the third floor where the sale was being held (in a huge double shop-lot next to the bookshop), I could not believe the long queue of people waiting to get in to the already packed space. I needed lunch (at my favourite Korean restaurant) before I could even think of braving it.


When I came back much fortified (by kimchi and bulgogi) the queue was gone, but there was scarcely room to move inside. Whoever laments that Malaysians don't read, don't value books, should have seen the heartwarming sight of folks with huge piles and boxes of books.

I really hadn't intended to buy much but soon accumulated a huge bag full of good stuff. The coffee table books were going for RM20, and pretty much all the rest - even hardbacks - for RM8 each. The adult fiction selection wasn't amazing (or maybe all those other eager poeple had beaten me to the best), but I ended up with plenty of non-fiction choices. (My bag full only cost me RM139!)

No matter how hot and uncomfortable it got, or how long the queue for the tills, there was a great feeling of camaraderie among the book lovers. There were new-friends to make along the way, much surrepstitious peeking at other people's book choices.

And of course a few old friends to find. Raja Ahmad is at every cheap book sale I go to!

And Daphne Lee was there too helping out.

I was hot and exhausted by the end, but very happy indeed with my swag. I'm too tired to list everything I bought but might add a note tomorrow.

The sale runs till 2nd December and there's still plenty of good stuff.

Bookxcess Turns 2

Sunday is the day to visit Amcorp Mall - the flea market is tremendous fun and provides a great excuse to visit BookXcess to buy a guilt free pile of books.

The shop boasts 100,000 titles ranging from fiction to children to self-help to business and prices are about 50-70% lowers than regular bookstores so the store's slogan Read More for Less! is entirely approriate.

Now the remaindered bookshop is celebrating its second anniversary this coming Sunday: 20 titles priced are going for only RM2 each, others are included in a Buy 2, Get 1 Free, and if you spend RM200 nett in a single receipt, you will be entitled to a RM20 cash voucher. BookXcess’s director Andrew Yap says :

We hope our anniversary promotions would entice the general public to pick up more books as we want people to shed their wariness to read the pages of a book.

BookXcess has also launched its own book blog in conjunction with the celebrations with book-related news, book reviews by staff and invited guests, promotions, contests, freebies and more. You can also become a fan of BookXcess on Facebook.

I was there on Sunday with friends Rob and Elaine, and managed to pick up a good haul including Ian Rankin's short story collection A Good Hanging, Oliver Sacks Musicophilia : Tales of Music and The Brain, J.M. Ledgard's highly acclaimed first novel Giraffe, and the first (huge!) volume of Birds of the Thai-Malay Peninsula. It was also good to bump into other book-loving friends who haunt the place on Sunday ...

Even Cheaper Cheapie Books

Tomorrow, 23rd April, is World Bookday (the UNESCO one, not the British one!) And what better way to celebrate than by giving yourself the gift of a book, because you have a perfectly valid excuse!

The good folks at BookXcess are giving big discounts on their already cheaper than cheap books for just two days. Click poster above to read details. I think I might just go to Amcorp for lunch ...

Your Next Cheap Book Fix

Time to stock up on some cheap reads? I snapped the picture above at BookXcess a few weeks back on my first visit to the shop since it had expanded. Was pleasantly surprised, not just at the cheap prices and the wide choice of titles, but also how pleasantly 'squidgy' the bookshop is. The only reason that I'm not there all the time ... well, you guys can fill in the blanks.

And they also have a snazzy new website with lists of all the books in stock and a map to help you find them.

Pay Less are having another warehouse sale this weekend, this time at the YMCA. (Click to enlarge the map.) I might be tempted meself!

Postscript:

And here's another source of cheap books, found via good-ole Facebook!

Secondhand and nearly-new books for sale at The Dram Projects to raise funds for the MY-UK Project, a creative arts exchange between Malaysian and British kids.

The aim of this exchange is to, ultimately, enable the participants to share with their communities what they have learnt, through performances and workshops.

Saturday, March 1, 2008
Time: 9:00am - 3:00pm
Location: The Dram Projects, BG-6 Happy Mansions, Jalan 17/13, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Xcessively Cheap!

Fancy some cheap books? Christy Yoong of Starmag interviews Jaqueline Ng (left) of Bookxcess which has now moved to a much bigger shoplot in Amcorp Mall.

How did the books get there at such low prices?

All the books in this store are remainders or overprints. Remainders are unsold books returned to publishers by bookstores and distributors, while overprints happen when publishers overestimate demand.

“Previously, publishers would just pulp these unsold books when their warehouses are full,” Ng says.

“Now that there’s a demand for these books, they are happy to get back something from their original investment.”

BookXcess is part of a worldwide consortium that buys these books in bulk from publishers like Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, Headline-Hodder, Random House, Paragon, Penguin and Walker.

“The publishers want to get the books out of their warehouses to make space for more books coming in, so they just pack everything and send them out,” Ng explains.

The number of books shipped out is mind boggling – literally in the hundreds of thousands – and BookXcess, one of the smallest members of the consortium, gets about 8,000 new titles every two to three weeks.

There are plans for expansion - branches in Penang and Johor Bharu and even for a (gasp!) cheapy books hypermarket (which will surely have my friends in the established bookshops hyperventilating!)

A second article features Reader's Shack, an online book rental service. (Apologies - I meant to blog about this service some time ago after someone sent me this link to an article about it by Brigette Rozario in the New Straits Times.)

Reader's Shack was started by Lau Sie Sing who is in IT and engineer Lily Liang.

In the early days the enterprising couple would even meet their customers at LRT stations to pass on and retrieve books but as the business grew (largely by word of mouth praise) they now have to mail the books out. They now have about 500 registered users.

(For those in other parts of the world where the whole concept of book rental is alien, basically you pay the full price of the book when you rent it. When you return it, you get that amount back, minus the cost of rental. If you don't return the book, there's no problem - you just don't get your money back. As a book gets tattier after subsequent rentals, the total cost of the copy drops. It's a very sensible system, particularly in a country where public libraries are inadequate but many can't afford, or haven't space to store, their own books.)

So don't you guys go complaining about the high cost of reading!

Cheapy Cheapy Books

Okay you stingy fellows out there who need a quick bibliofix at rock bottom prices, this is a great time to pick up a bargain.

Pay Less are having one of their amazing warehouse sales:

(Find a map to the place on this previous post.)

Big Bookshop in Atria has new stock piled high at low low prices. It's not so much a warehouse sale these days as an almost permanent fixture! I went on Sunday, bumped into Natasya (who took this less than flattering photo of me in my Sunday morning scruffiness) and Roy, and was happily passing you-might-enjoy-this-es to them. I didn't find the fiction too exciting, but was delighted to find a book I had on my wish list: The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction, and several others I haven't even had time to open yet.

Someone told me that BookXcess in Ampcorp Mall have moved to a larger shoplot, but I haven't been there to check it out.

The hypermarkets did piss me off the other day, but I'm glad that Tesco is selling remaindered Penguin Classics along with the frozen peas. Jordan wrote to tell me that he had picked up some great bargains at the Kajang store including James Joyce for RM6 which is a steal. (Loss leaders again??)

MPH has very generous discounts at the moment for their Merdeka Sale with up to 20% off selected titles and 15% off all books. (I just bought Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union in a beautiful hardback edition for for around RM55 after discount!)

And, dear bookshop people, I am always happy to pass on news of special offers to the readers of this blog, so why don't you drop me a line?

All of these sales I have heard about from friends, through rumours, or by going to the store. Not via email from the booksellers.

One Shouldn't ...

... but one does.

Books purchased yesterday at Big Bookshop warehouse sale (yes, another one) on at Atria, Damansara Jaya until 25th March. Incredible bargains on incredible books, many of them Penguin.

Bookxcess in Amcorp Mall, P.J. also has new stock in at low low prices.

Cheapo Cheapo Books

It can't be anything but good news when you come across a source of cheap copies of books you want to read.

I seldom go to Amcorp Mall, but went exploring on Friday and found several book rental shops, a branch of Pay Less and branch of Popular, and this ...

Some four years back Jaqueline Ng (pictured here with her husband) began selling imported magazines in Reissued for a fraction of the cost of current issues - most titles go for RM9.90, and it's possible to get magazines which are just a month or two old. It's a good place to stock up on reading material for specialist interests and some of the titles are not normally sold in Malaysia.

She has now started BookXcess in the adjacent lot, planning to bring in a plentitude of cheap books from the UK. She's using the same suppliers as Big Bookshop and plans to keep prices to the same level e.g. most fiction titles are going for under RM20. The difference is that you won't have to wait for a warehouse sale - the books will be this price year round. A new consignment will be here soon and she has promised to let me know when they arrive.

Meanwhile, if you are in Amcorp, do drop by and talk to Jacqueline about the kinds of books you'd like to see brought in and the kind of prices you'd be prepared to pay. The shop is located at Level 2-10. (And why not go browse when you drop by the Sunday flea market?)

Anyway I couldn't resist a few mags and bought Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones for RM19.90.

I also went off the the Times Warehouse sale. There were an awful lot of books there - as usual - but a lot I think were "recycled" from their previous sales and there was little fiction that I fancied.

I wasn't tempted go crazy, but found enough stuff to make me happy including Melvyn Bragg's 12 Books that Changed the World (which I had almost bought full price), Writing Poetry (in the Teach Yourself series but surprisingly useful), The Cat Owner's Manual (am a sucker for books on cats and this one made me laugh 'cos it's written in techie speak) An Instance of the Finger Post by Iain Pears (a novel highly recommended by friends some time back), and Shirley Lim's Joss and Gold (to fill a gap in my local reading).

Was a bit sad to see books getting bent and warped by the way they were arranged/ chucked on the tables. Even a remaindered book deserves respect.

And the biggest downside to the sale was the total hassle of trying to find a parking place where there were none at all to be had.

Not enough cheap books for you? The Big Bookshop warehouse sale is still on in Atria until the end of this month, though no new stock has been added. And MPH has a Bookfair and Stock Clearance Sale at its Subang Parade branch 17th-28th January, with discounts of up to 50%.

(Pic nicked from MPH website)