World’s biggest book sale opens in Dubai

Imran Mojib, Special Correspondent

It takes several generations to change a society unless it gets educated. For a faster transformation of any society, you need to present good books to kids, said Andrew Yap, Founder of the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale.

“We just need to introduce a book to a kid. Our job is to build a new generation of readers. If you put right books in a kid’s hands, as long as the kid can read, it changes his mindset,” he said.

The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2019 started in Dubai on Wednesday with a day dedicated to invited guests. The sale, featuring over three million books, will open for public on Thursday. The 24-hour sale, offering discounts ranging from 50 per cent to 80 per cent, will continue till Oct.20.

Talking to the Gulf Today, Yap said that getting millions of books across the world to underprivileged children, to the grassroots, will move the needle in terms of poverty. “The poor will help each other more and you will see a whole new world, if you educate them,” he said.

The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2019 has a bigger number of books than the last year, as the organisers have learnt from the first year’s experience. They collected all the data and analysed it to know what type of books our customers in this part of the world love to read.

He said that children’s books form the biggest category. Other top categories include business and self help, which also reflect the demography of the people in this country as most of them come here to work and want to improve themselves.

“That is certainly what our mission is all about. We want people to benefit from books we bring. As we know that it is benefiting them, we have brought many more new titles to serve the cause,” he said.

Yap was excited with the opening day’s response. He said that the response was tremendous when the sale was organised in 2018, and expressed hope for a better response this year.

“There is a true hunger for knowledge. Despite digital media’s influence in our lives, people still wants to read the written world in physical form. Our mission is to grow as fast and go around the world,” he added.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation’s publishing arm Qindeel is participating in the sale on a bigger scale. It has sold sold more than 70,000 books in Arabic from participating Arab publishing houses during the sale in 2018.