It'll Huff and It'll Puff

We went to the Big Bad Wolf sale in Manila the other day, and it was a blast. I was simply accompanying and didn’t plan on buying anything–lord knows I have plenty of books that I haven’t finished reading at home–but there’s just something unreal about being in an arena filled with so many books (and people) that you can’t help but be simultaneously taken aback and dumbstruck at the same time. I’m pretty sure it was what Noah probably felt like when he’d set the ark adrift, and suddenly had to deal with the enormity of his endeavor.
My girlfriend brought home several (I use the word loosely) books that she normally wouldn’t have bought from the expensive shelves of Fully Booked and National Bookstore, since they were unquestionably at a pretty decent steal. I’m pretty sure that had we had the opportunity to go there during the earlier days of the sale, the haul would have been much bigger, as we were starting to see emptier tables throughout the arena on the third day of the sale alone.

To put that in perspective, It’s good to remember that there were roughly two million books up for grabs at the sale. For display counters to start going empty in as early as three days after the sale began, it would mean that a specific selection of items in the inventory–let’s say around 1/16 of the entire inventory–started running out in a mere seventy-two hours. That’s 125,000 books all in all. When you start reckoning everything in numbers, it gets even more impressive, because that means that the sale was selling around 1,737 books an hour.

It’s also pretty interesting to note that a good portion of the sales is going to the benefit of Gawad Kalinga communities throughout the country. Even cooler is the fact that majority of the staff manning the counters and the floor of the World Trade Center are individuals from these communities as well. And while that meant that there were hiccups along the way–which I will discuss in a later post, after I’ve had the time to mull over it–it still meant that the Small Good Sheep (I think this was the corporate name of the outfit?) would still donate a pretty sizeable amount to charity communities.

I’m pretty sure that the booksale is still nothing when compared to stalwarts in the industry like Booksale or Chapters & Pages, both of which are still pretty legitimate treasuries with occasional golden finds which makes every trip to a Booksale branch a fairly fun treasure hunt. But, as a passive observer this time, I found that there was one other aspect of The Big Bad Wolf sale that was pretty appealing: the chance to see a good percentage of the metro’s reading community flock together, both in search and in queue. I ran into no less than two acquaintances in the sale, and read about at least three other people who were in the venue at the same time we were. What are the odds of that?

If you’re reading this at the time of it’s publication, then that means you still have a good ten hours at least to go before The Big Bad Wolf sale closes. Don’t let the bad press deter you from going to the venue. Let the bookworm in you lose, and head on over to the World Trade Center before the Wolf closes its gates to the public this year. If you don’t get to make it, though, don’t fret. I’m pretty sure the event will be back next year.