Customers peruse the selection of books on offer at the Innwa book store in downtown Yangon.

BOOK sales in the past year are way down, say sellers, who have resorted to holding more special sales and fairs to compensate.

U Maung Maung Lwin, the manager of Innwa bookstore, said the book market has not been active this year at all and is way down on what it’s been in years past.

“This year on average has not been particularly good but since the middle of October our sales have dropped by 20 to 30 percent. I think that the reduced demand during October might be due to the number of festivals that take place at this time of year,” he said.

He said sellers have been trying hard to attract buyers by holding book fairs that bring together a number of dealers at one time and place.

Such fairs are not uncommon even in good years, he said, but the frequency of them this year has doubled from only two normally, to four already.

“We’ve run several book fairs this year on special themes; those kinds of promotions are good for buyers and sellers alike,” he said.

And while the fairs bring together a larger-than-normal range of books together in one place, U Maung Maung Lwin said sellers also offer discounts to further boost sales.

“Usually we give discounts of between 5-30pc depending on how many books a particular customer is buying,” he said.

These special sales boost sales by 50pc compared with a normal business day, he said.

U Kyaw Min, the owner of Zizawar Bookstore, said that depressed book market was also impacting his store, which specialises in rare books.

“My sales are down by about 30pc this year. People usually invest in books when they have extra money to spend,” he said.

However, U Kyaw Min, said that he believed other factors may be behind the slow demand.

“I think that the development of the IT sector may be one of the reasons that younger people aren’t so interested in Myanmar classical literature books anymore; young people just read for pleasure,” he said.

He said that in his opinion about 80pc of young people read only fiction novels and magazines, and most of his customers are aged over 30 or post graduate students looking for reference books.

“I find that educated older readers are the people who come to my shop looking for religion or philosophy books, while people who are 30 or older look for classical Myanmar literature,” he said.

U Kyaw Min said that because of the downward market, half of the book shop owners have swapped to other businesses.

He said the downturn started after Nargis and if it last for long time, small investors would simply disappear.

But he agreed that book fairs were a good way of winning back customers.
“Book fairs tend to bring new customers into the shop and I’m always interested in taking part in them,” he said.

Daw Swe Swe Naing, the owner of Amyin Thit bookstore, said that daily sales figures from book fairs are double, or even triple, what they are on a normal day.

“On fair days we have more space to use and can put our books into better managed sections, or on a certain theme. We can’t normally do that because we don’t have any space in our shop,” she said.

Daw Swe Swe Naing agreed with U Kyaw Min that Nargis had been the start of the sales downturn for her shop, adding that her sales are half what they were before May.