Vendors, readers close book on fair good deal happier

A last-minute race for deals by avid readers helped vendors close the chapter on this year's book fair in a good mood on Tuesday.

That came with the fair, held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, opening at 9am and ending at 5pm, as is customary for the final day of the annual event.

Many book sellers upped, as in the past, their discounts to whittle down their inventories and customers responded by lugging in trolleys and suitcases to snap up the bargains.

Some parents and students too joined in the race by coming in with budgets of up to thousands of dollars to score supplementary exercise books at cheaper prices.

One secondary student, Alexander, told RTHK he enjoyed the atmosphere at the book fair and would return next year.

A director at an English-language tutorial centre, who is a regular at the fair year in and year out, said she came in with a HK$3,000 budget to buy exercises for her students and managed to score a 25-percent discount deal at one of the stalls.

Some book sellers were happy, saying this year’s fair saw a rise in their turnover, with one vendor pointing out a surge in both customer and sales numbers.

“For our store, our sales were much better than last year's, which is exciting news for us,” he said.

“We also had quite a lot more visitors coming to our booth this year, so it has been pretty good for us.

Another seller said business was up 10 percent compared to last year in spite of adverse weather conditions.

The reverse was the case for one vendor, but he said his company was still eager to participate in the book fair to reach out to more readers.

Edited by Aaron Tam ...