Reading The Future

Propelled by a desire to see the right books in the hands of more people, Jacqueline Ng’s faith in the road less travelled has been no less rewarding and impactful.

- Adelina Tan

With new books costing the equivalent of a few standard meals, they’re inevitably a luxury to the average Malaysian. We pick and choose carefully, checking reviews and asking around before plonking down good money for a paperback – having had to regretfully pass on the even pricier hardcover. It’s a sentiment Jacqueline Ng, the co-founder of BookXcess and Big Bad Wolf Books (BBW), is intimately familiar with. She grew up in a home without tomes of wisdom and lore, simply because her parents couldn’t afford them.

Together with Andrew Yap, her partner – in business and life – Jacqueline sold backdated magazines before taking the plunge into the book-retailing business. While the decision was partly motivated by changing consumer habits, the biggest push came from their wish to increase readership and English literacy levels by making books more affordable. How they do this is by getting remaindered books – unsold copies returned by traditional bookstores to publishers, who then sell them in bulk at a much lower price – into the hands of people through both the BookXcess stores and the travelling BBW book sale.

“We started with one small shop, in Amcorp Mall, with a minimal impact. But we wanted to do what we could; to change the landscape of retail in the smallest way possible. And, because we were so small, we weren’t in the position to say how much money we wanted to make,” Jacqueline recalls of those early days. She quips, “You know? As long as you don’t have to come out with more money every month to prop up the business, you’re the happiest person in the world!”