As long as the book comes with a story, travelers are content. There’s no better place to find stories than in a secondhand bookshop. And in Thamel, you won’t have a hard time finding what you’re looking for.[break]
Travelers on their way often only have a tiny space in the corner of their backpack to squish in one book. Because you don’t want to stop reading after finishing your book, you can save space and money by selling it and buying a used one. That way you get two stories for the price of one.
Although the Nepal Book Depot has been running since the past 25 years, the trade in used books is only going on there for six years.
“I started offering secondhand books because tourists came in the shop asking to sell their used books. When the demand for cheap secondhand books became bigger and bigger, I decided to start trading in used books as well,” the owner explains (name withheld at request).
Nonetheless, the owner does not accept all books customers want to sell.
“First of all, I don’t buy photocopies, only original books are welcome in my shop,” she says and adds, “The books have to be international bestsellers or travel guides and stories about Nepal because they are most popular with tourists. I only have a small amount of secondhand spiritual books.”
Love notes or drawings in the novel you bought can come as pleasant surprises. Less nice ones are the coffee stains or missing pages the last reader kept to himself.
“Nearly 15% of the secondhand travel books we buy have pages missing,” says the owner of the Nepal Book Depot, “If I find out that there are pages ripped out of a book while the owner is still here, I refuse to buy it. When it’s too late, I make a note on the cover and try to sell the book at a much cheaper price.”
Not far from this shop, you can find the Summit Book House. Just like the Nepal Book Depot, their clientele consists mainly of tourists. The shop offers a wide range of new and used books in every possible language.
Anup Khadka, nephew of the owner, admits he likes to read some of the used books before they find their way to the packed shelves.
“The shop is getting quite crowded. At first, we weren’t picky in buying used books, but now we have to be selective, because we are running out of space,” he explains. “So we only accept the types of books tourists are looking for.”
The prices of books vary, but in general, you can find used books for at least half the cost of a new one, so it is worth paying a visit to different bookshops to compare prices. This is the most important reason customers prefer secondhand bookshops. But the idea of giving a second life to a book also sounds attractive to a lot of travelers. Thomas from Australia says, “There’s something more authentic about the story when the book has been used before. You get the feeling that you can share the story with the last owner.”
Although tastes may differ when it comes to picking books, according to these bookstores, tourists generally like to feel nostalgic while reading travel stories or good old classics. Also the spiritual and tourist guidebooks find their way to the hands of curious travelers.
These popular tourist books, however, can’t be found at Vision Books. It is a somehow different secondhand bookshop, hidden from the main road. The difference lies in the clientele.
“I sell books to people who are working on their Masters degrees and need to read specific literature,” relates the owner (name withheld at request), who opened the store four years back. “Some books are hard to find, that’s why I sell them for higher prices, but most secondhand books are cheap.”
While other bookshops in Thamel aim at tourists, the former manager of the famous Pilgrims Book House decided to start a bookshop where mostly locals can find their literature.
“I work with the buy-and-sell rules; I don’t want people to just swap books because then they would bring rubbish books and pick great literature,” he states.
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