A most fully booked Reader's Haven

READER'S HAVEN is a bookstore that was set up two years ago out of the owner's frustration at not being able to find the books that he wanted in Brunei.

"The love for books came into play, somehow," says bookstore owner Edwin Wun. "I caught myself going to Singapore quite often and spending a lot of time in Kinokuniya. I realised if I was doing it, wouldn't there be a lot of other Bruneians doing it?"

This led to his assumption that some people would opt not to go to Singapore to buy their books if they could find them in the Sultanate.

When the bookshop, located in Jerudong, first opened on July 7, 2007, it specialised mostly in fiction. "With fiction, especially fantasy and sci-fi, if you've never read it, it can be new to you," Edwin explains.

One of the major challenges as a bookstore owner is being able to keep up with the latest books. With new releases every month, trying to keep up with them is a full-time job, says Edwin.

"I'm more of a 'gung-ho' type when it comes to book selection." When he first started out, it was mostly a trial-and-error affair. "I'd get a wide selection as possible and see what customers would come in for, and then work it out from there."

Edwin admits there is a bit of overlapping in some of the book selections amongst the competition, "but I believe I have gotten to the point where I have the largest selection of fiction works in Brunei," he says.

"But from what we've seen in the Brunei market, children's books really sell. Parents are more willing to spend on their children's books. This is the one point where I actually compete with, whether its a fully-focused bookstore or one of those stationery-slash-bookstores."

Edwin claims that he doesn't advertise his store, and instead relies on the age-old tactic of word-of-mouth in Brunei. "I don't know about you, but I never really notice the ads in the papers, unless it's a full-page spread or something like that. I do realise I should be making use of Web 2.0 (the second-generation of the Web that allows for open sharing of information) to advertise, so I guess I am slightly behind the curve on that."

Reader's Haven has so far been dependent on word-of-mouth, especially within the English language teachers community.

Edwin is also looking at taking his store online for the convenience of his customers, most likely by the year's end. "I'm not going to take orders online (though) because I don't think I can run a really secure website, so it's more like an online catalogue, and customers will be able to tell, in real time, what's in my inventory.

"But I also have a dilemma there. If my customers can see it, so can my competitors," he says. "I've tried making use of newsletters to provide notifications and updates for the members who have signed up. But I ended up having to apologise to everyone who signed up, because A, I have another day job, B, we are understaffed, and C, the resources weren't there. It's actually a lot of work."

He laments the lack of clear guidelines set by the authorities on what can or cannot be brought into Brunei.

"There is a rule of thumb nothing too saucy on the cover, no blatantly outrageous words, etcetera.

"But most of the time it's the comics and graphic novels that really get inspected. When it comes to certain genres like erotic novels, that's a no-no.

"Clearer guidelines would definitely help. If they had clearer guidelines, people wouldn't be bringing in the kind of books that cannot be sold here. If there were clearer guidelines, I think it won't put people off, and instead there'd be more entrepreneurs popping up.

"Transparency needs a much needed boost here."

Because it's a high-margin business, one would assume that it's highly profitable as well, Edwin says, but books move slow unless it happens to be one of those best-sellers the Harry Potters and so on. "But on the other hand, if you know that it's going to be a best-seller, everyone else does (sell it) too," he says laughing.

"This is why I focus on fiction because you never know when the books would sell," he says. "For example, people only really started buying Dan Brown's older works after the 'Da Vinci Code' franchise exploded in the mainstream scene."

The 2nd floor above Reader's Haven has been turned into a library four months ago for members who have signed up. "It's just something for the kids to use. The books available in the library are also on sale downstairs."

Edwin reckons he is not making as much money as his nearest competitor because he does not mark up the prices beyond what distributors suggest. "In effect, if you were to compare some of the prices here to some of the prices in Singapore, the books at my store are actually cheaper. Just look at the rental rates in Singapore, these bookstores have to pay a lot of money.

"We've had many requests from customers for special book orders. But every time a customer does that there is a tendency for the request to be very unique, and our distributors simply just wouldn't have them.

"We're still in the growth phase. It's a good thing that my earnings haven't plateaued. And technically, I broke even in April." The Brunei Times