Three Famous Used Book Stores in Bangalore

Who wouldn't want the latest best-seller at half the original price? If it's in great condition, still better. The icing on the cake is if you can sell it back at where you bought it from at a reasonable price. Let's admit it : most books that make it to the best-seller list don't really deserve a place on our book shelves.

The Times of India, Bangalore edition in its series of covering home-grown retailers recently ran a piece on the city's most famous second-hand book shops on MG Road - Select, Blossom, and Book Worm; these shops boast to have many otherwise hard-to-fine books.

So, what drove these young entrepreneurs to think of starting seconds book stores?
“I’ve been a book worm and reading has been a passion all along,” Krishna says. While he was doing his graduation at an evening college, he set shop on the pavement on M G Road. His investment then was Rs 4,000 and the net profit about Rs 250 a day. This was between the years 2000 and 2002.
After his graduation, he had plans of opening a shop in Koramangala. “I was looking for a roughly 300 sq ft store, but didn’t find space. Eventually, Ifound a place at Shrungar Shopping Complex in 2003 that fitted my budget. Recently I opened another branch on Brigade Road Cross. In both shops put together, we have about 50,000 books and the total investment is about Rs 35 lakh,” says Krishna. Mayi too dreamt up the idea while he was still a student. “I’m an avid reader and noticed that Bangalore had only one seconds book store — Select. Soon after I completed my engineering, I set up a store
in 2001 which has now grown into this three storied building that houses about 5 lakh books,” he says. Select is one of the earliest seconds stores in Bangalore and its USP is its very rare collection of books. It was founded 65 years ago by K B K Rao and is now run by his son K K S Murthy and grandson K Sanjay. “People call to say they have rare copies of books, which we sift through and take. We also source books from Mumbai,” says Sanjay. Select also keeps a few new editions like Vikram Sampath’s book on the Mysore Wodeyars, the History of Vijayanagar and the History of Coorg. “There’s not much point in keeping easily available books like White Tiger,” he says.
But for the past six years, it hasn’t been easy finding rare books. Sanjay thinks people now probably see greater value in them and don’t want to part with them quickly.
Krishna and Mayi have sourcing agents across cities. “I have sourcing agents in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. Most of our rare books are from paper stores,” says Mayi.

If you know of any other famous used-book stores, leave a comment.