Seen from the street, the gray container with yellow letters looks like a temporary auditorium and those who don’t know, may not realize that books are also sold there.
Inside, located in the space of Associação Boutique da Cultura (at Av. do Colégio Militar, near Colombo), is the Livraria Solidária de Carnide – where prices range from one to five euros. All books are within these values - from the international bestseller The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, to the national bestseller Bilhete de Identidade, Maria Filomena Mónica’s memoir.
Since it was created three years ago, the bookstore’s sales have continued to grow. For the association’s president, Paulo Quaresma, the secret of success lies in donations. “At the beginning of the project we had many doubts if we would have as many donations as that and we were very surprised”, he says.
The bookstore lives on offers from individuals (and some from publishers), which allows those who have books at home to get rid of them without having to put them in the recycling bin, and allows other people to buy them at affordable prices. The bookstore accepts all types of books in Portuguese, except textbooks, technical books, dictionaries and encyclopedias.
“We appeal to people to donate books and with them we opened a bookstore. These books are all offered for sale at very attractive prices”, explains Paulo Quaresma to DN.
Revenues from sales revert to the Boutique da Cultura and are channeled to the “creation of jobs for young people” who work in the bookstore itself or in the production and development of the association’s cultural projects.
“Many of the plays that we take to the stage, the edition of books, the works of adaptation of our cultural spaces – all this is the result of the sale of these books”, says Paulo Quaresma.
“Our expectations for this bookstore were exceeded. We haven’t run campaigns to donate books for over six months. And every day, even during periods of confinement, people contact us because they have books and want to donate them” , explains the former president of the Parish Council of Carnide.
Giving new life to books
Paulo Quaresma knows this area of Lisbon well and it was in the parish that he directed between 2002 and 2013 that he started the project of staged readings Good Night, eight years ago. In the beginning, it was “an informal group that did some shows” and as it gained dimension it made sense to form an association, explains the former mayor.
“We had a group of people who liked this issue of books and reading and we thought about the amount of books that are thrown away every year”, he describes. “The motto of this was to give new life to books” and, at the same time, to contribute “to help democratize access to books”.
Books are cheaper than in a traditional bookstore but they are not less valuable to those who buy them. All donations are evaluated and analyzed exhaustively to ensure that the books offered for sale “have quality”, assures the association’s artistic director.
“A sorting is carried out to see which books are of good quality. Some are torn, damaged, others written down. These go for recycling or for other projects that we have where we are able to give new life to the paper”, describes João Borges de Oliveira. Only books in good condition are cataloged “to be available online for our users and here, for those who visit us, when we have the store open.”
For João, this separation of books is another factor behind the bookstore’s success. “Customers who visit us for the first time, when they come in, say: it doesn’t smell like a used book. Because the used book always has that characteristic smell” – and the books they put on sale on shelves made from old fruit crates don’t.
“We don’t sell used books, we sell books already read”, reinforces Paulo Quaresma.
Catalog of eight thousand books
Among copies already read, handled and “almost new” there are approximately “eight thousand books available in catalogue”, says João Borges de Oliveira. The number grows in the days of cataloging the donations, and although sales have gone up, the catalog has remained stable. All because the books didn’t stop arriving, even when the bookstore was closed due to the state of emergency and the duty of confinement. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the number of people calling and scheduling deliveries has multiplied.
“During this period of pandemic, the number of donations increased significantly”, recognizes João, advancing with an explanation. “People are at home and they’ve started going through their books and sorting through what’s important and what’s not.”
There are many children who “inherit” their parents’ books and end up donating them to the Boutique da Cultura. Some are very old, unique copies or rare and valuable editions. When it receives one of these books, the association gets in touch with second-hand booksellers who buy them. “We have already received books that are currently on sale on the market at 250, 300 euros”, says João Borges de Oliveira.
All theater-related books that arrive through donations are not offered for sale. It is a theme that “is part of the genesis of the Boutique da Cultura” and with these “we are creating our own library”, he says.
Another curious aspect of donations has to do with what they find between the pages of the books: photographs with dedications, show tickets, love letters and many other things with which one day the association’s artistic director plans to put together an exhibition. In addition to these “objects” there are books that arrive with inscriptions and dedications. “The other day I found a book signed by Amália Rodrigues”, he recalls.
Portuguese authors who “don’t heat the shelves”
During periods when the bookstore was closed, work “behind the scenes” did not stop. At the beginning, the catalog was “condensed in an Excel sheet” that could be consulted by all who visited the Boutique da Cultura website – a “very rudimentary way of making information available to those who wanted to buy our books over the internet”, recognizes Joao Borges de Oliveira. With the increase in requests, the bookstore had to adapt its online store. The site was revamped in record time – thanks to the help of a company that did it for free – and the list of books can now be consulted through a simple search by the author’s name, for example.
“We were not expecting such a significant increase in online sales. Even because we are talking mostly about books that have already been read and there is always a type of public that doesn’t like it very much”, he admits. And what are the most sought after “second hand” books? João Borges de Oliveira highlights two Portuguese authors. “José Saramago barely arrives, he leaves. That’s why he doesn’t even warm up the place on the shelf… And so does José Rodrigues dos Santos.” Among books of foreign literature, novels also tend to stay in the catalog for a short time.
“Many times our volunteers or interns are still tidying them up on the shelves and someone is already saying: we’ve already received the order, don’t pack it because you’re leaving,” he concludes smiling.
elsa.rodrigues@vdigital.pt