What type of book sells best here? Indonesian travel guides?
No, novels are the most popular ones. Once in a while I can sell a travel guide, but I think most tourists already have Indonesian guidebooks when they arrive here. We have guidebooks for many other countries in Asia as well. How many books do you have here? Maybe a thousand. We have books in seven different languages — German, English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, French and Italian. How many books can you sell in a month? I don’t know, a hundred maybe. How’s business been since the twin hotel bombings? It didn’t affect the number of bules (foreigners) around here. In fact, at the moment there are lots of them. So, I guess they’re not put off by the bombing. It’s so much different to what happened after the 2002 Bali bombing. Business was dead, so, my brother, who started the bookshop beside this kiosk 10 years ago, had to close the shop and continue selling the rest of the books he had here at the kiosk. Do you simply sell used books or are travelers welcome to trade their books for yours
