Booktique is a library based in Goa and delivering books to readers across North Goa using bicycles. They package their books using old newspapers. Thus reducing their carbon footprint to a great extent. The Booktique delivers and picks up the books for FREE.
The Booktique was started by two college students, Emmanuel Souza and Elijah D’Souza back in December of 2018. Over the last month and a half we received many of orders.
The Booktique aims is to make reading both cheaper and provide easier access to reading materials
Here is what Elijah D’Souza had to say about her operation in Goa.
In the start, I had around 50 novels that I bought online from Amazon. I realised, however, that buying books to read could get really expensive. That is when I started buying second-hand books from online sites like OLX. One day when I was traveling home from college on the bus I thought of starting an online library.
That’s when I messaged my best friend EMMANUEL SOUZA and told him about the same. He agreed that it was possible and that’s when we started buying novels in bulk from online sites. We then cataloged our books on a software and uploaded the list of books on Google drive. We then started an Instagram page called THE BOOKTIQUE. We started the site on 6th December 2018. We advertised on WhatsApp and soon people started following our page. Our site has over 300 followers and the follower count is growing rapidly.
Once people follow our page they contact us after which we send them a link to the list of books that we have. Once they choose a book they fill an online google form stating their name, contact number, email, address and the book they would like to read.
We then package the books using old newspaper. I being an endurance cyclist can cycle for very long distances thus I used this gift to deliver the books for free. to make a more hassle-free reading experience we deliver and pick the books for free anywhere in NORTH GOA. we charge a WEEKLY FEE of rupees 20. Once they finish reading they contact us and we collect the book.
As security for us, we collect rupees 100 at the time of delivery from which we deduct their weekly charges. We deliver the books in less than a week. Emmanuel takes care of the deliveries when I can’t deliver them as he cycles as well. At present we have approximately 700 novels to choose from across all genres mostly in English. There is no specific age group that we are targeting. We have received over 70 orders at the moment. We add nearly 100 books every month to our collection. This idea turned into a reality as we both worked hard on it planning how we can make reading so very cheap. The response so far has mostly been from youngsters and that is a good sign. Soon we will have a mobile app to place orders
Our mission is to get the youngsters back into the habit of reading.
We really did have a great response since we started.