In emails to fans of their store, BooksActually, Kenny
  Leck and girlfriend, Karen Wai, cheekily sign off as
  “BooksActually Kids”. In reality, they are anything
  but imps at running their much-loved indie book shop.

  By Hidayah Hassan

        Once upon a time, there was a lovely young couple who owned a lovely little bookshop tucked away at the second level of an old shophouse located along an aisle of coffee shops and offbeat dingy stores. No one, except for the occasional book lover, knew they were up there. There was hardly a sign at the door, save for the little logo plastered on the wall, and even then, the signage barely screamed for attention.

        The shop was green and white, serene and uncluttered, and it saw many languid afternoons. Filled with shop lady's own collection of rustic typewriters and nostalgic cameras, the shop felt like it was the couple's own warm abode. The couple themselves was an interesting pair. He was constantly clad in bermudas and often the chattier half, ready to rattle off facts on books any given moment. On the other hand, she was rather reserved, as pretty as a picture, and was extremely talented in drawing and decorating. Together, of course, they had an insatiable love for reading and all they wanted was to share this joy with others.

        No one thought the couple would survive the treacherous path of business, nay nay nay. They were young (boy, they were kids!) and grown-ups especially liked to think that the couple were nothing more than silly kids with silly dreams. They served tea and cakes to those who visited (but these freeloaders did not necessarily buy the books) and calmly manned their brainchild, the store, despite the salvo of brickbats thrown at them. These attacks were painful for the quietly resilient couple but they were adamant about offering people books actually worth buying. You could find the most acclaimed classic literature there, works of great authors from George Orwell to Vladimir Nabokov. Even lesser unknown creations from homegrown writers, like Cyril Wong, were proudly displayed side by side these great artistes.

        Everyday the couple watched the titles sit still on the shelves, and although they felt happy that the books remained there for more visitors to browse through, something did not feel quite right. They had spent a lot of money buying the books for people, and what good would it be if the visitors did not bring the books home? For nine months, the couple were stuck with the 1000 books they had, and did not buy more because they had no money left. Something had to be done. Because she was really good at making things, the couple started producing little hand-stitched notebooks, whimsical bookmarks and charming postcards. Soon enough, these made-with-love products started flying off the racks and the couple saved enough to buy more books.

        Many languid afternoons later, people began to take notice of the bookshop. And not just because they served tea, mind you. Popular cult magazines like Wallpaper started to feature their unique bookshop and people continued wondering, in a terrible mixture of awe and dispiritedness, about how they managed to survive. A little over two years later, the couple unveiled a much larger and lovelier shop located at a more expensive district. The teas were still available, the couple remained optimistic and the book collection grew by leaps and bounds. Would they live happily ever after?

        “People still think we're two kids,” says Kenny Leck in a resigned drawl and his girlfriend of four years and business partner, Karen Wai forms a small smile. While he is 30 this year, she is turning 24 and in the business world, that is considered relatively young.

        “We've been in this (business) for only three years, but I don't think it's fair to call us adolescents in business. We work very hard and we're seeing growth in the store,” Kenny continues, explaining one of the challenges of running Books Actually.

        In fact, combating challenges is all they've been doing since the inception of their book store. With $40,000 in the kitty, of which $20,000 was generously loaned by Wai's mother, the couple opened the bookstore at Telok Ayer Street in November 2005. The opportunity to do what they've always dreamt of presented itself to them – they were walking along the street when they saw a sign indicating that the space at level two was available for rent. A call later, before they knew it, they had a bookstore holed away where it was difficult to attract walk-in customers. The 900 sq ft space cost them $1,600 a month, and they had spent almost half the seed capital on getting the book supplies and the rest on the usual startup costs (computers, decorations, furniture, etc). On the first day of Books Actually's opening, their business bank account had no more than a paltry $300. Leck is very quick to admit that they had “a very bad business mentality”, where they put in maximum hours into the store and spent very little on themselves. The only form of luxury they savoured, up till today, are cab rides.

        “For the past three years, we haven't had a holiday; family and friends see us at the store and we don't hang out much with them,” adds Wai, who dropped out of school early this year to focus on the store. She was reading literature at National University of Singapore (NUS) and had a year and a half left in school before she decided to quit her studies altogether. Although it was an easy decision for her to make, it wasn't quite the same for her mother who wanted her to take up a degree after her Diploma in Film, Sound and Video at Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Leck had no such difficulty in his foray into business. He was previously an employee at Borders Bookstore, dealing with the inventory, merchandising and floor management, working there for two and a half years. And before that, he was working at now-defunct Tower Books, hence both places allowed him to learn about the book-selling business. After leaving Borders, he was at a lost and opening a bookstore seemed like a faraway ambition to him. His initial idea was to sell books online or start a book festival. With another friend, Rachel Chee, they decided to go with the former – start a book website. While looking for a model for the website (they needed pictures of people reading books, and Leck quickly volunteers that Chee and him weren't exactly photogenic), Leck stumbled upon Karen's picture via a mutual friend's blog. A request asking her to model for their beta website later, the trio became fast friends through their love for books.

        Wai helped Leck at NUS book fairs after she graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic where they sold a mishmash of classic literature and “bad books” which were run-of-the-mill popular chicklit (portmanteau for chick literature referring to contemporary romance books geared towards females) novels. One thing led to another, and while nurturing their relationship, their desire to open a bookstore also manifested.

        Leck dishes out a sepia-tinged photograph of the former Books Actually and bellows out a guffaw. “See how sparse the store was and we didn't realise how empty it was until we saw this picture. We thought it was perfect! Very Swedish, very Nordic.” Wai continues, “We wanted to portray ourselves as specialists in literature but this,” she points to the image, “was the reality. We don't know how many people actually felt 'cheated'. We definitely lost a lot of customers during our first year.”

        Although many came to Books Actually because it was quaint and novel, most returned to the bigger chains to get their literature fix, primarily due to the wider range and slightly cheaper prices. The retail outlets also provided customers with bigger discounts if they become members; always a plus point for frequent book buyers. With Borders, Kinokuniya and Page One ready to crush the smaller players with their bulging muscles (read: discounts), any observer could easily conclude that the future for Books Actually, a small player, is bleak.

        Even Leck knows this. “The biggest barrier to this business is the amount of capital needed to start it. Everything you see on the shelves is money. Money is being displayed in the store. You can't return unsold books. The power goes to the retailer because they buy in bulk and get more discounts from the suppliers. Hence they can afford to stretch their profit margins.” Profit margins go up to 55% for big retailers and for Books Actually, the range goes from 30% to 40%.

        “We don't see the bigger stores as competitors. In fact we love Kinokuniya. We started a bookstore because we love books and we do want people to read. It's a good thing that people are buying books and we feel that the pie is big enough for us to share. It's just a matter of how we run the business.”

        That opinion is clearly shared within players of this small industry as a number of niche book stores have been mushrooming over the last decade, and surprise, surprise, are not just surviving, but have carved out reputations of their own.

        Just to name a few, these independent stores include Bookaburra, 25 Degree Celsius and Basheer Graphic Books. Bookburra, located at Forum The Shopping Mall, specialises in children's books started by two Australian expats in 1998. 42-year-old housewife Jenny Goh visits the store for trusted recommendations from co-owner Lynette Thomas for books to read to her 4-year-old son. “You wouldn't receive personal attention like this at the bigger stores, and even if you do, chances are they (the bigger stores) wouldn't know what books are best for kids.”

        25 Degree Celsius, a newly-incepted store, is a chic cafe-cum-bookstore establishment situated along Keong Saik Road, that serves gourmet grubs along an equally delicious range of cookbooks. Foodies from professional chefs to culinary hobbyists frequent this little haunt to grab books while having a coffee pudding.

        Basheer Graphics Books is a mecca for any designer worth their creative salt. It is almost like an institution with a constant supply of the latest design books – from advertising to architecture – and have spread its wings around the region with branches in Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.

        Competition is almost non-existent amongst the smaller bookstores because they specialise in different genres altogether but there is one common thread that connects them. On top of merely selling tomes, customers flock to these haunts because they provide an all-encompassing experience sorely missing in the bigger chains. BooksActually started organising events like poetry reading and exhibitions a year after they opened and are making these sessions more regular, acting as a platform for artists to showcase their works.

Today and Tomorrow

        Three years flew by and BooksActually's supply of books have more than triplicated from 1000 to 4,500 books in the store. They replenish the supply every fortnight lugging 6 cartons each time, with easily 150 fresh titles placed on the shelves. Their little “sweatshop” of handmade goodies (those charming notebooks and bookmarks) is still going strong, and comes under their brand, Birds and Co.

        Last year the duo decided to try their hands on publishing and invited customer-turned-fan-turned-friend, local poet, Cyril Wong, to be their “guinea pig” for their first project under Math Paper Press. Math Paper Press, the publishing arm of BooksActually successfully launched 'The Boy With The Flower That Grew Out Of His Ass', a tale on homophobia. Calling the hand-stitched book a “very pretty surprise”, Wong gets a small profit from proceeds of the sale. 300 copies were made and the book costs $26, a tricky price for them to decide on.

        “$26 is unheard of for a local title but we decided to break the barrier and it turned out to be our bestseller. So much effort went into the book because it was handmade and embossed so the price is justified. We broke even within eight weeks,” explains Leck. Their next action plan is to release a hardback version of the book by this year. One mistake which they admitted to was turning down Select Books and Kinokuniya when these bigger stores wanted to carry Wong's books. Any businessman would have grabbed that opportunity and make a windfall. Leck bravely attributes that little blunder to sheer inexperience.

        Not all is lost for the very same book has made its way to Sweden, where one of their friends brought some supplies to a bookstore there. Gaining international reach has always been one of their plans as they hope to present the local literary scene to a wider audience. On the other hand, writers spanning the globe have also taken notice of their “sweatshop” and they've received manuscripts from Australia and Malaysia. Karen vigilantly scrutinises their work and reveals that writers, like any other artist, are precious about their works. At the end of the day, supporting the arts is what their business is about and they offer their shop space for readings and launches, often at no charges when the events suit the store's identity.

        A quick visit to their Facebook group page (everyone has a Facebook page these days – it's the fastest way to communicate ideas and updates), their fan count would be the envy of many other startups. A whopping 1613 people have declared themselves devotees of BooksActually, even though Kenny and Karen do not diligently log on to the popular social networking website. And who can blame them? This Generation Y couple is busier than usual these days. Leck just recently hosted his first exhibition titled “A Literary Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas on the Human Condition” at Grey Projects, a new art gallery at Zion Road. The extravagant title might take a while to decipher but it is basically a showcase paying homage to political theorist Hannah Arendt. Leck successfully interpreted her literary works into art pieces, encapsulating them within boxes which he painstaking pieced together.

        Entrepreneur turned artist? Whatever pleasant surprises these duo have up their sleeves, they can be sure they've got an audience waiting with bated breaths for the unveiling. All 1,613 of them.

Quirks and Quotes from BooksActually

Kenny and Karen have a pet kitten called Cake kept in the bookstore. This mischievous fur friend was a stray which they picked up, and scratches everything that comes his way.

“Die die must survive” is the practical philosophy embraced by Kenny when it comes to running the business.

All the vintage cameras and typewriters are Karen's personal collection of knick-knacks which she gathers from her dad or from ebay.com. Some of they still function, some of them are dead artifacts.

“I think God will play a joke on us,” voices the couple. They unanimously believe that their children will hate reading and that they (their children) will sell away their book collection when they both are deceased. Hence the ultimate plan to open a book museum where their beloved books are kept safe.

Karen, who was reading literature studies at NUS, dropped out of school recently to focus on the bookstore. While her mother was not too happy about that decision, she recalls with a glee, Karen is relieved to be able to focus on what drives her most – Kenny and the bookstore.