Preloved book industry flipping through market volatilities

Alex Grace has been saving up for a foreign book she saw at a local bargain book store in Manila in March.

- JASPER EMMANUEL ARCALAS

That book, a fiction novel, cost P165. She went back to the store after three weeks, P165 in hand.

She picked up the book, one of the missing pieces in her Hardy Boys collection. But the grin on her face was immediately wiped out by astonishment.

"It was P185 already," she told The STAR. "So I backed out." For bibliophiles like Alex, the P20 difference means a lot. She began collecting Hardy Boys mystery novels in high school. As a 22-year-old working Gen Z, her book preferences have turned to rarer editions of the fictional series.

"I have always wondered how they price the books. Is it based on quality? Because some of the preloved books are also almost the same price as brand new," Alex said.

The global preloved or second-hand book market industry has been caught by surprise with higher shipping fees and more expensive printing costs - a consequence of world market volatilities, from the US reciprocal tariffs to wars.

The situation has forced preloved book importers and sellers in the country to cope by either absorbing the additional costs or raising prices minimally.

Ripple economic effects

When US President Donald Trump announced on April 1 that he would impose reciprocal tariffs on US trade partners, Joshua Emmanuel Sison found himself in a bind. He knew that the higher tariffs would create ripple effects in the global market. He did not know just yet how his book business would be affected.

With the goal of trying to save on costs, Sison started frontloading orders to get the books at their current prices before any spikes happened. This, he said, was also to avoid delays in logistics. But what happened next surprised him more.