The Manila International Book Fair is among the many annual events that we look forward to as a family. This year's MIBF is held at the SMX Convention Center in SM Mall of Asia from Sept 14-18, 2016, from 10AM - 8PM. Admission Fees are P20 (Adults) and P15 for Seniors, PWD, and kids below 4 feet. I think Students also get a discount :)We were able to bring home several books for the kids and possibly early Christmas gifts for close friends ;)
Check out what we saw at the Book Fair!
You can't imagine what it feels like to be at the entrance to one of the biggest book sales in the country. It's like you start hyperventilating at the thought of all those books that may be yours for the taking :) That's exactly what all of us felt like. In fact, we should have been here yesterday but Patrick and I got caught in traffic and we lost a lot of time and we weren't able to come. Anyway, we were able to come today and we were just so excited to be here!
Once you get inside, you'll wonder where you'll start your quest for books. The venue is huge and you have to be clever in planning your route throughout the place. Ideally, we could have just headed over to the exhibitors' booths that we recognized like National Bookstore, Fully Booked and Adarna House, simply because we know where they are based on their posts on Facebook about the event. But to do that means you may miss some other exhibitor and their books. So, we decided to walk the whole venue from left to right. Yeah, tiring is an understatement! There were so many different types of books - academic, children's books, religious books, graphic novels, reference materials, multimedia packages, hobbies & special interest books and of course, bestselling novels.
We were initially drawn to the PSICOM Publishing booth because we recognize them and we've bought quite a number of their books before. Their booth was crowded with teens and young adults who were going crazy over the short stories and Wattpad publications. Dana was more interested in their instructional materials for drawing Manga comics. The How-To-Draw Manga materials were 3 for P100. Other books, like the recipes and local publications, were also available for 3 for P100. New releases were available for P100 each.
The Rex Bookstore booth was striking! It's like it was Halloween. Dylan was fascinated by this Devil Mask display. There were a lot of academic books here for High School and College levels.
Another favorite booth, judging from the crowd, is the WS Pacific Publications. They mostly have children's books that are priced so attractively! There are books in the P10 range! Activity books for kids are priced at P95 and higher. These are Disney-themed books, mind you, and some of them come with colored pencils and/or crayons and even bags! Perfect for Christmas gifts! :)
Their other booth has books for the older kids, like encyclopedic reference materials, cookbooks and even Marvel and DC-related reading materials :) These were a bit expensive at P350+ because they're hardbound and very thick.
Fully Booked and National Bookstore had easily the biggest areas. Most of their books were given 20% discounts. There were other bargain books that were scattered throughout their space so you really have to take the time to check every stand so you don't miss anything. There are a lot of Customer Assistants around should you need to just ask for a particular author or book.
Again, Dana gravitated towards the graphic novels section where she saw her favorite anime series in Manga form - Tokyo Ghoul, Attack on Titan, One-Punch Man and Naruto. These were around P400+. These pictures were taken at the Fully Booked booth. They had more of these graphic novels than National Bookstore.
National Bookstore had this complete set of Harry Potter books complete with chest! The piece that I saw had no tag price so I assume that this was around P7K-P8K, considering these books were Hardbound and there's a chest :)
I was also able to buy these Lang Leav books for a friend. These books were extremely popular! A lot of young adults were ogling them and racing to buy them. National Bookstore had these books encased in plastic. Fully Booked had them too but they didn't have any plastic on. Both "Love & Misadventure" and "Lullabies" went for P460 from their original price of P575. These were softbound books. "Memories", a Hardbound book, was P599.25 from its original price of P749. Dylan chose the "Reading Readiness" book, P79.25 from P99 and Dana got this "School for Good and Evil" book, P199.25 from P249.
Dana stopped by the Comic Odyssey booth where she saw, to her astonishment, My Little Pony Comic books! They were P200 each.
Now that I've come to the end of this post, it seems rather short considering the time it took to go through all the booths haha Actually, there was more than just books in this year's MIBF. There was a Lampara Storytelling contest, autograph signings, book launches and a lot more! If you need more information, visit the Manila International Book Fair website here.
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