It all started in 1990, repeat costumers were mostly book readers hoping to chance upon the titles of their favorite authors. They were the happy side of business, appeased with their finds and and eager to go back for the next weekly delivery. Some of them have stories to share, and before leaving passed me lists of books they wanted to include in their private library. Paperback novels from Booksale was so cheap and being a big buyer, I was given a call each time they have new arrivals. Filling out the customers' book preferences were a bit easy those days. Not one of them haggled and most of them are thankful for the lower price they pay.
The reign of the queen of darkness, caused a daily 10 hour brownouts, so I decided to let go my photocopier and electrical repair shop. The repair shop was hard to manage since its quite difficult to guarantee the works of the technician I employed and handling complaints drained my patience. What started off as "second hand garage sale type store' was then named Juleric Rent-a-Book. With no TV, radio and playstation during brownout, reading books or "pocketbooks" (as most refer to Tagalog novels) became the favorite past time while waiting for the lights. Tagalog serialized comics were slowly being edged out by Valentine Romance and other tagalog romance novels.
The Pinoy comics was marginalized. With the rising cost of printing, the comics business was slowly being eased out by the tagalog novels. After a year, sales of books covered only a third of our income while two-third came from renting out pocketbooks. Book collectors still visit our store regularly taking with them their friends, and friends of their friends. I have to employ a couple of helpers to accommodate the costumers especially on rainy days and weekends. The brownouts was shortened to four hours a day but new costumers keep coming.
Never a dull day ... By the end of 1992 we have over 2,000 members renting out tagalog pocketbooks and about 500 members who preferred english novels. The tagalog readers just pick out whatever was new and since most of them were housewives, the bookstore became sort of social club where stories about what they read about were shared. I took care of the english readers by putting up collections of books per author and buying new releases. I have books lined up for my regular english readers that they usually get what I reserved for them and made request for the next title they would like to read.
What I enjoyed most in serving costumers was the way they appreciate the efforts I exerted in trying to provide them the titles they have been long searching for. Unsolicited friendship as you may call it, sharing ideas and reflections from the books we read, and recommending some titles which they believe I too would appreciate. The eyes can tell as well as the smiles, for at times they reveal a part of of themselves from the books that they pick. Considering that almost all my costumers were women, I enjoyed every minute of the conversation, falling in love with beautiful minds and at times feeling attracted to some. The first 3 years was indeed our golden years.
The golden years ended the second week of 1993. Just 3 days after I was featured in the Life and Leisure Section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer titled, "The Masa Doesn't Only Read Comics", an isolated fire destroyed our bookstore. It lasted only 30 minutes with the fire fighters responding after only 15 minutes, partly gutting down the one storey, 30 square foot commercial stall yet completely ruining nearly 5,000 books. Only the exposed sides of the books were torched but they were all soaking wet. Adding insult to the fire was the garbage collector's refusal to collect the damaged books since they termed them as fire debris instead of garbage. I was asked to pay 700 pesos to have the "debris" collected. And then came some more "vultures" - the fire investigators and the insurance adjuster, and topping the cap was the real estate tax collector who argued that since the fire broke out the 13th day of the first month of the new year, real estate tax for improvement still should be paid.
We have to start all over again ... with 3 kids in tow, we decided to rebuild. Now we have to pay the rent for the new store we will occupy, and hope that the 2,000 plus costumers we have before will continue patronizing us. But tha's another story.
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