Books galore filling the store
Posted: Wednesday Mar 23, 2022
Books are piling so high in storage for the Regent Book Sale organisers reckon it is starting to look like the New York skyline.
The annual sale has been postponed for the past two years because of Covid-19 restrictions, and now book stocks were "bursting at the seams", organiser Alison Cunningham said.
"We’ve got such a lot of stock — tens of thousands of books.
"I think at the moment, we could probably build something like the Empire State Building out of the books we’ve got."
Earlier this year, another Covid-19 outbreak prompted organisers to cancel the sale yet again.
But since then, they have announced the sale will go ahead from April 1-10, under a new system in which people can buy a $5 ticket to enter the theatre for 90 minutes to buy books.
"You do have to book a spot. You can’t just turn up because we need to know that you’ve got a vaccine pass and it allows us to limit the number of people in the building to 100 at any given time."
She said people could buy multiple tickets to enter at different times.
"The ticket charge — we’re hoping that people would like to make that a donation, but they can reclaim that money against the books that they buy."
The Government is expected to make an announcement about the Covid-19 mandates today, but Mrs Cunningham said even if the Red traffic light setting or system was dropped, organisers would press ahead with the ticketing approach because a lot of people had already bought tickets, and "even if we can be less careful, a lot of the buyers will want us to not be less careful".
"So we’re going to stick with the Red traffic light setting."
She said many people would be running out of reading material, so the 40th anniversary fundraising book sale was a great opportunity to restock the shelves.
Having so many shows and events cancelled over the past two years had had a major financial impact on the theatre’s income, so it was hoped tickets for the sale would sell out.
"We have to do everything we can to keep our wonderful small team of staff employed," she said.