Last year, New Market’s Zeenat Book Supply shut down on May 1, 2023. Zeenat was one of the oldest bookstores in Bangladesh’ Dhaka city and had been operating since 1963.
Syeed Faisal, owner of the bookstore, says:
“There were few other forms of entertainment when my father opened this shop in 1963. Radio and Bangladesh Television eventually arrived, but even that was limited. I still remember the days when we would arrive at the bookstore each morning to find huge lines waiting outside the shop.”
Faisal spent nearly 47 years looking after the bookstore. In the last few years in particular, he has seen the bookstore sell in three months what it used to sell in a day. Of its 25 registered importers, Zeenat has had to maintain trade with just one—all caused by the fall in demand for textbooks and leisure reading.
According to Faisal, the coronavirus made the situation even worse as students became used to online classes and reading books digitally.
But he explains that piracy is one of the main reasons which made them to close Zeenat Book Supply. All of the store’s books are imported original copies. While the pressure of taxes continues to inflate the prices of these books in Bangladesh, readers want to pay lower prices. Though taxes should not apply to some of these imports, the time and financial costs of navigating court cases far outweigh the revenues they would have earned from the books. The books themselves get damaged in stock during this time-consuming process.
In the meantime, most of these books get pirated and sold at surprisingly low prices. Few customers want to buy the original prices from stores like Zeenat which do not have the financial backing of larger bookstores or the technical expertise of younger staff to compete with digital promotions and online orders.
Navkiran Dhaliwal is a seasoned content writer with 10+ years of experience. When she's not writing, she can be found cooking up a storm or spending time with her dog, Rain.
