How To Start A Bookshop Business In Nigeria

Starting a bookshop business, can never be a wrong decision on your part, as a person looking to start a profitable business. Because, people buy books on daily basis. Everyday, books are written on every topic and in all aspects of life. Students need books for the purpose of their learning. Individuals, whether important or not, need books on whatever topic that interests them. Professionals buy books for further understanding of various subjects in their profession.

Reading helps to increase literacy. When the literacy level in a particular society increases, it will affect the economy and other sectors, positively. That is why, there can be no end to books.

But, starting a bookshop business goes beyond just making the decision. Before you can start this business, like any other, you must have a passion for it and you must have gained knowledge about it. You also need to know the intricacies involved in starting a bookshop before starting the business at all.

First, you must decide what kind of bookseller you want to be. Do you want to sell all types of books or would you prefer to have a special category of books that you would sell? Do you want to sell second hand books or new ones.

Getting Books For Your Bookshop Business

Note that, starting a second hand bookstore will require that you have access to large collection of used books, gathering books over the years and relating with people who also love to read and keep their books may not be feasible. To help you to have a larger collection of books to start your second hand bookstore with, you need to import used books as well as new ones from the UK or USA, at an affordable price that will enable you make much money from the sales.

One benefit of importing books from the US is that, you don’t have to pay import duties as books from the US are not VATable. But, you must make sure that your supplier over there, includes the books on the customs form and also, indicates what the parcel contains on the form so that you can easily get it through customs, here in Nigeria.

Importing books from the UK is also as easy as importing from the USA. No import duties apply. Take for instance, you are importing books worth N596,036.63 from the UK, the shipping cost will be around N32,010, while the insurance will cost like N5,500. Making a total import value of N633,546.63, without import duty and vat. When you sell the books here in Nigeria, you can make up to N1,000,000. By so doing, you will be gaining around N360,000 with about 37% profit margin.

Get Money And Location To Start

Having known this and having made the necessary decisions, of course, the next thing to do is to source for money to start your bookshop business. This type of business requires substantial amount of money to start up, sourcing for capital may demand you to apply for loans from various financial institutions. You may have to borrow from friends or family members as well as your own saved money. Even if starting up drains you of all your finances, you can be rest assured that you will make returns on your investment in no time provided you apply due diligence in managing your bookshop business.

In choosing your location for the bookshop business, you need to locate a place where there is good density of human traffic. A place where you can find pedestrian traffic, school children, workers, individuals, even car owners moving to and fro. Such a place will be very good for a bookstore business. Also, you must furnish your bookshop with attractive bookshelves and counter similar to what we have on the picture above. This will help in organizing the books and it will make your bookstore more attractive to your prospective customers. You can also compartmentalize the store. In such a way that, customers will not have difficulty locating books of their choices.

A bookshop requires proper organization, as such, indexing is important in the proper organization of a bookstore. That is, classifying and arranging the books such that, books that are alike or in the same category can be found in the same place. In doing so, your store will always look attractive and organized to your customers. You can also do a window display. So that your customers can see the books from afar off and drop in to browse through and make purchases.

When starting a bookshop, you need to market and advertise your bookstore. You can write proposal to schools around your location, offering to supply books to their students and to give them discounts upon purchases. You should also set up a banner or a small signpost on your location. This will serve as a form of advert and a way to create awareness to prospective customers.

It is after you have done your business plan, raised capital, find a suitable location that you can go ahead to set up your bookstore.