LAHORE, Jan 12: Old books, sold or discarded, get to the shelves of book-lovers again at prices far less than those of the new ones, thanks to the city footpaths.

The footpaths, especially in and around Anarkali, serve as the sole suppliers of textbooks to hundreds of thousands of students who cannot afford to buy new books because of their high prices.

These books are strewn on the footpaths between the Government College and the old Law College every day. But, the market spills over to the footpaths on The Mall in front of the Commercial Building and in the main Anarkali Bazaar.

One can find book-lovers browsing through books on almost every subject and searching for the one of their choice. They include students, teachers, researchers, government officers, scientists and bookworms.

Many visit these footpaths with something on mind while some just want a good book on any subject. It requires expertise to haggle with the seller, who normally quotes a high price.

There is a kind of competition among book hunters and they try to take lead by getting to the footpaths early morning and selecting books before anyone else could see them. Alive to the situation, the sellers start displaying soon after dawn.

Students, especially of medical colleges, engineering universities and those studying computer science, are regular customers because of high prices of new books. They place an order if the required book is not available.

Many return the books to the sellers at low prices who again put them on sale. The stuff includes textbooks, English best sellers, English, Urdu and Punjabi literature, fashion, interior design and showbiz magazines, and digests both English and Urdu. Reading material on information technology was in great demand three years ago. Now the sale has declined, the sellers say.

Discarded library books or those stolen from libraries are brought here. Books from personal libraries of people are sold on these footpaths after their death. Those, who buy waste papers in the streets, are among one of the supply lines. The sellers also sift through the piles of waste paper dumped in Bund Road, Lohari Gate and Patiala Ground godowns. Street vendors and owners of godowns weigh and sell the selected material, but they give a preference to those offering high price. This leads to a competition among the footpath book sellers who keep in touch with the godown owners for new stocks. Afterwards, the “raw” material is processed. The damaged books and magazines are repaired and bound.

Old books and magazines are also sold at several kiosks in Anarkali near the Bible Society office, and some shops in the Gulberg’s Main Market and a plaza on the Main Boulevard. But prices of books here are much higher than those sold on the footpaths.

The trade in old books has entered a new phase with the import of rejected books in bulk from Singapore. Those in Lahore are still getting old books from Karachi and selling them to prospective buyers. Most of these books are on computer science and business administration and people say their prices are still lower than the new ones.

According to Muhammad Asif, whose father used to sell books on the footpaths, there is a slump in old books business because of extensive use of computers. He says the business has also been affected because of the decline in the reading habit of people. “But still, we are earning our bread and butter because of our large clientele among students,” he says.

Almost all booksellers say they do not bribe any civic agency or police for encroaching upon the footpaths. And they cite two reasons for the favour —- many high officials in almost all departments are their clients since their school days and whenever there is a problem, they approach them and they give concessions to those who can remove them from the footpaths, or do not charge them at all.