Without the fear of having to deal with an exorbitant shipping cost, let alone the question of whether or not your package will actually end up at your door, online vendor the Book Depository is shipping books to Argentine doors.
Founded in 2004 in London and first made available to Argentines in 2007, the Book Depository sets itself apart by offering free shipping on all orders, as well as a guarantee that your package will arrive within 20 days.
But according to Mitch Lang, a Senior Marketing Manager who joined the company in 2014, many Argentina-based customers have noted that their orders tend to arrive within seven days.
This year, Lang – along with other Book Depository employees – is taking part in the Buenos Aires International Book Fair to try and spread awareness about their product, as well as in an attempt to learn more about their Argentine audience.
“We came to the Book Fair last year, and were so impressed with the reading culture,” says Lang. “There aren’t many cities in the world that could have a book fair and have one million people come to it.”
According to Lang, Argentina is home to Book Depository’s largest customer base in both Latin America and the Spanish-speaking world. But it’s USP (at least for readers of the Times) might be in the way it offers easy access to English-language books, which can be hard to find in Argentina.
Located in the blue pavilion of the La Rural Convention Centre, the Book Depository’s stand is populated by book fair attendees who were likely drawn in by its vibrant ‘wheel of fortune,’ jutting out into the walkway and offering prizes of 15 percent off coupons and a chance to enter a raffle to win an iPad mini.
Aside from spinning the wheel, those who pass by are given the chance to interact with and provide feedback for the company’s exclusive Spanish-language website, which is available to look at on iPads placed throughout the stand and set to be released later this year.
“We encourage people to come down and take a look and give us feedback so we can improve it and get it right,” says Lang.
Right now, the website offers a wide variety of 20 million books to its customers, 750,000 of which are available in Spanish. But Lang says the company is actively working to increase their stock of Spanish language books, saying that they’re also at the Book Fair with the intention of speaking with Argentine publishers.
To get a better picture of just how many books the site has, the main wall of the Book Depository’s stand at the Feria del Libro is entirely taken up by a mosaic made up of various book covers. But even that is only made up of 10,000 books, let alone 20 million.
“Maybe some of the other retailers focus on the best-selling books only, but we want to provide selection and choice to our customers and that’s like our ‘All books to all’ motto, that’s where that comes from,” says Lang.
In addition to the Buenos Aires book fair, the Book Depository has made an effort to attend other international book fairs as well, including fairs that have been held in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand. In July, Lang says that they will be heading to a book fair in Hong Kong and overall, they’re targeting 10 book fairs this year.
“We want to be at the [Buenos Aires] Book Fair for the next 10, 20 years,” says Lang.
Book Depository’s website can be found at https://www. bookdepository.com/ and for the duration of the Book Fair they are offering a limited deal of 10% off all orders made by Argentine customers, using the code ‘BA10'.
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