As the cofounder of BookXcess and Big Bad Wolf, Andrew Yap is the most powerful bookseller you likely don’t know. BookXcess was founded in 2009 as a bricks-and-mortar and online bookstore chain in Malaysia. Today, BookXcess runs 18 bookstores in Malaysia, as well as five stores in Singapore. “The stores in Singapore are different” than those in Malaysia, Yap said. “They are inside OCBC Bank branches, instead of in traditional retail locations. Real estate in Singapore is too expensive, but the chairman of the bank—who on his retirement, wanted to create a lasting legacy—asked us to open bookstores inside the bank branches, and we did.”

Better known overseas is Big Bad Wolf Ventures, which runs massive, multiday pop-up sales across Asia, selling remaindered and hurt English-language books. In 2019, the Sharjah Book Authority of the United Arab Emirates invested in the company, which helped extend its activities to the Middle East and Africa. Big Bad Wolf has hosted book sales in 37 different cities in 15 countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.A.E. In 2022, Big Bad Wolf held its first pop-up event in Africa with a September sale in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, as well as another in December in Nairobi, Kenya. Both events offered half a million books for sale over nearly two weeks. Future events are scheduled for Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Kampala, Uganda, among other cities.

The figure of half a million titles may seem large, but the company’s sales in Kuala Lumpur, where the firm is headquartered, are many multiples larger than that. The most recent sale, which ran from December 19 through January 2, offered 3.5 million books for sale in-person and another 500,000 books online.

Yap sees his work as both a business and a mission. “We saw that people’s inability to access books was a global problem, so we started the company,” Yap said. To date, Big Bad Wolf has sold 31 million books to six million customers. Yap means it when he says he wants used books to “change the world.” Big Bad Wolf’s efforts have also extended help to rebuild Malaysia’s library network, which was devastated during severe flooding in December 2021. Yap saw the destruction firsthand, noting that Big Bad Wolf lost millions of books when its warehouse flooded. “Through the Big Bad Giveback program, we hope to build 2,000 community libraries through donations.”
A donation of 20 Malaysian ringgit ($4.75) buys three books for a library, while 3,500 ringgit ($780) buys an entire library.

So how does a company that depends on a steady supply of remainders and hurts from English-language publishers intend to survive in an environment in which publishers are struggling to get enough books printed, the cost of shipping containers has doubled, and there are fewer instances of overprinting overall? “It’s true it is becoming more of a challenge to find enough books for our enormous sales, and publishers are getting better at managing their supply chain,” Yap said. His solution is one that will interest American publishers: he wants to encourage publishers to take existing backlist titles that continue to sell, but in relatively modest quantities, and print editions exclusively for Big Bad Wolf. “You can print a book for 40¢ or 50¢ in China. We can buy maybe 10 million books a year. So we’d like to order 5,000 or 10,000 copies of each book at a time. We will do the whole thing. You order the print run in China, we collect it and write the publisher a check.” Yap is open to copublishing arrangements for publishers who only need a small number of titles shipped overseas and are willing to allow the remainder to be sold by Big Bad Wolf at its regional sale events.

Initially, Yap believes that the big publishers in the U.S. and U.K. may balk at the idea, fearing cannibalization of the market. He is more confident that he’ll succeed in working with Indian publishers. “There are 1,000 Indian publishers who have never sent a book out of the region and have a vast supply of titles,” he said. He added that Big Bad Wolf won’t commission print runs of just any books, but will focus on titles that consistently sell and for which there is a perennial need, such as board books, ABC books, children’s books, and business books.

“I am trying to reverse engineer the process for us to acquire content,” Yap explained. It’s counterintuitive, he admitted, but it’s in service of something larger. “I think if the world had more access to affordable books, if people were more educated, they would be more compassionate, and thus more capable of change. The world would be a better place. I know that may sound odd from a guy who looks like me [Yap, sleeved in tattoos that end at his neck, gives off a punk/metal vibe], but that is exactly what I believe.”