Bookstores selling imported works hit by rupiah woes

By Monika Winarto

JAKARTA (JP): Like other traders, Henky S. is busy adjusting prices of books in line with the fluctuations in the rupiah.

They are going up because Kinokunia, located in Sogo shopping center in Central Jakarta, sells imports.

A sign posted next to the cash register warns that prices are subject to change without notice.

Since the rupiah's value continues to fall, the cost of some imported books has increased by more than 100 percent.

"However, prices of books already two to three years old have not increased," Henky said.

Eli, an assistant manager of an imported bookstore in South Jakarta, said Rp 80,000 was the lowest price of her goods.

"Even a small Sidney Sheldon paperback that was formerly Rp 40,000 is now more than Rp 100,000."

She said she had been forced to increase prices since November because she paid foreign book distributors and her store rental fee is in dollars.

Kinokunia and Gramedia held out longer than Eli, increasing prices in January.

Although increases vary from one shop to another, prices of hardcovers are universally high.

Henry Kissinger's Diplomacy sold for Rp 80,000 just a few months ago in a Central Jakarta bookstore, but it now carries a price tag of Rp 253,000.

The same store is charging the equivalent of between Rp 1,000 and Rp 2,000 a page for other books; the 260-page History of Southeast Asia is Rp 605,000.

Have the book bookstores lost business as a result?

"Our customers understand, and 70 percent of them are foreigners and they have dollars," Eli said.

But Anna, a 17-year-old Australian, was baffled by the high prices.

"I could get the same books cheaper in Australia, and, besides, they don't have a complete range here."

She predicted bookstores would ultimately lose out.

"I think people will just buy books overseas and bring them here instead of buying foreign books in Indonesia."

This is what lecturers like Triwardani from the University of Indonesia have been doing to get materials to teach classes.

"Of course, we have to use English textbooks because there are not enough Indonesian materials for the university level of teaching, but I can't get them from bookstores here which import works. So when one of us goes abroad, we buy books there."

She said she could not expect her students to buy them, even before the economic crisis hit the country.

"The students can photocopy from our books. It may be breaching the copyright, but it is already a common practice."

Etnobooks, a distributor of imported books for Gunung Agung, Maruzen, Kinokunia and Gramedia, used to give samples to the University of Indonesia.

With the new prices, it is uncertain whether lecturers can afford them anyway.

"We have had to put up our prices by 150 percent, while the rupiah itself has depreciated so much more," said a manager of Etnobooks who wished to remain anonymous.

"Actually, the bookstores are not suffering a big loss because they are charged in rupiah if they get books from us as a local distributor, and if the book does not sell in 90 days they can return it."

He conceded it was a different story for bookstores using overseas distributors or dealing directly with publishers who charged in dollars.

Only 25 percent of books Gramedia sells are imported and most buyers are Indonesian, according to Setiawan of the firm's purchasing department.

"Foreigners only buy our tourist books," he said.

Most of the imported books at the Gramedia branch in Pondok Indah Mall in South Jakarta are business and economic manuals or university textbooks.

The latter are predominantly on economics, engineering and some medicine.

Twenty-one-year-old university student Yudistira has a passion for English books. He does not buy them for his graphic design studies but to expand his knowledge of literature and philosophy.

But he confessed he had to be more selective now.

"I have become very choosy with the books I buy and also where to get them, because some bookstores are more expensive than others," he said.

He has cut down his weekly purchase of three books to only one.

Joe, a manager of a foreign bank in Jakarta, said he was also picking and choosing what he needed to buy because of the economic crisis. He said English-language reading materials were not essential items.