2Summers — Cruising Jozi's streets, selling books from a suitcase

Four months before Bridge Books opened, Heather Mason wrote about Griffin Shea's reporting on the men making a living selling books from suitcases and pavement stalls around Park Station. At the time there was not a single retail bookshop in the CBD — anyone downtown wanting a schoolbook, a Bible, a Biko biography or a romance novel had to travel to the suburbs or buy informally. Some of those vendors did well, despite stock being raided by thieves and police alike.

Then the detail that makes this the origin story: over coffee, Mason learned Shea had become more than an observer of the trade.

The big book retailers "need to wake up" to a thriving market they were missing.

Read the full post on 2Summers — by Heather Mason, 1 February 2016.