This is part of my series on Building Your Chinese Library.
I can’t believe I’ve been buying books for our Chinese library for over 10 years. The market for overseas Chinese books has changed drastically since then.
Before you go and start buying books from Taiwan, here are some background info. Please note that I’m based in the US, and even though I know of the existence of Chinese bookstores in other countries, since I have no first hand experience, I decided not to mention those.
First, Do You Need a Chinese Children’s Library?
I have found that a home library is as much about the parent’s love of books as it is about books for their children. So if it pleases you to have books in the house that your children might not read….go for it? That’s what I did. ha!
So the short answer is, no, you don’t need a Chinese home library for your kids to learn Chinese. But it certainly makes your life much easier, even if it’s just a small collection. Because the alternative will require time and effort.
However, I want to advocate for building a Chinese Home Library for the kids. Articles abound when you Google why it’s good to have a home library. I’ve started using my local library as a resource when I realized that I obviously cannot buy everything under the sun, it’s too expensive. But, nothing beats having books available when your child has a question about the world and you can go to your home library to look up the answer, in Chinese! Or just a variety of books available to them when they’re bored at home with nothing to do.
I’m always reminded what my Montessori trainer said: If a resource is out there to buy, then buy it instead of making it yourself. Similarly, if you can afford to have books at home, buy it instead of making other efforts that you don’t have time for.
Cost of Your Library
I have a 2000-3000 book library collection spanning from ages 0-18. Books often cost 250-350 NT list price. At that cost, that’s $17000 – $37000.
Wow.
Did my books cost that much? Maybe? Lot of them were used or big set group buys. But then I also have a ton of ebooks, audiobooks, and textbooks. And what about the Hyread Gaze or Readmoo eInk readers I bought? So averaging it, let’s say it cost me a minimum $15000.I
Do you need this many books? No. I personally think I don’t have a big fiction collection for my kids to read, maybe just 1 big set for each reading ‘level’, and they were just fine in acquiring the language. But I spent some money building my homeschooler’s Montessori library of non-fiction books and my books, unlike most people, go all the way up to adolescent and adult.
So how many books do you need?
I’m a big fan of repeat reading. My friend Lavender has a small selection of 30-50 books for each reading level. Their family places more emphasize on English, and yet her daughter’s Chinese level is a very solid upper elementary, including writing.
I think that is a good amount, just enough to repeat read and read at a certain level. You may be spending more money on tutoring or language learning materials. There’s some give and take there.
So let’s say, for each level you have around 50 books, and you need:
- Picture books
- Early readers
- Reading 123 level
- Between Reading 123 & Reading 456 level
- Reading 456 level
- Upper elementary level
- Teenager
- Late Teens
- Magazines
- Comic books
That’s 500 books minimum.
Cost of Your Books
As I mentioned, new books cost around $250-$350 NT, used books around $80-$120 NT. (exchange rate is 1:28 right now). There are also bigger books, and audiobooks, and all your DVDs and videos, plus 3 years of 巧虎 QiaoHu subscription. Maybe my books cost closer to $20k when I add those in.
Anyways, just remember that 75% of list price is a very good value for books and when things go on sale they can go down to 66%, 62%, etc.
So that’s 500 books with my list above. At $200NT, that’s $3500 USD. Remember, that’s books from 0-18. So you can just budget accordingly. It comes out to maybe just $350 a year if you buy your books over 10 years; your kid may reach upper ELE level of reading by 10 or 11.
Consider setting a budget for your library
And yes, I pulled that number out of nowhere. But hey, didn’t you feel 😱 at the figure? I just like to start with a number staring at my face, and then face my feelings.
Either eventually I make peace with it, or it tells me exactly what I’m comfortable with when it comes to spending money. Then I can say, hey I will find other solutions or hey, learning Chinese isn’t that important. Or, “Hey, if I skip a week of summer camp I have a year’s worth of book money!”
Or, a trip to Taiwan can cost up $6k-$10k That’s A LOT of books. If I don’t go to Taiwan for a summer, would I be able to buy enough books that can last my kids for 5-6 years, at the expense of losing 6 weeks of Chinese learning? Provided I can give them something half ass at home?
Oh crap, I forgot about shipping. Okay, maybe make that $500 a year over 10 years?
How I Buy Books
Here are the ways I’ve bought books over the years, listed from cheapest from most expensive.
- Directly from Taiwan, hand carried back during my once in a blue moon trip. I even wrote a post on how to pack your books for the flight or how to ship from Taiwan. These includes used and new books.
- Owe 人情 method (Owing favors) – Sometimes I beg my mom and in more recent years, some friends, to bring a few books back. It’s a hard method because everyone already has things they want to bring back. There is never enough space for heavy books. I try not to use this method unless there’s something I MUST HAVE NOW.
- Order from bookstar or other cheap bookstores and ask them to ship for me. The only hard thing about this was figuring out how to pay via ATM transfers. Once I got my bank account set up during one of my trips, it made life way easier. You take the chance that the vendor doesn’t pack as well as you like and the books get ruined.
- Organize group purchases through vendors and book sellers such as Mr. and Mrs. Books and Sagebooks. This was before the modern US based online bookstores. Group purchases lowered the total sea shipping cost.
- Order from Taiwanese bookstore books.com.tw 博客來. The cost is pretty high since they do air shipping so it’s the next step when the US local bookstores and vendors don’t sell my books.
- Buy through physical local Chinese bookstores. Technically I didn’t buy through the bookstore, I bought it through my dad, who worked as a distributor for those bookstores. The selections really aren’t great. But it’s how I got my Harry Potter and 金庸 novels even before Thumper was born! The local bookstore market is slowly dying out and making way for online Chinese bookstores. And honestly their selection was always crappy and mark up high so I rarely do this.
Remember, 20kg is about your limit for a box.
My favorite way to buy books for myself and friends is to come up with a booklist order ahead of time online and have it delivered to an address. Then we go to the used bookstores to browse books.
Other Ways to Buy Books
One option I did not list is “Buy through US Online bookstore”. I pretty much finished building my library before these stores proliferated. Plus they are selling mostly under 4th grade books whereas I was looking for adolescent books. So other than the occasional buy from Mr. and Mrs. Books, I don’t buy. Cost wise, now adays they’re all pretty competitive to buying directly from Taiwan online, it’s just a matter of stock.
Taiwan also has various “group buy” groups like 丹爸教材教具團購網. But honestly, I don’t have family based in Taiwan, these type of very local methods of buying books are not possible for me.
There are also some Facebook groups that sell books. But the selection is limited and under early elementary level.
You can buy second hand books,
I guess that wasn’t quite helpful in you finding other ways to buy books. If you’re up for digging and you read Chinese well, you probably don’t need me to tell you what these Taiwanese group buy groups are, or even FB group buy groups. For the rest of us, it’s such a pain when everything is conducted in Chinese, with Chinese banks expected, I just don’t bother too much except with Bookstar.
A Note about Shipping
As I mentioned, I’ve coordinated quite a few group book orders. After awhile I started getting the hang and logistics of them. Here are a few things I learned: (Note, Taiwan post office has up’ed shipping costs during the pandemic, it is no longer what I quoted below as of July 2021, but I’m leaving things in to give you an idea.
- Each box of 20kg book will probably cost you around $200-$250 to purchase. So ideally this helps with your budgeting. With shipping added it costs around $300-$350. This of course depends on how much your books originally costs. I have seen books like I Love Martine 我愛瑪婷 for $60 USD and that fills up one 20kg box.
- Make sure you add insurance, bubble wrap, and Post Office sea shipping grade thick box. We’ve had quite a few Sagebook boxes delivered damaged. Also, after my book vendor told me of his horror shipping stories I stopped trying to go cheap. Once you start buying a lot of books, it’s much better to just get insurance. Insurance only costs $20NT for first $1000NT and $10 NT per $1000NT thereafter. You’re not going to get all your money back from insurance. But we suspect that it helps in getting the package delivered instead of getting lost or damaged through sea shipping.
- You won’t have as many shipping issues if you do air or surface shipping. That’s how many major Chinese book booksellers do it here in the US and why their books are so expensive.
- Make sure everything is declared. I’ve had bilingual CDs that were included in books confiscated by customs.
- Book sellers dislike shipping overseas due to all the unforeseen issues out of their control and most of the time disavow any responsibility for Customs or USPS delivery issues.
- Keep all books to under 20kg. USPS doesn’t like delivering heavier boxes.
Alternatives to Buying Books or Building your own Chinese Library
Many of us build a library because we just love books. Here are some ideas I’ve used to save money on books.
Before you start, FIND SOME FRIENDS.
Seriously, without a group of cohorts who believe in building a Chinese book collection as much as you do, or to tell you where the good books are, it’ll be hard to save money.
Group buy or deals
Sometimes with enough people you can get discount on books. This isn’t as big a deal now with all these US based bookstores. But I contacted Eastern Publishing once and asked them directly what is minimum order to get a good discount. I then got enough fo my friends to buy the Cross Century Set for all of us to get it at a very good rate.
You’d need someone willing to devote the time in coordinating book orders and fielding random questions.
A local ‘shared’ library
Thanks to the Internet, I met Mandarin Mama and various other friends who share common goals in learning Chinese and we lend books to each other.
Here’s an example of how cheap I get sometimes. For Zoroshi 怪傑佐羅力, I got 3 other friends to buy together. Each of us bought 5 books in the series and we shared the books with each other.
Of course, you will need to make sure your friends have similar goals and similar ways of treating their books.
Your Local Library
If you live in a community with lots of Asians, there is a good chance your local library may have good selection of Chinese books. For awhile, I went to our local library weekly for those Chinese books. I also paid a membership fee for a local private Chinese library someone founded.
Sadly, most local libraries only have books up to lower elementary level. However! liberally use the ‘suggest a purchase’ feedback form on your library’s website and suggest Chinese books for them to buy!
Of course, the trade off to saving money is expending gas to drive an hour or two (plus all that eating out when you lose track of time in the library and then have to feed hungry toddlers and little kids), sometimes I wondered if it was worth it. I could have used those money to buy more books!
To Sum it Up
Aim for a minimum of 500 books at the cost of $3500 USD. I probably spent at least $15000 for 2000-3000 books.
