Record-breaking book sale bonanza for Rotary

The Rotary Club of Narrabri is celebrating a record breaking annual book sale.

This year’s sale in a pop-up shop on Maitland Street not only beat previous years’ sales, but was also the fastest fundraiser reaching more than $17,500 in less than a month.

The previous record of almost $17,000 was made in 12 weeks.

By Monday morning, the sale’s tally had reached more than $19,000 in the space of almost four weeks.

The club’s president Grahame Herbert thanked the community for rallying behind the initiative in what has been Rotary’s first fundraiser since the COVID pandemic started.

He said the pop-up shop had also seen many travellers call in to browse and purchase books.

“We thought we would be preparing to have one of our worst sales,” he said, due to the pandemic.

“All the ducks have lined up for us this year.”

Mr Herbert said the sale had averaged $700 to $800 a day in its first week.

“We have been surprised by how little it has dropped,” he said.

Last year’s book sale raised almost $16,000 to be spent on community projects, and the success of this year’s shop ensures the service organisation has additional money to put towards local initiatives.

At a recent Rotary meeting, Mr Herbert and fellow Rotarians decided to allocate a weekend of sales to the Country Education Foundation of the Namoi.

The organisation provides education grants to students from across the Narrabri Shire to help with the cost of post-secondary school education and training.

The foundation manned the store last Friday and Saturday and was able to raise $1720.

The foundation’s chair, Trudy Staines, when speaking with The Courier recently about the book store, thanked the Rotary Club of Narrabri for its continued support.

“Rotary has been a fabulous supporter of CEFN,” she said.

Mr Herbert was thrilled to see fantastic help for the organisation.

He said Rotary had assisted the foundation previously, and would usually hold an event to aid the group.

Depending on the level of interest in the book shop, he said they would keep operating Monday to Saturday for another week, with the possibility of reducing the days the store was open.

Book shop coordinator and Rotarian Bruce Pyke said this year’s sale featured better quality books.

That, in addition, to travellers visiting from the coast, is believed to be a contributing factor for the overwhelming success of this year’s pop-up store.

“We are still getting plenty of books coming in,” he said.

He said volunteers were seeing customers return to restock on books.

Reading interests of all tastes are covered in the store, with the range including fiction and non-fiction as well as different genres in each section.

There are also books for all ages, including some special interest items.

Rotary’s pop-up book shop is located at 119 Maitland Street, next to Baguley’s Jewellers.