Books to bound through clearance sale

June 28, 2023 BY Tim Bottams

Off the shelves: Alan Hinton has been part of the organising team behind the Ballarat Biggest Book Fair since its establishment more than 10 years ago. Photo: FILE

ALTHOUGH normally run twice a year in March and November, Ballarat’s Biggest Book Fair is returning early as part of a one-day clearance sale next month.

Novels will be the focus of the event set for St Andrew’s Church Hall, with each book priced $1.

Proceeds will go towards the fair’s regular beneficiaries, Uniting’s BreezeWay meals program and Lifeline.

Despite selling roughly $15,000 worth of books and more than 1000 people through the doors in March, fair organiser Alan Hinton said the team of 10 have more novels than they can handle.

“We’ve got miles too many novels,” he said. “We want to clear them and that’s what we’re working towards with this.

“We did this once as a one-day sale about five years ago and it was relatively successful. We took about $2000 from that sale which was pretty good.”

Mr Hinton said the book sale raises more than $30,000 a year with items sourced mainly through donations.

“We’re well-known now,” he said. “We get our books from here, there, and everywhere, usually from donations through family estates and things like that.

“We’ve got about three times the amount of novels we’d normally handle and it just keeps coming. It’s incredible.”

About 5000 books will be on offer at the event.

The fair normally features paperback books at $2 and hardbacks at $3 as well as CDs, records, bric-a-brac, and coffee-table reads and special items up to $20.

Sixty per cent of profits are sent to the BreezeWay program with the rest donated to Lifeline.

Mr Hinton said the demand is greater than ever between the fair and its main fundraising recipient.

“The BreezeWay program at the moment is under stress,” he said. “Where they were doing some 50, 60 meals a day, they’re doing 80, 90 a day now for people in need.

“That’s a lot of food to make so there’s especially a need for this. It’s not necessarily people from the street we feed. We also feed people under financial stress who can barely afford to pay their rent.”

The one-off book fair clearance will run from 9am to 3pm on Saturday 8 July.