BIBLIOPHILES DELIVER PAGE-TURNING RESULT
LIFELINE’S biggest fundraiser of the year has delivered the goods with close to $200,000 being raised for charity.
Tens of thousands of books were sold during the suicide prevention hotline’s biggest fundraiser of the year, Bookfest.
Across the past three days, Lifeline have driven five semi-loads of books – thought to be more than 100,000 books – to the Broadbeach Convention and Exhibition Centre where the event was held.
Thousands of avid book readers poured through the doors to pick up bargains, with a majority of books being sold for just $2.
All proceeds will be donated to Lifeline, which answers 170,000 calls a year to help prevent suicide.
Manager David Gale said the results were great and up seven per cent on last year.
“The popular areas are paperbacks and children’s novels … but we’ve sold a lot of cookbooks and books on health and wellbeing,” he said. The World Travel Expo being held next door also helped drive up sales of books to do with travelling.
Lenka Robinson, who took her children to the event, said the family of four spent about $100 in total, but it was a bargain.
“My 10-year-old loves books and they’re not (usually) cheap so he had an absolute field day,” she said.
“He picked up 30 books. Altogether we picked up about 50 books.”