Big Bad Wolf is actually doing some big great good: An interview with co-founder Jacqueline Ng

The biggest English book sale in Bangkok, Big Bad Wolf, is back for the second time this year and Lifestyle Asia got the chance to sit down with co-founder Jacqueline Ng to talk about how it started, where it’s going, and if bookworms with a pile of unread books should be guilty. 

Books are expensive. Whether you’re a bookworm or not, everyone can agree it’s a much better addiction than drugs but it seems to burn a hole in your pocket all the same. That’s why when the Big Bad Wolf book sale comes around, I and a number of other bookworms in Bangkok and the other cities they go to make a point to visit. What is normally the cost of one or two books is six in Big Bad Wolf, so budgets be damned. If the Wolf comes huffing and puffing to blow our money away, we bookworms giddily oblige. 

But the book sale, which has now been in over 15 countries and is looking to visit more, wasn’t always the biggest English book sale in town. It started out as a humble bookstore in an old shopping mall in Malaysia run by a couple, Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng. I was able to spend some time talking with Jacqueline about the journey so far—and the journey ahead—of Big Bad Wolf.

[Hero image: Big Bad Wolf Books]

Big Bad Wolf co-founder Jacqueline Ng on the sale’s chaotic beginnings and the value of the printed word

Jacqueline recalled that she and her husband started in a small 500-square-foot shop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia back in 2006. With only a small shop, Jacqueline knew she would only be offering a few titles. On top of that, she didn’t have access to the latest hot titles or rising authors, which meant she and her husband only had one thing to bank on: cheaper prices. “We wanted to do an experiment: if we would sell books at half-price, would that really increase readership?”

The experiment paid off. Customers began to come in, a majority of which were already readers who were buying books for themselves and as gifts for others, something that Big Bad Wolf actually promotes especially with their latest sale here in Thailand.

Ultimately, however, their goal was to convert non-readers to readers. But they found themselves in a tight spot. They had no backing and little financial resources. How would they expand?

The birth of the Wolf

It was in 2009 that Jacqueline and Andrew decided to hold their very first Big Bad Wolf book sale. I asked how they came up with the name, and she explained that it was actually her husband’s idea.

“My husband is the visionary of the company,” she explains. “He’s more of the marketing person and I’m more the operational execution person.”

Andrew wanted a character for the event right from the beginning. Because he knew they had no money to do any sort of marketing, he wisely predicted that they needed a character to be the voice of the event. This was back when social media was new and ads didn’t populate Facebook and Instagram.

Andrew also specifically wanted a villain. “He wanted something cheeky, something fun and able to be naughty,” Jacqueline explains. Eventually, they chose the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. 

In yet another stroke of marketing genius, the couple utilised Facebook to market the event, long before companies were using Facebook. “Because of the character, it allowed us to play and engage with the customers.” They called their customers “minions”, pre-dating the yellow pill creatures of Despicable Me, who get their orders from General Black Paw, the Big Bad Wolf’s right-hand person. For customers, it was fun and built hype for the sale. It was a marketing strategy that would become the norm years later on social media.

Humble and chaotic beginnings

The first book sale in 2009 was, in a word, chaotic. With a whopping 150,000 books, Jacqueline had underestimated just how much work it would be.

“It was a nightmare,” she recalls while laughing. “From the first day until the last day, I was still opening boxes and pricing books because I didn’t realise that it took so long to do that!”

They had hired undergrads to help them out but Jacqueline also faced another issue when segregating the books by genre. “Only two of them knew the difference between fiction and nonfiction,” she says, which woke her up to the reality of the reading situation in Kuala Lumpur. 

She had to manage everything. There were no systems, no databases, no automatic cash registers. There weren’t even any trolleys or baskets unlike the Big Bad Wolf sale now. “My customers were just angels,” Jacqueline says. “I couldn’t even manage to display the books on time.” At one point, she just dumped a whole bunch of fiction on a table and gave them one base price because she was just too overwhelmed. 

Queues were long. She and her staff apologised profusely but the customers were extremely happy. “That is where I got the satisfaction and motivation that this is such a joyful thing we’re doing here,” Jacqueline recalls. “The customers feel so rich. When we go to a bookstore, you can only buy one or two books. You can’t tell your children to just choose what to buy. But over at Big Bad Wolf, they could.”

Aside from the fact their books were getting cleaned out (“I basically sold every single book on the tables”), something else happened: non-readers also bought books. “With that price, they are keen to explore,” she says. “The people who don’t know what to buy would just buy whatever other people were buying.”

Going international

Without any sort of advertising and despite the disorganisation, the first Big Bad Wolf book sale was a hit. Seven years later, they decided to take the Wolf international to not just one but two countries: Indonesia and the Land of Smiles itself. But initially, everyone advised them it was a bad idea to bring the sale here.

“Everybody said no,” Jacqueline reveals. “Our friends said, ‘No, it won’t work. They don’t even read Thai language books. Why would they read English books?’” Instead of deterring her and her husband, it made them want to bring the Wolf to Thailand even more. “We’re championing English and converting a non-reader to a reader,” she explains. “So we’re supposed to go to countries that have that problem. That’s where we come in.”

Since then, Big Bad Wolf has been a frequent visitor to Thailand, not just in Bangkok but also Chiang Mai and other smaller cities they’ve reached with the help of local organisations. The current ongoing sale is the second time they’ve been to Bangkok this year. 

What’s ahead

Around the same time they took the Wolf overseas, Jacqueline and her husband began to ask themselves whether what they were doing was working. “We still had a big question in our heads. We know how many books we sold but were people reading them?”

They got their answer during their next sale. The Young Adult Fiction books were selling like hotcakes, which made them realise that the kids who bought their books years ago had grown up and become readers. It’s the reason why they’ve kept going after all these years. In 2024, they were able to bring the Wolf to Africa. They’re hoping to bring the sale to South America towards the end of 2025.

Bad bookworms

Before I ended my conversation with Jacqueline, I had to alleviate my guilt and the guilt of many bookworms across the globe. I admitted that I ashamedly had a pile of unread books at home, all while a fresh new pile from the sale was sitting in a plastic bag beside me. Laughing, Jacqueline says that she too has her own pile of unreads (which funnily enough also comes from Big Bad Wolf). But she also tells me a story.

“I was at this lady’s salon to get my hair washed. She asked me to give her 15 minutes to pick up her son,” she began. “When she came back, her son was just sitting there, and while he was waiting, he pulled out an English book and started reading.” She was surprised because the family was Chinese and resided in a village where Chinese was spoken. Plus, the boy went to a Chinese school.

When she asked the hairdresser how she encouraged her son to read. “She looked at me and said, ‘It’s because of you’,” Jacqueline recounts. The hairdresser explained that since everyone went to Big Bad Wolf, she also went there with her son and bought books for him. Despite none of his family members being able to speak let alone read English, the son just picked up the books and began to read.

“He started reading on his own just because books are there.” The son’s English has improved at such a rate that he now speaks English better than Chinese. “The teacher always told the mother, ‘Your son speaks English well but can you please improve his Chinese?’”

Her point? Access to books, even if they’re just lying there and especially for young kids, is not to be underestimated. “So you’re not a bad bookworm!” she assures me. “One day, you’ll read your pile of unread books.” She says having access to a book (or books) is valuable not just for the reader but as possible last-minute gifts. If you gift it to your friends, “They appreciate that you pick out a book that’s relevant to what they like.”

Physical vs. Digital

As we wound down our conversation, there was one last question I had to ask. In the digital age we live in now, why are physical paper books still in demand? Clearly, Big Bad Wolf is having no trouble competing with the likes of e-books or audiobooks. 

“On the phone, you’re usually browsing or skimming,” she said when we read something on the phone. “But for kids, it’s part of the development process. Reading a book has that. It allows you to touch and see and feel with the way it’s constructed with the illustration and words. Sometimes, you can’t duplicate that on a gadget.”

“With children, it’s a no-brainer. It can never be replaced,” she continued. “And for adults, any reader would tell you that they always prefer a physical copy. They might have a gadget or read online, but if they want to relax, they always want a hard copy.”

“Nothing replaces the feel and touch—and the smell.” I know for a fact all bookworms unanimously and wholeheartedly agree.

The Big Bad Wolf book sale is currently being held on G Floor of The Market on Ratchaprasong Road until November 11. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.