MANILA, Philippines - For the past 65 years, people have been going to National Book Store to buy books, and school and office supplies. Today, the bookstore comes to your doorstep.
NBS is now online at www.nationalbookstore.com. With its partner myAyala, National’s online store works just like amazon.com: you register your account for free, your credit card is charged for the purchase and then your order is delivered to your address. The website also accepts Globe GCash and Smart Money.
The online store is divided by categories (books; school and office products; gifts, toys and games; movies and music; seasonal items; NBS bestsellers; international bestsellers; and upcoming books).
One feature that makes it easy for you to navigate the site is the search engine. If you type the word “micro,” you get results from two categories: music (for the karaoke microphones, along with song chips) and books (with “micro” in their titles). If you search for “Da Vinci,” you get books on Leonardo Da Vinci himself, and The Da Vinci Code and its spin-offs.
The website is not only useful for extremely busy people who don’t have the time to browse in the malls, but also for who live elsewhere and want to send gifts to friends and relatives. If you’re the type to give books as gifts you can’t go wrong here, or if you’re the type who loves to receive books as gifts just send a link of your chosen book to the giver.
Or what about theater and theme park tickets? National Book Store is associated with TicketWorld and you can buy tickets to theater performances. This season, you can buy tickets to Ballet Manila shows (a ballet of Don Quixote sounds interesting) at Aliw Theater, The Fantasticks at Greenbelt Onstage, and choose your seats when making your purchase. You can also buy tickets to Enchanted Kingdom and some concerts.
The website also lets you order books or supplies that it doesn’t yet carry. Just e-mail bookfinder@nationalbook-store.com.ph the following info for books: title or ISBN, author, quantity you want to order, and other relevant information, such as edition or publication date, if any. For supplies, e-mail the product name, quantity, and specifications such as size and color, etc.
They will look for the item in the NBS branches and advise you of the status. If the item is not available in the branches, they will look at other sources and advise you of the price. If you’re making the purchase using your credit card, the website will post the product on the site and advise you when it is available so you can log in and make the purchase. Without a credit card, you may make deposits to Land Bank, Citibank or do money transfer through Western Union with details available on the site.
In Gifts, Toys and Games category, there are Barbie dolls and High School Musical lunch boxes, Transformers and Hotwheels backpacks, branded pencil cases and water jugs, chess sets, board games and photo albums.
In School and Office Products, there are scrapbooking materials, lesson plans, acetates, mouse pads, bags, and other technical supplies.
In the Books section, you have children’s books, travel books, fiction, business, art and photography, home and garden, entertainment, textbooks, self-help and other reference materials.
The NBS Bestsellers and Books categories give choices on what’s popular on the market, including Hannah Montana and Dan Brown books. What’s nice is that when you click on the expanded view, the book’s synopsis comes out.
NBS vice president Cecilia Licauco says National Book Store is affiliated with amazon.com. So all Philippine-published titles are also available on Amazon. “We fulfill that order on amazon.com from our end,” she says. “They usually ask for English-Tagalog dictionaries or English-Cebuano dictionary for those orders of Filipinos based abroad.” — Tanya T. Lara