Review of our Shop!

Untamed Travel Magazine
(December 2005)

UT Says: We’ve always liked Orchid Press and their non-profeteering approach to publishing/printing books they think should be printed and hang the popularity and profit. Honestly, we don’t know how they do it—perhaps there are enough people out there who appreciate the method and buy enough books to keep their mission alive. Anyway, we’ve decided to give their new shop a plug here, courtesy of our most-published freelancer of all-time, Tom Vater.

   Orchid Press, one of Thailand’s longest running independent publishers, opened its first retail outlet in Bangkok last month. The specialist bookshop, located on the fourth floor of Silom Plaza, next to Sala Daeng Skytrain Station, was the brainchild of Chris Frape, Director of Orchid. “As I was looking for titles on Buddhism and Asian art, I got more and more wound up by the fact that I had to travel to another continent to get hold of material that would help me leam about the region I live in”
   Chris Frape has long been buying books on Asia over the Internet or on trips to Canada and Europe. No wonder, as bookshops in the Thai capital generally cater to the lowest common denominator—chain outlets carry mostly mainstream fiction, coffee table dross and travel guides, and you’d be hard pressed to find staff members who have read any of the books sold in their shops. What’s more, there is no book shop that gives foreign visitors or local buyers any idea of the wealth of English-language titles published on and in South Asia.
   Orchid Books aims to change all that. The shop offers more than 1,700 new non-fiction titles, as well as an eclectic selection of out-of-print and antiquarian books on Asia. And if you are looking for something that’s not on their shelves, the staff of Orchid Books will share their experience in sourcing obscure and rare titles. We lifted that last sentence from the press release, but manager Wanwimon Lawson leaves no doubt that Orchid Books is different. “We aim to have all locally published titles on Asia on our shelves and we are continually ordering titles published outside of Thailand to add to our stock.”