Families crowded Fez’s Lido used book market over the weekend, looking for cheaper schoolbooks and textbooks they had been unable to find elsewhere before classes begin on Monday.
Some parents came looking for individual titles missing from regular bookstores. Others bought their children’s entire set of textbooks second-hand to cut the cost of the new school year.
Fatima, one of the parents at the market, told Le360 that families were racing to complete their children’s book and supply lists before Monday.
For households on tight budgets, she said, Lido offers prices they can more easily afford.
The market has sold new and used books in Fez for decades and is known well beyond the city. Students and researchers also come looking for older or difficult-to-find titles.
But bookseller Mohammed says frequent changes to textbooks and school curricula are making the used-book trade harder.
Some new textbooks cost around MAD250 each, he said, putting a full set beyond the reach of some families, particularly those with several children at school.
At the same time, a textbook can lose much of its resale value when schools move to a different edition or curriculum.
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Mohammed said booksellers once dealt with textbooks that remained in use for years and could be passed from one pupil to another. More frequent changes now leave shops with stocks they can no longer sell.
He also pointed to difficulties finding some Pioneer Schools textbooks, saying supplies available through bookstores and distributors have not been sufficient to meet demand.
Some private schools add to the cost by requiring particular books and supplies, Mohammed said, leaving parents with little choice over what they buy.
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For Lido’s booksellers, that creates an unusual back-to-school market: families are arriving in numbers looking for used books, while shelves still hold older textbooks that curriculum changes have left without buyers.
Mohammed said some of those books eventually sell for revision or other uses outside the school curriculum, but many remain in stock.
