The Regent Theatre 24 Hour Book Sale opens on Friday for another year at the Edgar Centre, and there will be thousands of books to browse.
Sale convener Kath Wallace said the Dan Brown tower had remained largely unsold last year, and quite a few more of the author’s works had been received this year — enough to make an even bigger "Da Vinci tower".
And they will soon be able to make a twin to the tower, made up of copies of E.L. James’ saucy erotic romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey.
"It’s good fun because somebody will say, ‘I’ve got another one,’ and they’ll just put it to one side and we just add them up — this year we have quite a few.
"They just seem to have been around forever," she said.
She said none of it would happen without the incredible generosity of the Dunedin community.
Volunteers had offered their time for the arduous task of sorting thousands of books, navy, army and air cadets came to set up tables, and Taskforce Green had been helping with the set-up all morning.
It was also the general public who made it all happen.
"The people of Dunedin are very, very generous with their books — if it weren’t for ... Dunedin donating all these books, there would never be a book sale," Ms Wallace said.
She said a bit like everything else these days, the prices of the books were creeping up, and the $1 books were being raised to $2.
"We’ve tried to keep them as low, and they’ve been $1 for 15 years, so we think it’s still reasonable."
The only category remaining at $1 was the children’s section.
"Kids’ books need to be sold — and it’s one way of encouraging kids to read."
