On book fairs, missed brand experience, and the publishers who forgot to make you feel something.
How I Ended Up There
I wasn’t planning to go to PBAKL this year, especially since I’m not an avid reader in the traditional sense; most of my consumption happens online through long-form journalism, podcasts, and digital essays.
However, my daughter wanted to see her favourite YouTube creator release limited edition merchandise, so we went for two days with no agenda and no expectations, though I tried to be a visitor, my UX brain had other plans.
What I Noticed
Within the first hour, the diagnostician kicked in, noticing that it wasn’t about the event organiser, the floor plan, or the crowd flow, but rather the publishers themselves.
These people, whose entire business is built around the power of words and ideas, seemed to have forgotten how to make anyone feel anything.
The Discount Placard Problem
Walk through any publisher’s booth at PBAKL and you’ll see the same thing: piles of books representing every SKU in their catalogue and staff holding placards for discounts upon discounts.
The booth layout answers the question of how to move inventory, but ignores the more vital challenge of how to make someone fall in love with reading again.
These are completely different briefs, and the booth design clearly shows which one was chosen.
Am I In A Library Or A Bookstore?
The focal points were scattered with book racks everywhere, lacking a clear visual hierarchy or an atmosphere that signaled a specific point of view about the world.
A brand experience isn’t just a logo and a colour scheme; it’s the feeling of walking into a space and immediately knowing what the creators believe in, much like how a MUJI store communicates its philosophy before you read a single word.
In contrast, most PBAKL booths couldn’t articulate their philosophy even if you asked them directly.
The Multi-Sensory Gap
Books are ironically among the most sensory objects humans have produced, defined by their weight, the smell of paper, and the texture of a cover.
Yet, almost nobody at PBAKL was activating these elements, resulting in a lack of atmosphere or sound design beyond the transaction of books and discounts.
The biggest missed opportunity at a book fair is failing to make the physical experience of being around books the product itself.
What My Daughter’s YouTube Creator Understood
The sharpest observation from both days came from my daughter, who didn’t go for books, but for limited edition plushies from her favourite creator.
The long queues and genuine excitement for sold-out products proved that the creator understood that the relationship with an audience extends into physical objects people can hold and share.
This Post-UX thinking applies perfectly to publishing; while the book is the content, the experience of being a reader, the identity and community, is what the Gen Z visitor truly seeks and almost nobody was offering it.
What A Book Fair Could Feel Like
I’m not criticising for the sake of it, but rather to suggest that a book fair is the one place where the atmosphere of being surrounded by permanent ideas should be the whole point.
A publisher should be able to invite visitors in to feel who they are and what they believe reading does to a person, rather than just relying on a discount placard.
PBAKL provides the perfect room for a properly designed brand experience, given the massive audience it attracts.
How I Would Design The Booth
Instead of a sales booth, I would design a gallery that picks a few representative titles and makes them the stars with space, light, and motion visuals that set the atmosphere before anyone picks up a single book.
The staff aren’t holding discount placards. They’re in costume or in character something worth photographing. Something Gen Z will share before they even know what they’re sharing.
Interaction would move away from lucky draws toward exchanging free merchandise for an email and insights into what the reader is looking for.
This isn’t just a giveaway; it’s live market research with thousands of participants, providing data far more valuable than the booth rental fee itself.
Why Brand Experience Is No Longer Optional
Gen Z doesn’t arrive at a booth cold; rather, before they even walk through the doors of the Putra World Trade Centre, they have already encountered these publishers across multiple digital touchpoints like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Threads, where the digital experience has already built their anticipation.
When they arrive in person, they expect that experience to continue seamlessly through more than just flipping pages; they seek engagement with staff who genuinely love the books, audio excerpts playing at the booth, merchandise that extends beyond the page, and visuals that are truly worth photographing.
And here’s what most publishers missed completely:
Every photo taken at a well-designed booth, every story shared, every TikTok filmed in the queue, and every WhatsApp message sent to a friend saying “you have to see this booth” represents free digital marketing and organic reach that money simply cannot buy, all generated by the experience itself.
If you imagine walking through hundreds of booths offering the same discount placards, book racks, and tired staff, only to stumble into the one booth that feels like a gallery with a character worth photographing and something tangible to keep, the choice of which publisher stays in your mind twelve months later becomes clear.
Ultimately, the publisher that becomes a topic in the group chat three weeks later or the one you search for online when buying your next book is the one that prioritized this experience, making the obvious answer clear even if the execution across the fair was not.
The Missed Gold
PBAKL is millions of people walking through a physical space, voluntarily, with money, looking for something that matters to them. That’s not just a book fair. That’s a living database of reader behaviour waiting to be understood.
Unfortunately, most publishers treated it like a warehouse clearance. The gold was on the table. Nobody bent down to pick it up.
Clarity is the most underrated business investment. — Lokman S.