As the school year finally starts, so is the beginning of the grand Hunger Games for the cheapest textbook finds. Each student scouring through every corner are trying to find the cheapest copy of their required book or even their most coveted notes for their thesis. Maybe even a great piece of fiction that their school library shelves can’t provide. Scour no more —we just saved you a Google. These five hidden bookstores in Manila will be enough to save your academic life and your current broke life.
Books from underground

Specialty: name it, they probably have it
Location: Lagusnilad Pedestrian Underpass (between Manila City Hall and Intramuros)
Located within the University Belt, jealously guarded by the murky stairs of the Lagusnilad underpass, Books from Underground is a cramped secondhand bookstore filled with mounds of books that piles up to the ceiling lie beyond the infinite stretch of this tiled tunnel.
Who knew that the muggy and reeking underground pass contains an array of rare tomes and notes? Students living on a tight budget can score great finds even with just P50 pesos on their pockets! The bookstore caters to the work of the National Artist for Literature Cirilo Bautista’s The Archipelago, Plato’s The Republic, and even various books on history, law, sciences, and engineering. They also sell limited edition comic series and the latest releases.
You can also browse through their collection or even ask for a copy of a book you are looking for on their Facebook page where they also offer delivery services across the Philippines.
Bookay-Ukay
Specialty: general selections
Location: 78 Maginhawa Street, Teachers Village East, Diliman, Quezon City
If you’re running low on budget, you can sell your preloved books or even purchase from their diverse collections with just P60!
Housing famous classic titles such as Wuthering Heights, Art of War, and Romeo and Juliet. They also have academic titles in literature, economics, philosophy, and many more. Their prices vary from P100, P250, P300 or even P600 with their hardbound copies.
You can rummage through their shelves at their store or you can also reserve your orders through their Facebook page.
Biblio
Specialty: imported preloved books
Location: Ayala Malls the 30th, Ayala Malls Feliz, Ayala Malls Cloverleaf, and U.P. Town Center
A bookshop/coffee shop, Biblio is a piece of heaven to all book aficionados out there–especially since this secondhand bookstore sells as low as P50!
Their four branches house a vast collection of imported preloved novels and academic titles while serving coffee. They also sell other novelty items such as notebooks, bamboo straws, and even floating bookshelves.
You better watch out for their 80% markdown sale by following their page.
Tradewinds Bookshop
Specialty: cultural books on the Philippines and the Asia Pacific
Location: 744 Calle Real, Intramuros, Manila.
If your field of study requires you to delve deeper into the Filipino culture and history, this Intramuros based bookstore contains one of the largest selections of Filipiniana titles.
Identifying themselves as a cultural bookshop, they offer titles with topics of society, art, history, and many more. With their goods priced mid-range priced books, Tradewinds offers hard-to-find titles and limited edition tomes.
The Book Snoop
Specialty: rare selections
Location: online
If you really don’t have the luxury of time to actually visit a bookstore, this online bookshop is just beyond your fingertips. Carefully curated by its owner/s, The Book Snoop caters to math, science, and history. They also boast a wide collection of their modern and contemporary literary classics and poetry that tackles various genres.
Each month, they upload more than hundreds of books up for grabs, with prices ranging from P99 to P500 (or even more than that) depending on its rarity and condition.
As of today, they only offer meetups and delivery services since they don’t have a physical shop as of now. Browse through mounds of titles on their page.
Did we miss any hidden gems in this list? @ us @scoutmagph