Continuing the apparent trend of employee-less bookstores opening in cities around the globe, a staff-less, 24-hour bookstore called Book Hero has opened in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, ANI News reported. The store carries some 20,000 titles, the majority in either English or Arabic, and prices range from 10 to 20 dirhams, or around $2.75 to $5.50.
Unlike the employee-less bookstores that have recently opened in Beijing, or Amazon’s cashier-less grocery stores in the U.S., Book Hero relies on the honor system rather than digital technology: customers simply take a book and drop their money into a payment box called the Trust Box, which owner Montserrat Martin stops by to empty once per day.
Asked about the risk of theft, Martin told Gulf News that “nobody would steal a book,” and that even if someone did, the cost of replacing stolen books would still be far, far lower than “what I would spend on hiring staff and paying for overheads like visa and insurance.”