American University of Sharjah now has a campus book vending machine — who's hungry for a new plot?

What if your next campus snack came with a plot twist?

At American University of Sharjah, students can now skip the vending machine crisps and chocolate bars and reach for something that provides food for the brain: Books!

Bookends, the Dubai Silicon Oasis-based second-hand bookstore, has installed a new book vending machine on the AUS campus, turning the familiar grab-and-go ritual into something considerably more literary.

The idea was tested with the campus community before it arrived. Only five people voted against it. The several hundred who voted yes, meanwhile, now have a vending machine full of books to prove their point.

It is the latest, chapter in the story of Bookends, a second-hand bookstore built by two UAE-based mums who started out swapping ideas during school pick-ups.

From school runs to a bookstore

In a 2024 interview, when we spoke to Bookend founders, Grace Karim and Somia Anwar, they explained that they did not set out with a grand plan to open a second-hand bookshop. Their partnership grew from conversations over coffee while waiting for their children after school.

Karim, a Lebanese expat who has lived in the UAE since 2002, had long viewed books as comfort, having grown up during unsettled times back home. Anwar arrived in the UAE from Pakistan at 18 and stayed, bringing a more entrepreneurial perspective to the partnership. Business was already part of her family background, even if running a bookstore was not necessarily the obvious next step.

Then came the books. The pair began collecting donated titles and hauling boxes around in their car trunks, discovering quickly that moving hundreds of books is considerably less charming than selling them.

The idea became more serious when Anwar persuaded Karim to enter a three-day entrepreneurship pitch competition in Sharjah. Karim, by her own account, did not entirely realise what she had signed up for.

They pitched their second-hand bookstore concept, won the competition and were suddenly faced with a rather practical question: what happens when an idea that began over school-run coffee actually wins?

And so, Bookends was born.

You can read all about Karim and Anwar's story, here.

Then came 2020

The online store launched in February 2020, an unfortunate moment to start almost any new business. However, instead of bringing the fledgling operation to a halt, the pandemic created a new audience for what Bookends was selling. With people spending more time at home, books became an easy form of escape, and the founders continued sanitising and shipping orders to customers.

Some orders travelled remarkably far. As we were told in 2024, one customer in Australia reportedly paid around $50 in shipping for a five-dirham cookbook because it reminded him of his grandmother.

Stories within stories, and it's what made Bookends more than a place just to buy used books. The books came with histories, memories and, occasionally, a reason for someone to pay many times their value just to get one home.

In 2023, the online operation gained a physical home, with Bookends opening a store filled with more than 20,000 books. The space has since become a venue for book clubs, author signings and movie nights, alongside the browsing, buying and just, well, browsing.

Now, books on the go

The AUS vending machine takes that idea one step further.

Instead of having to make a trip to a bookstore, students can now encounter a book while moving through their everyday campus routine. The machine turns books into an impulse purchase, much like a snack or drink, except the payoff lasts considerably longer.

And for Bookends, it is part of a much bigger ambition: helping one million books get read by 2030.