Bookstores in Cali

Cali, Valle del Cauca has 5 bookstores on the map. That's 5 bookshops mapped around Cali, each with its own shelves and specialties. The used sections are where the real bargains hide. Give yourself an hour minimum — bookshops are the one errand that always takes longer than planned.

This guide covers every bookstore we could verify in and around Cali (within about 40 km), built from OpenStreetMap's community-maintained data. Names you'll run into include Papelería "La Economía" and El Sembrador libreria, plus La Linterna. If a bookshop's missing from Cali's list, it probably just hasn't been mapped yet.

The Cali bookstore lineup

5 mapped within about 40 km:

What the map tells us about bookstores in Cali

1 of the 5 list their opening hours on the map, which is genuinely useful — bookshops keep civilised hours, so the listed ones are usually reliable.

The one mapped bookstore sits on Cra. 37A #6 - 25, Eucaristico, Cali, Valle del Cauca — worth combining with whatever else brings you to that side of town.

The Cali bookstore crawl

Plot these on a map and the day plans itself: Papelería "La Economía", El Sembrador libreria, La Linterna, Librería nacional, and Libreria Médica Alomía on Cra. 37A #6 - 25, Eucaristico, Cali, Valle del Cauca. That's 5 stops on the Cali bookstore crawl.

Bookstore tips for Cali

Browsing in Cali? A little strategy helps:

• Don't overlook the classics wall at Papelería "La Economía". Every shop has one. Cheap editions of the books everyone claims to have read — your chance to actually read them.
• Support the shop's own publishing at El Sembrador libreria. Some independents publish local authors or print their own anthologies. Buying them funds the ecosystem directly.
• Learn the remainders table. Publisher overstocks sold cheap. Great for gift buying — new books at used prices.
• Kids' sections are goldmines. Even without kids. The picture-book art alone is worth the browse, and the middle-grade shelves hold genuine classics.

Good to know

We searched about 40 km around Cali — that covers the town itself plus the surrounding communities you'd reasonably drive to. Listings come from OpenStreetMap, mapped by local volunteers, so a brand-new bookstore in Cali can take a while to appear. Spotted a closure among the 5, or a bookstore we missed entirely? The map is the source of truth here — one OpenStreetMap edit corrects it for everyone.

We don't list prices — they change constantly and vary by edition. What we list is the where: real shops, verified by real mappers, in alphabetical order with no favourites.

If you run one of the 5 listed here and something's wrong — a closure, a move, new hours — the fix is the same: update the shop on OpenStreetMap and the correction flows through to this page on the next daily refresh.