Bookstores on the comeback trail
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, March 11, 2016
Bookstores are on the comeback trail after years of struggling against rising rents, competition from online book retailers and changing reader habits.
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First community bookstore opens in Beijing this year. [File photo] |
Since 2010, many bricks-and-mortar bookshops have been forced to close or move to cheaper, more remote locations. However, last year alone, 10 new bookstores opened in Shanghai, many in prime downtown areas.
Adding to the trend, online book giant Dangdang has announced plans to open 1,000 offline bookstores in the next three years.
"Bookstores are coming back, but in a different form," said Sun Ganlu, vice chairman of the Shanghai Writers' Association and main curator of the Sinan reading club and book market. "After a very difficult period, bookstores have transformed themselves to stay in tune with the times."
It's not just in China where the swing back to traditional bookshops is evident. Amazon opened its first offline bookshop last November in Seattle and will open another in San Diego in the next few months. The company said it eventually plans to open 400 outlets of Amazon Books.
The comeback is slow but steady. In 2014, offline bookshop sales edged up 3.2 percent from a year earlier. In big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, the increase was as much as 8 percent, according to comments from Wei Yushan, president of the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, at a recent bookstore seminar.
So what's causing the shift?
"Of course, I like the big discounts for books online," said avid reader Viktor Xu, 31. "But after awhile, I realized I also missed the fun of rummaging through piles of books in a shop and finding interesting things to read. You can't really do that effectively online."
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