Wen | Music Instrument
High appearance and good atmosphere have become the key to the popular network of many bookstores. Undoubtedly, the once popularity of the bookstore has also taken this road. However, how prosperous it was then, today's loneliness is even more prominent. Recently, the news of the closure of many stores in Yanjiyou Bookstore has come out, and the dilemma of internet red bookstores that are difficult to survive for a long time has reappeared.
Why is it difficult for an online celebrity bookstore to make a profit? In the final analysis, the self-positioning of the internet celebrity bookstore is worth asking. The popularity of the moment is not how good the book is, but that the bookstore has a high value - exquisite decoration, comfortable environment, plus cafes, various cultural and creative products and toys, such a "mood" in the major network platforms became popular, many customers came to punch, take photos, send circles of friends, by the way to buy a cup of coffee and one or two gadgets.
However, there are not many people who buy books, and the reason is simple: expensive. Therefore, for the closure of the store, "books are too expensive" has become the reason why many netizens summarized. Obviously, the price is not dominant, and "the book cannot be sold" is also natural.
Judging from the media reports, in many book online celebrity bookstores, customers do not come to buy books, on the contrary, the clerks are not selling books. Books are not the main source of profit, and sellers are not focused on "how to sell books", but on selling various stored value membership cards to customers. This may have been seen as an "innovation" at the time, but innovation is naturally risky. When customers have become accustomed to the "beautiful appearance" of bookstores, and there are more and more similar photo landscapes, internet celebrity bookstores may lose their greatest competitiveness, and the marketing model will encounter practical difficulties.
With the fading of the aura of Internet celebrities and the impact of the epidemic, some bookstores are not having a good time. Broken funds, arrears, closed stores... I have seen a lot of these news, and many of the net red bookstores have lost the scenery of the past.
Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Cheng
It is true that the impact of online stores and e-books on physical bookstores is fatal, but this does not mean that physical bookstores have really entered a desperate situation, but we must think: What kind of bookstores do we need?
In the book "84 Charing Cross Street", the old bookstore that exudes the smell of obsolescence has become the "white moonlight" in the hearts of many book lovers - as soon as you enter the store, the hustle and bustle is closed out. The core competitiveness of bookstores must be the book itself, not anything else.
Doing a bookstore should not be simply treated as a business. In bookstores, is it a bit of an inversion to make books an accessory to other goods? To be a bookstore is to do culture, excavate the value of books, make bookstores a place where knowledge and culture are intertwined, and even monetize these knowledge and cultures, which is the foothold for bookstores to survive.
Xinhua Network Li Xiangbo
We don't have to blindly deny the net red bookstore, after all, they are expanding more possibilities for bookstores, and the business difficulties faced by many stores are also the result of accidental factors, not all of them.
But the special feature of the bookstore is that it crosses the border in the field of commerce and culture, and the culture naturally has the characteristics of "qinggao", and the business inevitably has the attribute of "pandering". The ideal situation is to support each other, but how to better integrate and coordinate the two, from the situation of some internet celebrity bookstores, I am afraid that more exploration is needed.
Text: Musical Instrument
Column moderator: Zhang Yongqun
Editor-in-charge: Wang Yuanfang
Editor: Xing Yanyan Zhang Yongqun