In the Maker Plaza, surrounded by the residential area of Longzeyuan Street in Beijing's "Huitian Area", there is a very low-key bookstore, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore Weiyan Xiaoji, and on the second floor of the building where the bookstore is located, in a similar co-working space, is the inconspicuous Weiyan Culture Media Editorial Department. In March 2016, Weiyan Culture Media (hereinafter referred to as Weiyan) was established, and the founders were Zhou Qingfeng and Guo Liping (Kama). Weiyan's entrepreneurial and growth process is a microcosm of many small and beautiful publishing planning agencies and independent private bookstores in the current book industry.
This dream, which sprouted in Zhou Qingfeng's youth, grew up in the tempering of his book industry for more than ten years. In the past six years, Weiyan has produced more than 200 book varieties, many of which have a double harvest of word-of-mouth and market reputation; Weiyan Xiaoji Bookstore has won the titles of "Beijing Characteristic Bookstore" and "Demonstration Bookstore" in the past three years.
Many authors and readers are books made by prophets, and then they are surprised to find that there is a bookstore behind them, while many people in the Huilongguan community are prophets and many people in the Huilongguan community are prophets and then learn about their books. On a winter afternoon, we came to the small episode. "If you don't see him, hear them first" - Kamma's laughter was heard from afar. Unlike her extrovert, Zhou Qingfeng is introverted and elegant, calm and sharp. Over the years, the book industry has had a lot of discord about "feelings" and "business". But in him, you can feel the dual temperament of the literati and the businessman. Facing the current reading market and industry dilemmas, they continue to correct the model and characteristics of "before the store and after the factory", and export the humanities and social science books that are "for the beautiful" to the book industry, while also exploring the new possibilities of bookstore survival.
Where should the tentacles of the bookstore be
Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore Weiyan Xiaoji not only inherits the strong cultural heritage of the old Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, but also integrates the concept they adhere to for making books and bookstores.
Looking at the entire northeast of Beijing, from Huilongguan and Tiantongyuan to Wangjing, humanistic bookstores are relatively scarce, and small collections of small words just fill this gap. The bookstore's main customer base, centered on residents within five kilometers of the neighborhood, radiates throughout northeastern Beijing.
Zhuangzi said: "Useless use is of great use." The books sold by bookstores, in their view, have a great usefulness and can give people inner strength. Zhou Qingfeng stressed that the selection of products focuses on humanities, and the "saliva books" and "fast books" in the market are resolutely not wanted, and "the kind of books that sell you have a disease and I have medicine must also be excluded as much as possible."
The bookstore is relatively strict in the selection of products, and the internal book selection committee is composed of Weiyan's editorial team, authors and scholars, and nearly 10,000 varieties, including books produced by Weiyan, have been selected. For example, Shanghai's young painter Li Zhimi's "Jun from Hometown", "Chang Xiang Zhi", "All Things and Me" and related cultural and creative products have become regular sellers in bookstores and are also the "darlings" of each market. Selection is positioning, and selection is also invisibly screening the customer group entering the store, which is called "the first threshold for entering the store" by Karma.
"Membership is the second threshold to enter the store," Zhou Qingfeng added. After research, the bookstore will be members of the annual fee set at 2000 ~ 2500 yuan, the written in the store to the entire family consumption of the guest layer, membership rights can be shared by the whole family, in addition to enjoying free seats, free drinking water can also borrow books without deposit, additional drinks to enjoy the lower membership price. The communication, stickiness and renewal rates between members and bookstores are relatively high, "many readers regard small collections of small words as invisible healing fields," Zhou Qingfeng said. Bookstores are like magnetic fields that attract people with similar auras.
The slogan of the small set of micro-words is "let all the good happen". Over the years, the bookstore has done things in a down-to-earth manner to confirm this sentence: hundreds of activities since its opening, including reading salons, lectures, poetry concerts, reading micro-reading challenges, co-reading and reading, etc., and even done early reading, "The first early reading was a winter morning, starting from 6 o'clock, there were readers waiting in line at 5:30", which made Zhou Qingfeng very impressed. He hopes to arouse the reader's interest in reading in various ways. For example, in the reading micro-reading challenge, let the mobile phone and other electronic products leave for two hours, and the reader's hand will be placed in the rattan basket and returned after the end of the activity.
In addition to the bookstore itself, Karma believes that the extension of the bookstore can actually be greater. In the six years since its establishment, the bookstore has gradually become a distribution center for community information, "those who want to rent and rent houses, those who want to find boyfriends and girlfriends, and book lovers and friends who want to talk to people when they are upset..." Running the bookstore for many years, she has always maintained a pure original intention and optimism, and in the dialogue we have been infected by her hearty laughter many times, and she has packed more life-like things into this field.
However, what the bookstore should not do, they also think very clearly and consistently, and if it is inconsistent with the style of the bookstore or damages the aura of the bookstore, it will certainly not be done. "There are many people who want to borrow the shell of the bookstore to do things, and some people will even ask us fiercely after being politely rejected: Don't you want to make money?" Don't you eat?! In Karma's eyes, the bookstore is like a mirror, reflecting the state of life, "in the past few years of opening a bookstore, I have encountered too many strange things, and it is not strange to see it." The couple was slightly helpless, but when the style of doing things in the small group was understood by everyone, the situation gradually improved.
The bookstore is a quasi-public welfare undertaking or a low-profit industry, and the couple had a very clear understanding of this at the beginning of opening the bookstore. In recent years, most of them rely on books to raise bookstores, and bookstores may be the minimum value of The Weiyan brand in terms of revenue, but for the books and cultural and creative products produced by Weiyan, it has its own significance, and it is also an important path for the appearance of the entire editorial team. The bookstore is one of the bonds and bridges between authors, newsrooms and readers. "In addition to realizing our dream as readers, opening a bookstore is also a window for brands and a venue for cultural industry experiments," Zhou Qingfeng said.
The absolute value of making a book can be greater
Zhou Qingfeng, who studied history at Peking University and Tsinghua University, entered the publishing industry after graduating with a master's degree in 2003 and successively served as the core backbone of Guangxi Normal University Press Beijing Beibeite Publishing Consulting Co., Ltd., the Commercial Press, and CITIC Publishing House. After years in the publishing industry, many of his ideas are not lost, and he is also eager to try out cross-border parts related to books. At the end of 2014, he chose to follow his heart, walked out of the system, started from an independent publisher, led two interns, and made "Cultural Journey" (hardcover illustrated collector's edition), Wang Xiaobo's series of works ("Golden Age", "Silver Age" and other 7 books), Yu Shicun's "Extraordinary Tao" and other books, selling nearly 20 million yuan.
In 2016, Weiyan was established, and at the same time as publishing, it also opened a bookstore, and the books produced were mainly in the humanities and social sciences, literature and art. "Ten Lectures of Su Shi", which won the 2019 "Wenjin Book Award", is the content excavated by Weiyan's editor "sneaking" into the classroom of Zhu Gang of Fudan University, and has been reprinted many times so far, and nearly 100,000 copies have been distributed so far. This book belongs to the "Reading Micro Lecture Hall" series - focusing on finding course content from all over the world that can give readers "new knowledge" and "wisdom", but also full of insight and life passion, and touch the heart.
Two other books in the series: Dai's Are Humans Really Yehu? Zeng Yi's "Confucian Ethics and Chinese Society" also has a good performance. Weiyan also launched many highly acclaimed books such as "Wang Zengqi's Works Series", "Xu Zhuoyun's Works", "He Zhaowu Series", and "Hundred Forums" to teach Lin Qian's works "Yongzheng Thirteen Years" and "The Great Biography of Zeng Guofan".
From the perspective of the overall development of the brand, Zhou Qingfeng has a clear strategic decision. "Do the right thing, not do it right" "If things are wrong, the more right you do it, the more wrong it is." In 2018, Zhou Qingfeng had a very keen awareness of the subtle changes in the industry, although it was only the wind that started at the end of Qingping, he still made drastic adjustments to the personnel and products of Weiyan accordingly: the original team of 28 people was once reduced to 7 people, the product positioning was more vertical and precise, focusing on making people full of hearts and beautiful humanities, social sciences, literature and art books.
He said: "Under China's huge population base, niche books also have room, and its absolute value may be large." There is still huge room for the cultural industry, and the energy of publishing is far from being released. The adjusted micro-speech books cover classic interpretation, traditional culture, literature and art, such as the "Elegant Chinese Chinese Classic 100 Sentences" series, "Sven of an Era", "Then Art - 365 Aesthetic Awakening Journey" and so on.
Since its establishment, Weiyan has not accepted external capital operations. In the early three years of entrepreneurship, they put almost all their wealth (including all their energy) into it, although they thought they were mentally prepared, but "still underestimated some difficulties", experienced a cash flow crisis, and the most difficult time needed to stare at the payment to send out the salary.
In addition to the difficulties of reality, Zhou Qingfeng believes that the most difficult point is to keep yourself and stick to your heart. First of all, we must think clearly about which books we can make and which books we do not make; secondly, we must control the price of books, regardless of the size of the channel, Zhou Qingfeng said, and weiyan books hope to work hard and achieve omni-channel price control as much as possible. In the current situation, the difficulty of omni-channel price control can be imagined, Weiyan has also encountered the situation of being encircled and suppressed, but in the case of insisting on price control and not following the price, the other party found that higher discounts such as 20% or even 90% off to sell, Weiyan's books can also sell well, and the relatively good price system ensures that Weiyan's cash turnover can be in a relatively normal state in recent years, and also gives enterprises the profit margin for rise and development. Zhou Qingfeng said, "Price control is also to safeguard the interests of all parties, if the price is too far from the value, it will only make this market more and more chaotic, and there is no bottom line discount, which will eventually drag the industry into a vicious circle until it collapses." ”
Most small private book companies in the initial period, the core leaders are almost single-handedly carrying all the selected topics. After six years of development, what Zhou Qingfeng wants to achieve is that when he figures out and paves the road ahead, he becomes the service provider behind the team and does his best to provide support. This requires team members to be able to carry and fight, and to be "partners who can travel all the way". Weiyan's corporate culture is to "support everyone to become their dream self". In addition to the team's recognition at the value level, Weiyan hopes that everyone will cultivate themselves into "full-process super-editors" here. Now that there are 16 people in the team, "after six years of running-in, both the management and the core members can try to fight some 'hard battles'," Zhou Qingfeng said.
Since 2020, the pandemic has been the final straw that overwhelmed many small publishers and brick-and-mortar bookstores. However, under the accumulation of many years, whether it is personnel, output or payment, Weiyan has achieved counter-trend growth. As Zhou Qingfeng said, "In 2022, I hope that Weiyan will usher in its small outbreak as scheduled." As for the small collection of small words, we hope that it will remain and remain quiet in this small space, giving every friend who comes here as much comfort and warmth as possible."
Source: Publisher Magazine
Reporter: Huang Xiaofei
Reviewer: Pan Qiwen
Editors: Liu Shen Xu Liuyan