On the back cover of "The Lights of the Bookstore" is written, "Who passed down this profession and hung a lamp in the dusk". This affectionate phrase, adapted from Zheng Chouyu's poem, was once hung on the wall of Beijing's Wansheng Book Garden, reflecting the bookstore's psychological comfort to intellectuals or readers as a reading space. The significance of the reading space is also reflected in the attention of the national decision-makers. Since 2014, the "Government Work Report" has included a similar statement on "advocating reading for all people and promoting the construction of a learning society" every year. The repetition of national policies shows that there is still a long way to go to build a reading and learning society for all. One of the important reasons is that in cities that represent the gathering place of the reading public, public reading spaces are not popular, and independent bookstores, which were once thriving, have closed down one after another over the years due to economic pressure or profit models, resulting in the dimming of the lights of bookstores.
As the first channel for the public to get in touch with reading, bookstores have become the main force of the city's national reading space, together with libraries, which are government-led non-profit cultural institutions. Once the number of bookstores in the city shrinks, or becomes another commercial field, it will cause public concern about the development of urban reading space for all. In this context, coupled with the proposal of the "Scholarly China" strategy and the introduction of the national reading policy, the construction of urban national reading space has become a hot topic of academic thinking in recent years.
Based on the research results, the ways to expand the reading space for the whole people in the city are mainly concentrated in the two channels of bookstores and libraries, whether the operation mode is government-sponsored or privately operated, or government-run or privately subsidized, all of them focus on the establishment of various bookstores, especially public libraries. Expand the idea of urban bookstores and libraries, link the two keywords of reading and space, and cut into the essence of urban national reading space. Compared with bookstores and libraries, the advantage of publishing houses is mainly in the abundant author resources and content resources, but in the situation of relatively separate publishing and distribution, publishing houses and reading space are more of an indirect connection. So, in the construction of urban national reading space, how should publishers in the upper reaches of the national reading chain participate? The three key words of city, reading, and space can be used as three dimensions of thinking.
City: The cultural coordinates created by the reading space
Compared with the importance of food, clothing, housing and transportation, reading is not a rigid demand in public life, and the greater significance is reflected in enriching the meaning of life and making life better. This means that the amount or absence of reading space is only a flexible demand for the whole people, and it is only a "rigid need" of some people. In fact, the most successful areas in the construction of urban reading spaces are basically concentrated in prefecture-level cities and coastal economically developed areas. A very important reason is that these places not only have a sufficient population base to ensure that they have a certain number of readers who just need to read, but also have a good economic foundation, so that Chinese people can have a leisure time to read in addition to their busy lives.
A corner of Zhongshuge, which is known as the most beautiful bookstore
In January 2018, the former State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television issued the "Notice on Carrying out the 2018 National Reading Work", which proposed to carry out the "Seven Advances" activity of national reading - "vigorously promote the national reading into rural areas, communities, families, schools, institutions, enterprises, and military camps, so that reading activities can go deeper into the grassroots and the masses". What's more, more than 580 publishing houses on the mainland, including some private publishing institutions, are all concentrated in cities without exception. Therefore, the primary point of consideration for the construction of publishing houses and urban reading space for all is the connection between urban elements and existing publishing resources.
1. Cities provide an ample reading population. In the view of urban sociology of the Chicago School, the city is not simply rural integration and upgrading, and the American sociologist Louis Wirth published an article entitled "Urbanism as a Way of Life" published in 1938, mentioning that "the larger the community, the higher the population density, and the greater the variety of individuals, the more prominent the characteristics associated with urban life" [1]. In other words, the three main factors of a metropolis – population size, population density, and population heterogeneity – all revolve around one core word – population. Reading is an active process that requires the ability to think abstractly through vision to get information. As far as the cultural foundation required for reading is concerned, only a large-scale urban population can provide a certain number of people who just need reading space, which is also a prerequisite for the existence of urban reading space for all.
A corner of the University of Chicago
2. Cities provide a categorized reading population. The so-called people are divided into groups, and reading behaviors that are closely related to personal preferences often show the characteristics of classification and stratification. One scholar once said when thinking about public reading spaces, "Books are the best medium for spiritual communication, and spiritual communication is generally done in a trickle of knowledge rather than a surging river." Therefore, some small classic reading meetings and poetry appreciation meetings of about 10 people are only suitable for a certain level of readership" [2].
The segmented reading population can better reflect the effect and value of reading, but it is also more demanding of "readers" in the real sense, which constitutes a segmented demand for public reading space at a higher level. As Wirth puts it, "Urbanites in the individual sense have actually become weak and powerless, and they can only achieve their own ends and play their part by grouping with other people with similar interests." As a result, many voluntary organizations have emerged with the goal of meeting the diverse needs and interests of people. [3] The niche reading population that is closely related to this is more likely to be realized in the new social relations and social organizations with high density, large scale, strong heterogeneity, and frequent mobility.
3. Cities provide space for reading. American sociologist Ray Odenberg once put forward the idea of the third place in the book "The Great Place", "The first space is the family, and the second space is the workplace, which is the working space." The third space refers to public spaces such as downtown areas, cafes, bars, urban parks, libraries, etc."[4]. The improvement of the quality of life of the public mainly depends on the amount and quality of time allocated to the third space. After the government put forward the people's yearning for a better life as our goal, vigorously expanding the third space has become a very specific development path.
Jürgen Habermas
Commenting on the development of Western cities in the 19th century, the German sociologist Jürgen Habermas once said, "The city is not only the center of life of bourgeois society, but also the most prominent of the city is a kind of literary public sphere, whose mechanism is embodied in cafes, salons, banquets, etc."[5]. The literary public sphere, similar to the current vigorous construction of urban reading space, emphasizes the size and agglomeration of the population, and as a kind of third space, it provides a more high-quality space for reading. Therefore, from the perspective of reading population and reading space, the city is not only a simple spatial coordinate for the reading space, but also has the deep significance of cultural geography. The publishing house, which is also located in the city, also has the possibility of cutting into the construction of the city's national reading space. However, judging from the current reading space in the mainland, the direct participation in the publishing industry chain is mainly the Xinhua bookstore system, which is responsible for distribution and sales, and also includes some private independent bookstores. Therefore, in order to participate in the construction of urban national reading space, publishers in a relatively hidden position need to expand their functions in two aspects: providing reading products and cutting into reading space.
Read: Product Positioning with Publisher Involvement
Compared with other urban spaces such as shopping malls and cinemas, the reading space is characterized by providing book-based reading products. Several notices on the national reading work have mentioned the need to further provide rich reading content, and the provision of diversified books is the connection point for publishing houses to participate in the construction of urban national reading space. Under this dimension of thinking, the publishing house has two focuses.
Cultural historian Peter Burke
The first is to start with the reading content and provide classified books. Reading in modern society can be broadly divided into three types: knowledgeable reading, practical reading, and recreational reading. Knowledge-based reading is a reading activity carried out to obtain more specialized knowledge in a specific field, and readers are more interested in improving their own knowledge level. From a sociological point of view, Peter Burke argues that information refers specifically to relatively primitive, special, and practical content, while knowledge refers to thoughtful, processed, or systematic content [6]. In this regard, the objects of knowledge reading mainly carry professional or profound knowledge, and have high requirements for the quality and density of information, including academic monographs, dictionaries, examination books, etc., in addition to various textbooks. Practical reading is a reading that closely serves people's daily life and production activities, such as various child-rearing, cultivation techniques, car repair, dish making, etc., which are mainly based on the usefulness of information and can be used to directly solve practical problems. Knowledge-based reading and practical reading are oriented to different types of knowledge, but both are highly targeted. Readers who read knowledge pay attention to the accessibility and high quality of knowledge, while readers who read practically emphasize the convenience of obtaining practical information. Publishers should take the initiative to explore people's daily information needs and provide solutions to these needs.
Because the reading demands are clear, the knowledge and practical reading space is mainly established in specific fields, such as schools, hospitals and other professional spaces. For the general urban reading space, the participation of the publishing house is mainly to provide the third type of reading, that is, the content of entertaining reading. Recreational reading is a reading activity that is carried out for physical and mental pleasure and relaxation, such as reading popular books, fashion magazines, children's comics, etc. Recreational reading has a wide range of reading, which requires a wide range of publishers. At present, most of the provincial-level publishing formats that have completed the group restructuring cover different types of all-round publishing institutions such as the People's Press, the Education Press, the Literature and Art Press, the Children's Press, the Ancient Books Press, the Audio-visual Press, and the Periodical Press. In terms of content, there is no dilemma for publishers to realize the all-round content docking of the localization of urban national reading space, and the current problem is that there are many reading spaces that do not present distinctive regional characteristics.
(This article was originally published in the April 2019 issue of Publishing Wide Angle.)
Picture from the Internet)
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[1] Louis Wirth.Urbanism as a way of life[A].Urban Culture Reader[M].Beijing:Peking University Press,2008(43).
Library, Information & Knowledge,2017(2):4-12.
［3］Ｒay Oldenburg.The Great Good Place［M］.Cambridge：Marlowe&Co，1989：20-42．
[4] Luo Weidong, ed. Shanghai:Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, 2020(24).
[5] Habermas, Structural Transformation of Public Sphere[M].Shanghai:Xuelin Press,1999(34).
[6] Peter Burke.The Social History of Knowledge (I)[M].Hangzhou:Zhejiang University Press,2016(12).
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About the Author
Pengfei Wang, Ph.D., Professor. He is currently working at the School of Journalism and Communication, Henan University. Ph.D., Department of Chinese, East China Normal University, Postdoctoral Fellow, Oxford International Publishing Research Center, UK, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Information Management, Nanjing University. His research interests include modern literary journals, publishing culture, and new media. His main works include "Research on Isolated Island Literary Periodicals" and "Shanghai School Literature" (co-author), etc., and edited and selected Xiao Hongjuan, Shi Tuojuan, Xiao Jun and Luo Binji Volumes of "Publishing Studies" and "100 Libraries of Maritime Literature". He is also a member of the National Steering Committee for Graduate Education in Publishing, the Secretary-General of the Editorial and Publishing Research Committee of the Chinese Journalism History Society, and a member of the Steering Committee for Teaching Publishing in Colleges and Universities.
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