On April 21, at the 2024 Independent Bookstore Reading Festival (hereinafter referred to as the "Bookstore Festival") held on the roof of Hangzhou, the owners of several small bookstores gathered together to share with readers the joys and pains of running a bookstore at the moment, with the introduction of the new book "Second-hand Bookstore Collecting Stories".
Stories that grow in bookstores
Zhang Hui, editor of Hunan People's Publishing House, said that Yin Chenggen, the author of "Second-hand Bookstores Collecting Stories", is the owner of a second-hand bookstore in South Korea. The 29 stories included in the book are all collected by him in his daily life. Many people entrust him to collect second-hand books in the market, and the process is often very difficult, so the price is difficult to calculate accurately. Yoon asks the customer to tell a story in return.
Through the cooperation with the Bookstore Festival, Hunan People's Publishing House made a "customized version of Chinese bookstores" for the book, inviting 11 independent bookstore owners to write down their own stories and make them into separate volumes. This booklet with a story, in the form of channel customization, is only sold in bookstores that join the joint promotion of the bookstore festival, and becomes a gift with special meaning for readers.
The four bookstore owners who wrote their stories in the separate volumes, Xiao Nan from Wuhan Youhe Bookstore, Uncle Li from Changsha Shu Ancient Humanities Bookstore, Jiang Tao from Changsha Akmei Bookstore, and Assyria from Shanghai Kaishu Poetry Bookstore, shared their stories at the bookstore festival. They are also all "old faces" who have participated in the market since the first bookstore festival in 2022.
Jiang Tao wrote a short story in the separate volume of "Second-hand Bookstores That Collect Stories". One of their readers once posted a Weibo post saying that he was picking up books at the Akme bookstore and met Jiang Tao and his wife Xiaoqi one after another. The reader chatted with the owner and his wife, and the recommendation was exactly the same three books. Jiang Tao said that husbands and wives open bookstores and sell books while reading, and sometimes they have similar interests, so it is common to recommend the same books to customers. When he saw the reader chatting with Xiao Qi, he was also wondering, would the books recommended by his wife be the same as himself?
Jiang Tao and Xiao Qi's bookstore is located at the foot of Yuelu Mountain in Changsha, close to Hunan University, Hunan Normal University, Central South University, etc., and is a favorite bookstore for many college students. Jiang Tao said that the style of book selection and the reading interests of the owners of each bookstore are all intertwined with the customers. What kind of boss attracts what kind of customers, each store has its own small system and has a temperament.
Wuhan Youhe Study House is also next to the university, backed by the headquarters of Wuhan University. Xiao Nan's husband, Huang Jie, likes to collect old books at home and is often left to chat. "Sometimes he doesn't come back very late", Xiao Nan knew that there were old people who slowly told Huang Jie the story of his life in the chronological order of going to school, studying abroad, teaching, commenting on professors, and retirement.
He also appeared in the CCTV documentary "Bookstore, Meet You", and this time he came to the bookstore festival to set up a stall, and Xiao Nan met some readers who came to admire him. What makes her even happier is that there are young people who have studied in Wuhan who have come to Hangzhou to work in Hangzhou after graduation, and they also come to buy second-hand books they like.
"The Second-Hand Bookstore That Collects Stories" writes about a book thief, and the story resonates with Xiao Nan. She said that it is normal to encounter someone stealing books in the bookstore, and she rarely debunks them directly, and even pretends not to see them when she is in a good mood, because stealing books must be like reading. "I know that book stealers can be very nervous at the moment. I'm like, 'Did you forget to pay for a book?'
Many small bookstores are "mom-and-pop shops", where children grow up playing and opening a bookstore is also a family effort. Xiao Nan mentioned that the job of being a store owner is not easy, and now they have decided to take two days off a week in order to have enough rest, protect their family life, and have better energy to open the bookstore better. Jiang Tao said that he had not carefully calculated the accounts in the four years since the store was opened, "Life is still running normally, which means that it is still making money." But if you count the emotional value of the effort and the public welfare you make, it's really a loss."
Witness the transformation of the bookstore
Uncle Li, the owner of Changsha Shu Ancient Humanities Bookstore, has 20 years of experience in opening a store, and his store is in Changsha Wenheyou, where there are usually a lot of people, and he has to queue up at every turn.
When he first opened the bookstore, Uncle Li's idea was very simple, that is, he wanted to do a business that could take care of his own life without being too aggrieved and interested. Later, I met some interesting and uninteresting people, read some interesting books, and realized that the bookstore was also the place where the story took place.
Uncle Li also received second-hand books. He said that it is easy to encounter two extreme asking prices when receiving books, either each book is very expensive, or it is so cheap that I want to give it to you directly. Many people don't know the market price of used books, thinking that as long as they are a little old, they should be worth a lot, and some people will go to Confucius to check the price of used books online. Sometimes he can't talk at all after he comes to the door, and he will encounter embarrassment. Once, an old scholar of classical literature he knew, because of his eyesight loss, asked him to work on the collection. In this case, the offer is too high to receive, and the offer is too low to bear. I can't count the evaluations one by one, so I have to roughly price them one by one.
Now Uncle Li is no longer in the second-hand book business, and when he comes across a used book he likes, he buys it as a book collection. From the QQ era to the WeChat group era, Uncle Li has established a large-scale online community, and operates humanities, history, and art books through personal book selection and recommendation. He was very optimistic about the new book "Second-hand Bookstore Collecting Stories", and placed an order for 150 copies from the Hunan People's Publishing House.
Regarding the changes in bookstore sales in the era of the Internet and social networks, Uncle Li shared a small thing with readers. Previously, he observed that the proportion of male readers in the store was very high, and after a month of careful statistics, he confirmed the relationship between turnover and the gender of readers from the sales data, and the amount of books purchased by female readers was negligible. However, after readers relied heavily on online book recommendation information, Uncle Li found that female readers placed a large proportion of orders. He analyzed that this may have something to do with women's more accustomed to online shopping.
Shanghai Kaishuang Poetry Bookstore is a night bookstore. Assyria, the owner, shared with his readers a few "bookstore nights" about the people who came to the bookstore late at night and the various passers-by he encountered.
"On the night of April 12, 2024, two large branches fell from the entrance of the bookstore and lay across the middle of the road. I picked them up with an injury-like black stain stuck to my hands. At this time, a tall man came over to borrow the fire. I cleaned my hands and handed him the fire. Then we both smoked a cigarette by the branch. He told me that he was Ukrainian, I was stunned for a moment, I said, there is a war in your homeland, and he replied to me, two years. He asked me for my name, probably because I didn't understand the language, and I said he didn't understand. He asked me, is this a bookstore? Have you read all the books in the store? I said no, and I asked him, do you love Shanghai? And then he told me that his name was Vasily and he was a model in Shanghai. ”
Assyria said that every night, he would go to a nearby convenience store to buy a cup of Americano and sometimes a pack of cigarettes, "which are essential for a nighttime bookstore." If it opens that day (and there are readers buying books), buy a better pack of cigarettes. If it's not open, buy a pack of big front doors."
It's getting harder and harder
At the event, Uncle Li also talked about the fact that the fun of being a bookstore is becoming less and less, and the burden is getting heavier and heavier. He has experienced the wave of changes that e-commerce has violently impacted physical bookstores, and has struggled to keep up. At the moment of social networking and live streaming, another round of change has greatly increased his "emotional cost".
"In order to do well, I am getting more and more tired, and I feel like I am going to have no life of my own. Reading is not as focused as it used to be, and as you get older, the urgency to make a profit rises. I spend a lot of time on the computer every day, and I am confused and have no time to play football. Dealing with real people is reduced, and it's not fun at all. Uncle Li said.
He mentioned that it is easier for people to connect with people on the Internet, but the relationship is farther away, and it is not easy to get along with the relationship at all. Selling books online has met a lot of unreasonable people, some people always find reasons to return the book, and some people even ask for a refund after buying the book for a month on the grounds that "they have found a lower price on the e-commerce platform".
"Sales have been on the rise for the last decade. This year's difficulties are unprecedented, and there is basically a consensus among the peers who are in constant contact. Uncle Li said that the time and energy spent on choosing books is not equal to the money that can be earned now. In the past, he could achieve his target turnover for the day in one morning, but now he has to add the afternoon and evening hours. "Opening a bookstore, if everything is occupied by books, it is too painful to get up every day and think about how to sell books. Uncle Li sighed.
Assyria believed that whether or not he made money, he had earned a living by opening a bookstore. The life of a shopkeeper is tied to the bookstore, to the readership and sales data. He hopes that readers will not be so sensitive to price when they go to bookstores, always mentioning that bookstores are too expensive to sell, and e-commerce is cheaper. At the bookstore festival, some readers saw books that could not be bought online at the booth in Assyria, and when they asked if they were not on sale, they did not want to buy them. Another reader got angry at him when he saw that a book was more expensive than e-commerce.
"When people talk about bookstores, they seem to like them very much, and they want bookstores to stay open, but in fact, who really cares about bookstores?" But he also said that he hoped that readers would not treat bookstores as a vulnerable group and feel that they should buy books to support bookstores.
What can really support the development of bookstores in the long term is to break down stereotypes and maintain a sincere love for reading and respect for bookstores.
(This article is from Yicai)