At the end of last year, Tsutaya Bookstore, which has the title of "the most beautiful bookstore in the world", opened a branch in The New Institute of Shanghai's historic building, attracting a large number of young people to take photos and punch cards. At about the same time, the used bookstore that had been quietly operating at Fudan University for 21 years came with the news that it might be closed.
On the one hand, it is a highly visual "net red" new bookstore, playing with the popular "book + X" marketing law; on the other hand, it is to abide by the old traditional street corner old bookstore, not trim the edges, but to do the precipitation of knowledge to the extreme.
At first glance, it seems that the net red bookstore has won the market position, when coffee, cultural creativity, music and other forms enter together, the bookstore has become a cultural public space, which is the trend of the times.
But if the flood of commercial concepts enters the bookstore, and the attraction of photo punching and consumerism is greater than that of the book itself, we also have reason to think, those who really love books, must they withdraw from the bookstore field? How should those publishers who are serious about doing content achieve long-term development? And will the meaning of reading itself convey knowledge also be overlooked?
What should bookstores look like in the future? This is not only a problem being discussed by the industry, but also a topic of concern for every ordinary person who attaches importance to cultural consumption.
"When I see a book, I should have read a book."
The act of reading is simple and simple, one person, one book, at most add a cup of tea, you can achieve. But reading is not simple, it has a strong social image, reading shows a person's potential cultivation and spiritual temperament, symbolizing a way of life.
In 1989, Taiwan's Eslite Bookstore took "elite" as its positioning, pioneering the combination of books with art and fine products, not only to provide people with books, but also to provide "better life".
Who doesn't want a better life? Or, life itself is already troublesome enough, then go to the bookstore, you can enjoy the temporary relaxation. When Eslite Dunnan launched a 24-hour business model in 1999, the appeal was enormous.
Suzhou Eslite Bookstore. /Figureworm Creative
Eslite has ushered in a new 2.0 era for the bookstore industry, and bookstores that have created the concept of "good life" have also appeared. However, with the development of the Internet and the rise of punch card culture, bookstores have become "Internet celebrities". Fewer and fewer people are actually looking for a good book, and the shutter sound seems to be saying, "Reading a book is secondary, what is important is seeing the book, taking pictures, and others seeing it." ”
In the program "Thirteen Invitations", Luo Xiang, who teaches criminal law, and Xu Zhiyuan go to visit the All Saints Book Garden that the university often goes to, Luo Xiang sighs that "it is very happy to open books", but he also said: "The biggest pain of people is that they cannot cross the gap between knowing and doing." ”
In a sense, reading is the "pain" that people encounter in life, and there are many people who know that reading can make progress, but there are few people who can really withstand loneliness and internalize reading into self-growth.
In the Aranya Resort, there is a "world's loneliest library", the designers make this space facing the sea, the light and shadow change, and the people in it reach a dialogue with themselves through reading and meditation.
But today, the loneliest library is not lonely, and every holiday, there are countless people on the beaches of Aranya. They are young men and women who have escaped from the city, but have entered another "landscape society".
The loneliest library in Aranya. /Figureworm Creative
Fast-food reading and punching cards have made the net red bookstore somewhat "forget the book". In fact, an ideal cultural space should not only have the "imagination of capital", there must be both pleasing cultural products and readers who are willing to spend time immersed in it, and the field built by people and the environment together can effectively combat the anxiety of modern society.
Bookstores and the Internet should not be rivals
Some people may ask, since the Internet has brought the traffic model into the physical bookstore, it is equivalent to judging that technology is not good? Obviously, this answer is not absolute.
For those who insist on making paper books, the benefits of the Internet for the publishing industry are considerable. Zhang Lixian, the founder of the library, once said that through the Network, they can bypass the intermediate channels of layers of exploitation, directly establish contact with readers, and realize information transmission and book subscription.
In the era of e-books, the demand for paper books is still huge. /Unsplash
"I think the Internet, including the current mobile era, it's really not the enemy of paper books, it should be a friend of paper books, at least a good tool, and we have to embrace them." As a reader, but also as an operator, Zhang Lixian loves paper books, but does not approve of people emotionally putting paper books into the "high cabinet" and separating from the Internet.
In addition to paper books, in the field of digital reading, the role of technology is even more self-evident. Throughout 2020, the real economy has been affected by the epidemic environment, but industries relying on the Internet such as digital reading and audio content have ushered in development opportunities.
For example, in the first half of last year, platforms such as Get, Himalaya, and Fan Deng Reading have sent benefits to users by giving away VIP members or free resources, and first-class universities have opened data resource libraries for people who study at home with rich reference materials. The opening up of online reading resources has greatly alleviated the anxiety brought by the epidemic to the general public.
With the popularity of the mobile Internet, more and more people choose digital reading methods such as Kindle and mobile phone reading. /Unsplash
Last week, at the 7th China Digital Reading Conference, the China Audiovisual and Digital Publishing Association released the 2020 China Digital Reading Report. The report shows that in 2020, the scale of China's digital reading industry reached 35.16 billion, with a growth rate of 21.8%. The number of digital reading users reached 494 million, with a growth rate of 5.56%.
To a certain extent, the impact of the epidemic on physical bookstores is very huge, and many bookstores have also established online sales and marketing channels in the past year to actively approach readers.
After testing and seeing the comprehensive development of the digital reading industry, perhaps every practitioner will realize that technology itself is a "neutral", bookstores and the Internet, there is no natural opposition.
In the past, when people mentioned books, people always thought of beautifully bound paper publications, and when this medium was opened, people and information or knowledge were connected, which was quite ritualistic.
Nowadays, digital resources are highly developed, books break the inherent medium, become ubiquitous, it can be adapted into a movie IP, can also be a voice in life, it has gradually become an emotional bond, including the close interaction of people, space, and industry.
In this context, how to seize the opportunity of technology, adapt to the reading needs and hobbies of readers, manage the relationship between books and people well, and let those who maintain curiosity read more high-quality content and obtain higher recognition seem to be the most important.
Bookstore 3.0 era
Let more people really get closer to the culture
In fact, as mentioned above, in such an era of interconnection of all things, bookstores cannot be like the ancient books, leaving the world independent, high and widowed, and the wine aroma is afraid of deep alleys.
But the development of human civilization is also inseparable from the critical thinking of advanced technology, take its essence, remove its dross, from this dimension, when the bookstore is too "internet celebrity", its loss is bound to be the lasting vitality of the industry.
Therefore, compared with the 1.0 era of conformism and the 2.0 era of Internet celebrity, bookstores can also have richer and more in-depth forms of expression. This requires the integration of offline and online pan-reading resources under the premise of in-depth observation of the reading market, reducing formal procedures, avoiding empty concepts, and bringing readers closer to their favorite content.
At the China Digital Reading Conference, China Mobile Migu Digital Media, as the organizer, released the business operation model of Migu Cloud Bookstore. Both inside and outside the industry, this is a bold attempt at bookstores.
Migu Cloud Bookstore works with cultural industry partners to create a "knowledge cloud ecosystem".
Migu Cloud Bookstore will join hands with more than 300 domestic book publishing units and cultural industry partners to create an online and offline knowledge and cultural life cloud platform.
On the one hand, it can bring users one-stop cultural content experience such as paper books, e-books, knowledge payment, cultural creation, etc.; on the other hand, with the new production and marketing model, cloud bookstores can continue to empower the production, economy and distribution of knowledge, and ensure the income and development of the institutional industry with "cloud ecology".
It can be said that the era of bookstore 3.0, which integrates the advantages of many parties, is coming.
In fact, as early as before the launch of the cloud bookstore model, Migu had a meticulous exploration and excavation of the reading field. For example, in 2016, Migu launched the migu online sales platform , the Migu CITIC Bookstore APP, which opens up online and offline scenes and attracts the attention of the reading "backbone crowd" through a wide range of cultural activities such as paper, audio and video, cultural creation and so on.
This year's China Digital Reading Conference offline cultural and creative exhibition.
With the landing of 5G, AR, VR and book formats have more connections, Migu realized that the functions of a single APP are no longer enough to meet the cultural consumption needs of more people. The slogan of "reading for all" is getting louder and louder, and reading needs to fall into the corner of reality and need to be buried deep in the foundation of the industry.
As Liu Peiyao, chief operating officer of Migu Digital Media Co., Ltd., said, on the one hand, the user's strong demand for knowledge, on the other hand, the publishing enterprises waiting for more opportunities, need a link like the cloud bookstore to connect supply and demand, Migu Cloud Bookstore, essentially a digital intelligent content middle office and operation middle office.
And because of the comprehensive exploration of Migu Cloud Bookstore, perhaps, future readers will not be entangled in paper or electronic, because in different scenarios, there is naturally the most suitable way to read; they will not be lost in the world of knowledge explosion, because those who understand books and recommend content are hidden in this invisible cloud.
Migu Cloud Bookstore colorful creative design display.
French sociologist Bourdieu believes that compared with economic or social capital, the accumulation of cultural capital is relatively easy, it determines what kind of taste people use to live, establish a self-pleasing lifestyle, and achieve identity transformation, which is why education or broader learning has become the current social trend.
And the net red bookstore and its trend of taking photos and punching cards, may just be the beginning of this "cultural wind", along with more people into the bookstore, explore the "cloud bookstore", those hidden behind the calm heart, those pragmatism on the deepening of self-understanding, will promote the reading of this behavior throughout people's lives, more pure.
This is also the direction that Miguyun Bookstore actively strives to do, that is, to make the knowledge itself closer to people, and to let more people really get closer to the ideal culture.
[1] Liang Wendao in conversation with Zhang Lixian: A person likes to read because curiosity is not dead, looking at ideals, 2020-6
[2] Dunnan Eslite: The Hexahedron of The Story of the Lost, with a Question, End Media, 2020-7
✎ Author | Yumi
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