Age of reading: Publishers start trends of opening bookstores

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Page One bookstores, a renowned brand founded by Singaporean publisher Mark Tan, is set to start a new chapter under new ownership.

The brand is now taken over by Beijing-based publishing company, Thinkindom Media, after purchasing the well-known bookstore chain at the end of August. The deal not only include ownership of the stores in the Chinese mainland, but also the right to use the brand in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Page One’s new CEO Liu Gang said by taking over the stores, they hoped that the brand could survive.

A Page One bookstore located in Guomao in Beijing. /Photo via Zhihu

“It is the publishers’ complex to open a bookstore, and it coincides with the time when Thinkindom Media’s board was thinking of expanding from being a publishing house to owning bookstores,” said Liu.

He added that the bookstores will keep their original characteristics, but they will redefine each store’s position and role in the chain to adjust their goals of turnovers and benefits.

“We will build the bookstores as content distributors and consider the bookstores’ development strategies from a publisher's point of view,” said Liu.

The Thinkindom Media is not the only publisher that started to open bookstores. A small poem-themed bookstore secretly emerged in a Hutong in Dongcheng District of Beijing, jointly owned by China Youth Press and a former editor.

A Page One bookstore located at Sanlitun‍ area in Beijing. /Photo via Zhihu

The bookstore was also supported by a company which was established earlier this year, focusing on publishing poems.

Peng Mingbang, owner of the company and the bookstore, said that he is planning to forge the store into a cultural saloon, which could accommodate poets and their events.

Starting this year, many Chinese publishers opened bookstores, including CITIC Publishing Group and the Intellectual Property Publishing House. For Cheng Sanguo, CEO of Bookdao.com, a web portal for reading and publishing, the bookstores now are no longer just book retailers.

A poem-themed bookstore in Dongcheng district, Beijing /Photo via dianping.com

"They are now the media where books could be advertised. And if the bookstore attracts much readers, it could work much better than traditional advertising," said Cheng.

According to Xu Shengguo, a director in the reading sector of the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, it is the new trend in the age of Internet era.

“The publishing houses open bookstores because they would directly obtain the information of their customers, enabling them to create customized services for their readers,” said Xu, adding that the newly opened bookstores will focus not on book selling, but on management of the readers.

Xu predicted that a new cultural ecosystem is forming and will be more diversified and profound in the near future.

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