Bookshops: Talk of demise is exaggerated

The Librairie Avant-Garde in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. [Photo/China Daily]

"I don't have time. Honestly, the Internet is so convenient and you can get any book online. Why bother to go to an offline bookstore on a day like this?"

It was a freezing day in early March and it was raining, perfect for staying indoors and finding warmth in a cup of hot tea.

If all the traditional physical bookstores closed, it would probably come as no shock to most. In fact, since 2010, offline bookstores in China have gone through extremely tough times, a great many closing due to the impact of e-commerce, rising costs and plummeting patronage.

The nadir came when sales in physical bookshops around China fell two years in a row, 2012 and 2013, says the industry monitor Open Book.

However, in line with the Taoist saying that once a certain limit is reached, a change in the opposite direction is inevitable, in the past two years there has been a revival in private physical bookstores. Even as the government has urged people to read more, these shops have changed the way they operate to meet the expectations of buyers and are beginning to prosper once again.

Last year, nearly 10 bookstores, big and small, opened in Shanghai, including chain bookstores such as Sisyphus, Yan Ji You, and Muji Books, and smaller individual bookstores such as Mephisto and Rhino Library.

In other cities, big chain bookstores are also shooting up like mushrooms after rain.

In Suzhou, Jiangsu province, the Taiwan chain bookstore Eslite opened its first bookstore