New opening 4061: Closing the shop 1573 Can't open the bookstore anymore? You might be thinking wrong
More than a month ago, the closing of Beijing Normal University's Prosperity Love Letter Store earned another wave of tears from scholars.
Although, many of them probably haven't bought a book in a bookstore for a long time, maybe there are some who are secretly surprised: I didn't expect this bookstore to survive to this day.
"Bookstores can't be opened at all these years." "Opening a bookstore will definitely not support yourself." Whenever a bookstore with some characteristics closes, similar remarks appear from time to time.
As everyone knows, in 2020, experiencing the impact of the epidemic, more than 4,000 new bookstores have been opened across the country.
On March 30, the "2020-2021 China Physical Bookstore Industry Development Report" was released at the China Bookstore Conference hosted by the China Book Publishing Industry Association and other institutions.
The report shows that in 2020, China will open 4,061 bookstores and close 1,573 stores. The number of new openings is 2.6 times the number of closed stores.
Unexpectedly, in the midst of bad chants, the vitality of physical bookstores is far more tenacious and tenacious than you think.
Not all of those who stick to it come from cultural sentiments, and some of them also believe that the bookstore still has a "money scene."
At the same time, traditional bookstores in people's impressions are also digging their heads to retain readers.
Since 2014, "Advocating Reading by All" has been written into the "Government Work Report" 8 times in a row.
Every year before and after World Book Day, the relevant voices are even more unceasing.
In the opinion of Ai Limin, chairman of the China Book Publishing Industry Association, the promotion of reading for all is inseparable from the construction of physical bookstores and effective services.
But the demise of traditional bookstores seems to be irreversible, and the business format transformation is still on the way.
Forging a new concept bookstore in the steel furnace
The well-known 798 is a bit outdated.
When you come to Beijing now and want to visit the industrial sites, many people would prefer the Shougang Park in the west of Beijing.
However, the industrial site can only be seen from a distance and it is inconvenient to get close. In Shougang Park, if you want to "deep" strolling, your choice so far seems to have only one bookstore-the National Reading Art Bookstore.
This year's Ching Ming Festival holiday, the National Reading Art Bookstore is overcrowded.
This bookstore built in the "belly" of the original Shougang No. 3 blast furnace, although it focuses on high-cold foreign art albums, and the unit price of books can be hundreds of yuan, but it is as lively as a vegetable market.
Many people come here admiringly, but many of them simply come to Shougang Park for sightseeing without knowing that this is a bookstore, or even after entering the door-in this place known as a bookstore, the area with the largest area is the dining bar.
The expensive Western-style meals in the store are obviously more attractive than art albums, although the prices of the two are similar.
In the huge space, people are immersed in eating in almost all the places where they can sit.
Only when they raised their heads and wiped their mouths with paper towels and accidentally glanced at the albums on the bookshelves on the far wall, diners would remember that this is actually a bookstore, and their first identity should have been readers.
The design of the National Changdu Art Bookstore is unique, maintaining the original industrial style of Shougang No. 3 blast furnace, and even the bookshelves are made of steel.
Its chief designer Shi Yang once participated in the hutong renovation of Tianqiao Community in Beijing, and he brought the concept of urban renewal into the design of this bookstore.
"In the No. 3 blast furnace used for steelmaking, we decided to forge a book city." Shi Yang, currently teaching in the Department of Architecture of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, told reporters, "Books are the main body, but not all, just immersed in it. You can meet the book anytime, anywhere, and the culture it contains."
Indeed, even the shop assistants sometimes wonder whether this is a bookstore or not, but it is undeniable that books are still the most common element in this space.
However, because it is an art bookstore, most of the books on sale are thick albums and sealed with plastic film, which is respectable.
Even if someone is attracted by it, they handle it with care and care, as if they are admiring works of art.
Cultural creation is obviously a more accessible culture.
The number of people gathered in the cultural and creative sales area far exceeds that of the bookshelves next to it.
No matter how fancy it is, everyone can recognize that those cultural and creative products are nothing more than pens, notebooks, bookmarks, and refrigerator stickers.
The price is also very "lightweight", you can get a copy for ten or twenty yuan, as a souvenir to check in the Internet celebrity bookstore.
No matter whether it is used or not in the future, there is no burden, just put it on, it is already beautiful.
This is not the first store of the bookstore brand "Nationwide Reading", but the most profitable section of each store is catering.
"Accounting for more than 50%," Zhao Jie, founder and CEO of Quanmin Changdu, told reporters. "So many bookstore colleagues will say that I am selling dog meat. The name of the bookstore is actually opening a restaurant. Books are not respected, too. Disrespect the reader."
Zhao Jie didn't care about these doubtful voices.
He said that he was running a bookstore with Internet thinking.
"The wool comes out of the pig", in Zhao Jie's view, it should be.
He gave an example to reporters that in the nobles depicted in European oil paintings, some people drank red wine and ate cheese while reading a book. He thought that was also a kind of elegance, so he let red wine and cheese pay for the book.
"Some well-respected traditional bookstores have a suffocating pile of books. Readers choose books to read, and they don’t even have a place to sit. Bookstore owners who read poetry and books always claim that they are not making money and seem to sell books. It doesn’t matter, but the chat has to talk about you. If you catch a guest, you will PK with someone.” Zhao Jie said, laughing, “The books they sell are also advanced, and some people don’t even understand the title of the book, and even start to doubt it. With my IQ, I can’t feel the ease of reading. I don’t think this is a respect for readers."
Before founding Quanminchang Bookstore, Zhao Jie worked as an English teacher, ran a training organization, opened a cafe, and worked as a carpool app.
The reason he opened a bookstore was because he saw the opportunity hidden behind the book.
"Many books can develop products and courses, not just selling books. Books are the most diverse products in the world, and they are an entry point that can truly realize the Internet of Everything."
For example, when they sold "Coffee Practical Collection", they developed their own brand of coffee beans based on the content of the book and sold them in the store.
When selling music-related books, courses on musical instrument training will be offered in the store at the same time.
When you wander in other bookstores, the background sound may be a world-famous song, but in the Quanminchang Bookstore, the background sound may be which child is learning to play Hulusi.
Quanminchang Reading Store has hosted weddings, concerts, art exhibitions, and new product launches for electronic products. It has also opened up a space for a paid study room.
All of this requires enough space, so unlike traditional bookstores, there cannot be too many books in the store.
"Unlike traditional bookstores who want to sell more books, we must strictly control the sales of books. We must not let book sales account for more than 10% of revenue, otherwise we will lose money." Zhao Jie attaches great importance to the operation and realization of bookstore cultural space. .
It has been 6 years since the Nationwide Reading brand was created. Zhao Jie believes that he is still a layman in the bookstore field, but he believes that laymen have an advantage.
"Many industries have been subverted by laymen, and it is difficult for experts to have the courage to discount their legs and reform." He is still committed to making popular reading into a beautiful bookstore, although some people think it is a coffee shop, some people think it is a library Some people think it is a study room.
"It doesn't matter, as long as there is value." The value Zhao Jie said is not limited to cultural value, but mainly commercial value.
He firmly believes that he can explore a business model that makes money by opening a bookstore and empower the bookstore industry.
Invite readers back to the bookstore and deliver the books to their homes
Newcomers are not the only ones seeking innovation and change, but bookstores that rely on established state-owned enterprise publishing houses are also struggling to keep up with the times.
Every Saturday and Sunday, the main store of Waiyan Bookstore arranges a story meeting in the morning and afternoon, inviting preschool children and their parents to participate.
The clerk tells the story of the picture book to the children, and takes everyone to do the handicraft together.
Some children who come to participate in the activities are not yet at the age of kindergarten and are ignorant. They will suddenly get up and wander around when the clerk is serious about telling the story; or when they are doing handicrafts, they will snatch other people's things or even cry.
The shop assistants were not stunned, patiently comforting and counseling each child.
The clerk's daily work is only in charge of clearing, tally, and cashier.
In order to organize these activities, they went to the kindergarten teachers to learn how to tell stories, how to origami, and how to make plasticine.
Sometimes when the dozen or so children participating in the story meeting are noisy together, you can obviously feel the clerks are overwhelmed.
After all, they are not professionals, and they will inevitably be overwhelmed when facing their only child at home.
Even so, the story will continue to hold 4 games every weekend.
When the regular frequency cannot be guaranteed during the epidemic, the event is even completely free.
After getting rid of the pandemic, the bookstore will only symbolically charge a single fee of more than a dozen yuan for manual materials, although the content of the activity is similar to the expensive parent-child early education institutions in the society.
Fu Shuai, general manager of Waiyan Bookstore, told reporters that the store will not increase income due to such activities. They just want to attract children to the bookstore in this way.
"Readers need to be cultivated from generation to generation," Fu Shuai said. "Now that parents want their children to read more, then we will provide conditions for them to grow up in bookstores."
Children's activities are not the only cultural activities of Waiyan Bookstore.
Aimed at people of different ages and interests, Waiyan Bookstore Headquarters and Dongsheng Science Park Branch hold more than 500 cultural activities each year.
The vast majority of these activities are for the whole society, and there is no charge for pure public welfare. The only purpose is to invite the readers who have been long-lost back to the bookstore.
The bookstore must first be visited by people, and in Fu Shuai's view, what really attracts people into the bookstore shouldn't just be the unique location advantage and the exquisite decoration design.
In addition to bringing readers back to the bookstore, they also think of ways to send the books in the store to the reader's home, such as cooperating with a takeaway.
Meituan takeaways now not only deliver meals, but also deliver books.
This innovative breakthrough depends on the complaining epidemic.
During the most intense period of the epidemic in February and March last year, under the leadership of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department and other departments, 72 bookstores in Beijing cooperated with Meituan Waimai to deliver books to readers through takeout.
The sales champions of several rounds of Meituan takeaway book-delivery promotion activities were all from Waiyan Bookstore Dongsheng Science Park.
Li Shan, the manager of the Dongsheng Science Park Store of Waiyan Bookstore, told reporters that at the beginning of the establishment of the store in 2018, they paid great attention to the investigation of the situation of nearby readers.
Since they are opened in the science park, they used questionnaires and other forms to understand the reading needs of the employees of the science park and nearby residents before opening the store, and established a WeChat group of readers.
Most of the readers in the group are employees working nearby or residents living nearby, which coincides with the distance the food can be delivered to.
Reading is not as urgent as filling your stomach. Will anyone rush to read to order with takeaway?
Li Shan was also very vague at first, but she didn't expect someone to be eager to buy.
Most of them were students who were unable to return to school and ordered a large number of stationery such as copybooks and vocabulary books.
In order to make up the list, parents will also pick some other books at the same time.
Once upon a time, Waiyan Bookstore was just a salesroom of foreign language teaching and research publishing house.
Backed by the big tree of Waiyan Society, Waiyan Bookstore was once full of confidence and could confidently say: "If you can't find a foreign language book in Waiyan Bookstore, then you don't need to look for it in other bookstores." In the 1990s, there was even a scorching summer, when shop assistants took a nap in the store, and readers lined up outside the store to wait for the door to open.
Nowadays, there are very few cases where books can only be bought at specific bookstores.
Times are changing, readers are changing, and bookstores must also change.
Fu Shuai and his colleagues changed their tricks to pour new wine into the old bottle of "Waiyan Bookstore", and tried every means to bring readers lost due to online shopping discounts back to the bookstore.
At the same time, they are also expanding the geographic scope of bookstore cultural services. Even though the epidemic has hit hard, Waiyan Bookstore still opened branches in October last year, and even plans to expand into other places.
The value of a bookstore is not limited to selling books
Feng Zhen plans to come to Beijing from Wuxi on May Day.
This is not the first time she has come to Beijing, so she asked local friends to recommend some less conventional tourist attractions. Unexpectedly, the routes recommended by the two who did not know each other included bookstores by appointment: if you want to see the most beautiful night view of Qianmen City Tower, you can go PageOne Beijing Fangdian; if you want to visit the courtyard and taste Beijing culture, you can go to Zhengyang Bookstore.
"Beijing is Beijing, the true cultural capital. There are bookstores in the scenic spots, and bookstores are also scenic spots." Feng Zhen sighed while doing travel guides.
This is exactly what the Beijing Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department and many other departments are trying to impress on citizens and foreign tourists.
In 2020, 639 new bookstores will be opened in Beijing, ahead of other provinces and become the well-deserved annual "Bookstore Capital of China".
Wang Yefei, deputy director of the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee, said that the construction speed of Beijing's physical bookstores has nothing to do with the city's cultural heritage, economic development, and unique political advantages.
According to Wang Yefei, in 2020, the two-level financial departments of the Beijing district will coordinate a total of 240 million yuan in special funds to support the construction of physical bookstores, exceeding the total of the first four years of the "13th Five-Year Plan".
Leveraging the investment of real money, by the end of 2020, Beijing has overfulfilled the previous year's plan of having 0.8 bookstores per 10,000 people, achieving 0.9 bookstores per 10,000 people.
As if it was only a fraction of a decimal point, relevant departments at all levels of the Beijing Municipal Government have made tremendous efforts.
Specifically, almost every street has to dig three feet of land to dig out a public space, and the street takes the lead to attract bookstores.
During the interview, some grassroots cadres who had scratched their heads quietly complained to reporters: I don't understand why the city has worked so hard on the small business of bookstores from top to bottom.
It seems that Beijing does not regard physical bookstores as small businesses, but has risen to the level of infrastructure construction.
In February, when the epidemic was the most severe last year, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee decided that no matter how severe the epidemic in Beijing is, supermarkets, shopping malls, and physical bookstores cannot be closed.
On February 26, the "Notice on the Solicitation of Beijing Physical Bookstore Support Projects in Response to the New Coronavirus Epidemic" put forward 16 targeted support policies to provide emergency blood transfusions for physical bookstores.
At the height of the epidemic, more than 200 bookstores were still open in Beijing.
Although there were very few readers who came to buy books at that time, their persistence seemed to lighten people's spirit in the gloom.
It's easy to open a shop and difficult to operate.
The transformation and upgrading of physical bookstores has been a slogan of the whole industry for many years.
It is an exploration that many bookstores have done to run mixed businesses like Quanminchang Bookstore, and do more cultural activities like Waiyan Bookstore.
On the one hand, operators will be questioned by bookstores becoming obscure. On the other hand, reader activities held by many bookstores not only make no money but also lose money, but also make the bookstore suffer for a long time.
“Let’s look at this from another angle: physical bookstores are becoming a cultural container of a city.” Cheng Sanguo, president of Baidao New Publishing Research Institute, who is dedicated to the study of the bookstore industry, believes that “more and more physical bookstores reflect The value of public cultural services far exceeds commercial value."
Some public cultural services funded by the government, such as building community libraries, have to provide venues, personnel, and library equipment, which cost a lot of money, but attract limited readers.
If, through the provision of preferential policies in terms of rent and taxes, to attract physical bookstores to settle in the community, run them independently, and undertake cultural activities, the government's expenditure will not only be greatly reduced, but also the reading needs of nearby residents will be met.
Since its establishment 4 years ago, Dayin Bookstore has no longer positioned itself as a retailer of books.
They put more effort into designing various cultural activities around books, and selling these activities as products to various institutions.
In just four years, Dayin Bookstore has provided nearly 1,000 cultural activities for party and government organizations, social organizations, corporate institutions, and public welfare venues, and has gradually formed its own cultural service brand in the process.
Liu Jun, Chairman of Shanghai Dayin Book Company Co., Ltd. explained, “In this way, bookstores can only rely on readers to achieve value from the past, and develop into a bookstore that integrates good writers, good editors, and good book resources, and provides cultural services. "The way to go out." Liu Jun said, the cultural activities of selling bookstore brands to various institutions now account for about 40% of the total revenue of Dayin Bookstore.
"The number and value of Chinese physical bookstores are undoubtedly the world's top. The competition in this area can be said to have entered no man's land. Because there is no book pricing protection system, the business model challenges faced by Chinese bookstores are currently the most difficult in the world. . But this also means that we have greater late-comer advantages and more opportunities.” Cheng Sanguo said, “If China’s physical bookstore industry in the future can innovate and succeed in the dual-cycle mode of cultural industry and public cultural services, I believe that by then The quality of development of China's bookstores will surely lead the world."
Our reporters Yin Pingping, Yuan Quan, and Sister Liang