As we report news from the 2017 Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair, we also have our monthly listings on overall Chinese bestselling books, produced through a partnership with OpenBook in China and the US-based distribution network Trajectory. Details of what’s reflected in these charts appears at the end of the story.
Our colleague Rainy Liu reports that there’s a notable trend in China toward publisher-owned bookstores, and this is a phenomenon seen among both private and state-owned publishers.
In August, for example, Liu tells us, the Singapore-based bookstore Page One was acquired by Chinese publisher Thinkingdom Media Group Ltd, which recently was listed as a publicly traded corporation. The company, we’re told, anticipates retaining the Page One brand’s coffeehouse style with food and beverage service in addition to books.
Meanwhile, state-owned publisher Citic Press Group has opened 69 bookstores in close to a dozen airports in China.
Another development attracting retail attention is that of the “shared bookstore,” which is a kind of library service now seen in Beijing and Shanghai. The trend is reported to have been seen first in Hefei, in China’s eastern Anhui province in July.
As an article in People’s Daily describes it, “Customers are allowed to borrow up to two books valued under 150 yuan per visit (US$22.75) after registering with an app and paying the 99 yuan deposit fee (US$15).
