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| Book Lion in Kyiv | |
In defiance of Russia's ongoing aggression in Ukraine, "a crop of new independent bookshops... are springing up all around Kyiv, the Guardian reported, noting that in the central Pechersk district, Misto opened in December. "At the time, Russian missile attacks were regularly casting Kyiv into darkness. Everyone told Diana Slonchenko, its owner, that she was mad. But war, she says, 'changed my mindset.' Her desire to open a bookshop had switched from 'something I'll do one day, to something I need to do now.' "
Her bookshop is airy, with pale wood fittings, large windows, and a selection of vinyl neatly displayed above a record player. "I wanted it to be light and warm--like a library from the past, maybe a school library but in a good way. No Soviet stuff. I want people to come in here and feel safe," she said, adding that the most common question customers ask her is: "Can you recommend a book that is not about Ukrainian suffering?"
In the city's Podil district, the Book Lion bookshop opened last August. "It's really hard to plan during a war, and we were thinking: how can we do this when we just don't know what's going to happen? But step by step we did it," said co-founder Oleksandr Riabchuk.
An even newer bookshop, Skovoroda, named for the 18th-century Ukrainian philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda, opened April 8. "We want to fill the market up with original Ukrainian titles and books in translation," said bookseller Victoria Berkut. "There used to be a powerful stereotype that good translations of foreign literature could only be found in Russian--and we want to show that there are good translators into Ukrainian."
The bookshops "are as much community spaces as places for solitary browsing," the Guardian wrote. "The Book Lion bookshop, which had electricity through the winter blackouts, proved a haven for people living locally such as the writer Oleksandr Mykhed. During air-raid alerts a group of women employed locally still come and knit in the corners. Sens, a bookshop that opened shortly before the invasion, in January 2022, is practically a co-working space, with laptop-wielding hipsters getting on with their jobs over coffee."
The bookshops are a sign of hope. "When writers see the bookstores they are happy," said Riabchuk. "They have faith that the books they are going to write will find readers."
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| Eslite Songyan (via) | |
Shopping at 24-hour bookstores continues to be a popular option in some parts of the world. Eslite's Songyan store in southern Taipei will take over as the bookstore chain's next 24-hour branch after its Xinyi store closes at the end of the year. Taiwan News reported that it will be "the third time Eslite has operated a bookstore around the clock, with the volume of its publications to be tripled.... Taiwan became the first in the world to run a 24-hour bookshop, Eslite Dunnan, in 1999, followed by Eslite Xinyi in 2020."
Eslite chairwoman Mercy Wu also unveiled an initiative, to kick off in June, that will see the company's bookstores in Asia take turns providing nonstop service. A total of 24 outlets, including those in Taiwan and in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, will participate in the event. The company had also announced in March it would open 10 more stores in Taiwan this year.
In Japan, Yamashita Shoten bookstore, located in a residential corner of Tokyo's Setgaya Ward, "has launched unmanned overnight operations for a trial period, as part of efforts to boost sales," the Japan News reported. Customers have to scan a QR code with their smartphones to enter the store. They pay for items on a self-checkout machine exclusively for cashless payments. Cameras and other security devices are used to deter shoplifters. The trial runs through July.
Major book distributor Tohan Corp., which launched the trial in late March amid sluggish sales of printed books and a fall in the number of bookstores, noted that "a higher-than-expected number of customers have been visiting the shop early in the morning, presumably before going to work," the Japan News noted.
"Sales are rising. If overall results are good, we'd like to expand the system to other shops," a Tohan official said.
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BookNet Canada has released The Canadian Book Consumer Study 2022, featuring data about the book-related behaviors of adult Canadians. In 2022, surveys were conducted during the months of March, June, September, and December among 10,840 adult, English-speaking Canadians, 18% of whom were book buyers.
The Canadian Book Consumer Study 2022 includes:
- data on book buying, including insights into spending habits, reasons to buy at specific places, and changes in spending over time
- data on borrowing, including motivations behind borrowing vs. buying, discoverability, and browsing activity
- an analysis of the change in the buying and borrowing of print books, e-books, and audiobooks through recent years
- information related to the interest of book buyers in books by Canadian contributors, Canadian regions, Indigenous peoples, and more.