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Zheng Liu, "Cultural Mavericks: The Business and Politics of Independent Bookselling in China" (Columbia UP, 2026)
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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C
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Dr. Jung Liu about her book titled Cultural the Business and Politics of Independent Bookselling in China, which was published by Columbia University Press in 2026 and takes us into the world of independent bookselling in China, which is a very distinct part of the publishing industry in the country, but is not the same as what we might expect of independent bookselling in, for example, the country. I'm sitting in in a minute in the uk so it's a really interesting exploration where perhaps there are some similarities to those of us used to Western bookselling, but it is a very distinct, distinct dynamic as well. So we get to talk about it today. Jung, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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D
Yeah, thank you very much, Miranda, for the introduction and thank you very much for having me today.
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C
Well, I'm very pleased that we get to have this discussion. Would you mind starting us off, please, by introducing yourself a little bit and why you decided to write this book. What sorts of questions do you want to investigate? How did this whole project develop?
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D
Yes, I can do that. Absolutely. So yeah, My name is Dr. Jiang Liu and I am currently a lecturer in Innovation management at the University of Bristol Business School. Although by training I'm a sociologist. More specifically I'm a culture and economic sociologist. So basically my research in the broadest terms is really concerned with understanding how culture, processes, technological innovation and business practices interact with each other to shape contemporary social and economic life. I think it was kind of against the background about 12 years ago, it's a long time ago. So I kind of became quite interested in the phenomena of. Basically at that time the were a lot of bookstores in China who were calling themselves independent bookstores or in Chinese Du Li Shu Dian and yeah, so basically I was, I was. Well before I came to the UK I was studying at Tsinghua University in Beijing and there were quite a few such independent bookstores in the Wudokou area where is Tsinghua University, West End is still based in. So I was a regular customer of these independent bookstores. But at that time I, I didn't really pay much attention to the label of independent bookstores. So things really changed when I came to the UK to study sociology at Cambridge. And then obviously as you know, Cambridge we have a fair share of bookstores. And then I quickly learned actually in the UK book industry there is this distinction between independent bookstores and chain bookstores. And so that was really kind of some kind of personal experience or personal encounter that really got me to think, oh, independent bookstores, we've got some independent bookstores in China, so what's the difference? Because it seemed to me at that time in the UK when you talk about independent bookstores, you pretty much mean that non chain bookstores that run by individual kind of owners. But I had that, I had that strong feeling that in China, you know, all those self proclaimed independent bookstores, you know, some of them were small individually run bookshops but others were actually chain bookstores run by or founded by large corporations. So I was really interested but by the question of what does it mean to be as an independent bookstore? And you know, why is it there are so many independent bookstores opening up in China at a time where, you know, you have Amazon, you have other Chinese online retailing platforms and everybody seems to be ditching print books and you know, adopting kind of Kindle as a E reading. I just found that question all very kind of Very interesting. So I decided to use my sociological expertise to, to investigate the whole, the whole process.
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C
Yeah, well that's definitely a useful background and gives us a whole bunch of things to discuss over the course of our conversation. But perhaps to give us a little bit more foundation, can you give us maybe a sense of how book publishing works in China?
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D
Yes, so, so book publishing, book publishing, I mean if, if you are as a book professional, for example, if you're a book professional working here in the uk actually if you travel to China and talk to those publishers, well your first impression would be actually there are a lot of similarities. I think there are more similarities than differences between your UK kind of publishing house and the Chinese publishing house. But I think one of the main difference is that the Chinese book publishing field, so basically here in the UK when we talk about publishing there are main, two kinds of publishing kind of fields, trade publishing or general interest. So mass market publishing on the one hand and then the other one is called I think non consumer publishing, including educational publishing, academic publishing, etc. Etc. But in China I think we do not really distinguish publisher in this way. So, so, so books and book publishers, they don't really kind of find themselves to be so neatly in two separate publishing fields. Books in China tend to be officially classified into eight or nine categories including social sciences, science and technology, literature, art, children's books, Chinese classics, education, academic and references and encyclopedia. So which means that for a book publisher you, you can simultaneously publish what are known in the UK as treat, treat books and you know, like professional books or academic books. So I think that's one kind of main difference between the Chinese publishing and probably English language publishing. And also another main, main kind of difference is that, well, the Chinese book publishing field really is comprised of two types of players. So on the one hand you have the state owned publishing houses, so they are the official publishing houses who can legally publish books. But on the other hand you've got numerous privately owned book publishing houses or known as book companies. So these players, they do not have officially they do not have the right to publish books because they do not have official access to book numbers. So book numbers basically are the Chinese version of ISBN. But in China you are not allowed to publish books without a officially allocated book numbers. So these privately owned book publishing houses, they do not have access to those book numbers. So but in order to publish, and they do publish a lot, so they need to work or collaborate with state owned publishing houses. So that's something my sound new to, you know, Western audience But yeah, I think that's a kind of very interesting fact about how book publishing works in China. However, in terms of how book publishing, you know, the way book publishing works in China, how does that affect the rise and development of independent books bookstores? There are two main points that I think worth highlighting. So the first one is that unlike in the uk, where even you know, the smallest bookstores can easily find suppliers to supply them books in very efficient way, in China, many of these independent bookstores that I studied actually they were really struggling to stock books. So these kind of very small scale bookstores are not, well, were not and are still not very well served in terms of the suppliers and getting stock from, you know, publishers or the distributors. So yeah, so this is one kind of main reason why as I write in the book, I think in chapter five, so I write a lot about why so many independent bookstores simply choose to diversify into other non book business lines simply because many of them were struggling to stock books. So that might sound very kind of, you know, quite strange because you are a bookstore, but you know, a lot of those bookstores are actually quite understocked. And another point is that while the Chinese book market is one of the largest book markets in the world, but the most lucrative segments within the Chinese book market are educational books. So by educational books I mean primarily school textbooks as well as exam prep materials. So these are the two types of books that are most profitable. And most of the non independent privately owned bookstores sell this kind of educational books. Namely school textbook. Not school textbook. Yeah, school textbooks and exam prep materials. And one way for these independent bookstores to, to, to distinguish themselves from the non independent privately owned bookstores is to say that no, we won't be selling these books, we do not consider these books high quality enough. Instead we will be selling those other books which we consider as, you know, got more cultural or artistic value to them. So yeah, I think that's the second quite interesting kind of background knowledge that audience probably want to be aware of in order to understand all the dynamics that I describe in the book.
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C
Yeah, no, that's very helpful, thank you for explaining that. I think we also probably want to discuss what the term independent bookstore actually means then in that context.
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D
Yeah, that's very interesting that that actually was one of my research questions because so basically when I started the projects, you know, you started project by identifying your research subject. But then I found myself in such a kind of place where I basically, well there, there were quite a lot of self identified independent bookstores but there wasn't a kind of fixed or commonly accepted definition of the term independent bookstore or I don't think, well even these days I don't think there is a widely accepted definition of that term. So that means, you know, what, what does it mean to be an independent bookstore? One of my, you know, the first research question that I investigated and what I have found is that, you know, two to, to qualify as an independent book source. By saying qualified doesn't mean that there is an external body there or association there to you, you know, to grant a bookstore an independent bookstore kind of this status. It's just saying that if you, you know, well, I mean practically any bookstore can claim to be an independent bookstore. There is no kind of very clear cut definition there as here in the UK, but there are three kind of by talking to 50, 60 booksellers. So there were three kind of common themes involved in defining kind of independent bookstore in the Chinese context. So the first one being you must be a non state owned business establishment. This is because in China, so basically while the Chinese bookselling failed is mainly comprised of, let's see, three, three main groups of players. The first one being the state owned Xinhua Bookstore. So basically you can imagine this Xinhua bookstores as a group of bookstores. Well, they're all kind of, in terms of the ownership structure, they are state owned, but each book, but you know that China is so big, we have I can't remember exactly how many provinces, but how this Xinhua bookstore system works is that each one of these province will have their own Xinhua bookstore company or cooperation. Which means that although all these bookstores are called Xinhua bookstores, actually Xinhua bookstores operating in different provinces are actually owned by different cooperations. But on the whole, we tend to consider them as a whole kind of, you know, we tend to consider them, we can just call them like they're all Xinhua bookstores and they're all state owned booksellers. And in parallel to the state owned Xinhua bookstores, you have the ordinary kind of privately owned bookstores. And this is where the independent bookstores try to distinguish them from. So basically all independent bookstores are by definition they are non state owned bookstores, but they also try to be different from the non independent privately owned bookstores as well. So the first kind of dimension of the independent identity involves ownership structure. You must be non state owned. And the second one involves your operational mode. So basically nearly all of the independent booksellers I Interviewed, they said something like to qualify as an independent bookstore, you must have operational autonomy, which means that your business practices, your managerial decision making must not be subjected to instructions of a book of a third party, including for example, your co operate headquarter. However, there was some kind of controversy or debates around operational mode because as I said, even you know, you can simultaneously be independent bookstores but running chains. So this might sound a little bit, you know, old to Western audience or Western book professionals. However that is, you know what is happening in the Chinese independent book selling field. Basically you have independent bookstore chains. You know, they would be financed, founded and owned by large corporations, but they insist to be called independent bookstores. And then if you spoke with the manager of the bookstore and say why you call yourself independent bookstores when you are running like 10 branches and actually you are founded and managed centrally by a large corporation and then they will be telling you, first of all, we are not owned by the state. And secondly, although we are owned by a kind of distant headquarters, we do have at the manager level, we do have operational autonomy in terms of what kind of books we stock and sell, that kind of stuff. So that's an interesting kind of point. I think for Chinese independent bookstores it's really mainly about being non state owned and have a level of kind of operational autonomy. So it doesn't really matter whether you are a one store establishment or you run 10 or 20 stores across the country. And the third kind of dimension or element has to do with cultural ethos. So basically whether they are one store establishment or around multiple branches, all of the independent bookstores that I spoke with tend to tell me that. So basically to be in an independent bookstore means that your bookstores must have character, have some individuality. Your bookstores must be different in, in different ways, different from both the state owned Xinhua bookstores and those non independent privately owned bookstores. So I think being in individual being have some level of idiocracy is another kind of defining feature of these independent bookstores in China. So mainly three things, ownership, structure, operational mode and some kind of cultural ethos.
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C
Okay, that's very helpful to keep in mind because as you said, that is different from what the expectation might be. So good that we've clarified those terms. How do we get these kinds of stores? When and why do they begin to develop in China?
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D
Yeah, I think they mainly started to appear appear across China roughly in the mid 2000s. I think the golden era for these independent bookstores would be between the mid 2000s up until the COVID pandemic. So that's mainly the period where you would hear a lot of news about new independent bookstores opening up and that kind of stuff. Covid was kind of a big blow for these independent bookstores as well as for many other kind of small bricks and mortar businesses in China. So since COVID well, some of the independent bookstores that I studied permanently closed down for various reasons. But I think in terms of when these establishments are started to appear in China, that could be pinpoint to mid 2000s and for the next decade, also a little bit longer than decade. And that was the definite golden era of these independent bookstores and in terms of, you know, the driving forces behind them. I don't, I don't cover this actually in the book itself because this form, well, I mean this forms part of the original project. But I don't talk much about, you know, why these bookstores have developed over that period of time. But I think that I can share that here in the interview. I think there are three main things. The first one being so as I said, beginning in the early 2000s, you know, online retailing, book retailing platforms started to started to appear in China, including Amazon. Actually, Amazon basically got into the Chinese market by acquiring a Chinese kind of AE retailing platform called Zhouyu I think it's a long time ago. Anyways, beginning in the early 2000s, we've got this digital transformation started to have an impact on the book industry, especially the book selling industry. And a lot of bricks and mortar bookstores, or physical bookstores, I must be. So I need to specify. So I mean privately owned bookstores, the Xinhua bookstores are okay. The state owned bookstores, bookstores are okay. So when I said bricks and mortar bookstores, I mean the privately owned physical bookstores, a lot of those bookstores closed down because of the competition and because of the changing consumer behavior in terms of ebook adoption, that kind of stuff. Which means that by the middle 2000s or towards the end of 2000, there was a clear market gap where you know, some of the booksellers basically were telling me that we noticed that actually we had so many bookstores closing down over the past five or ten years. And without that, you know, there's a market gap there which we can probably fail. So there was a market gap and another kind of, another kind of main driving force being in. During the 2000s, the Chinese economy was actually experiencing some kind of transition. So basically from the kind of labor intensive, manufacturing driven kind of economy to shifting, or at least the government was pushing a shifting to the kind of service economy or the cultural economy. So basically what's happening at that time was that you would see a lot of investment actually being actively made into the culture industry, very broad culture industry, because all those investors and well, they basically think that the culture industry or the culture economy is the next kind of, you know, where they could make a lot of profit in. So basically there were a lot of money basically at that time, you know, just seeking opportunities to be invested in the broad culture industry. And that's where, that's why some of the kind of independent bookstore chains were actually owned or founded or invested by those kind of, by those big operations or which were actually not really started in the book industry. Basically their main business were not in the book industry. They could be, you know, a real estate developer, or they could be in manufacturing, or they could be in finance. But they decided that, okay, we want to invest in and we want to harness the culture economy. So let's start that by investing in some bookstores because it's relatively kind of small scale business which can be easily managed. And there, as I said, there was a market gap there. And so that's the two most important factors I would say that driving the emergence of independent bookstores and the quite rapid development of Them over the next 10 years also.
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C
Cool. That's helpful to understand. Of course, there's never one reason, there's always multiple. So good to have a sense of what those are. And you've mentioned already some of the things that sort of differentiate these bookstores in the marketplace. Are there any other key strategies we want to talk about in terms of what enables these bookstores to be successful?
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D
Yes, definitely. I think that's the main body of my book. And yes, definitely. So basically talking about strategy, I would. So basically in my book I talk about three specific, what I call culturally adapted strategies, namely political framing, moral positioning and culture distinguishing. But I think that you could consider all of these three strategies as a strategy of differentiation. I think the concept of differentiation is very, very important for understanding really the nature and dynamics of these independent bookstores. It's really kind of key to understanding what all of this about. So it's really about, you know, differentiate themselves from their competitors. So whether they use the strategy of political framing or you know, moral positioning, all cultural distinguisher, all of these three kind of strategies are there to help these independent bookstores to differentiate themselves from their main competitors, namely the state owned Xinhua bookstores and the non, you know, the ordinary, non state, the ordinary privately owned bookstores. So it's really a strategy of differentiation. So intel terms of the three specific strategies that identify and discuss in detail in my book. So basically, political framing really involves these bookstores presenting their activities such as what kinds of books they stock, they select for customers. So presenting their activities and offerings in explicit or implicit political terms. So by infusing their stores with politically invocative elements and a notable sense of politicalness, they create an atmosphere that feels distinctly different and alternative. So basically I think that. So when you think about it, you know, independent bookstores and in China, I think a lot of people would ask the question like, okay, so are they those businesses, the setup because they are kind of against the state or they are quite rebellious, those kind of businesses? I don't think the kind of political engagement that you observe in those independent bookstores are politically driven. So this really kind of set these independent bookstores apart from for example, in the UK we have some bookstores called radical, call themselves as radical bookstores. So basically these radical bookstores, they are driven explicitly by, you know, they're explicitly political, politically motivated, establishment. So they might be driven by some identity politics or sexual politics or environmentalism. So these radical bookstores are activists, activist bookstores. They do they, they are driven by some specific and explicit political kind of narratives or political goals. But the independent bookstores in China that I worked with, I do not think that they are, you know, the kind of way they engage politics were kind of politically driven. Instead they only kind of frame, they tend to frame their activities or offerings in political terms. But you know, their goal really is to not, not, not to be, you know, politically kind of their goal isn't to achieve any political political aims. Instead they just want to be seen as different from for example, the state owned Xinhua bookstore. So I think, you know, behind their rationale really isn't politically driven. Instead it's kind of economically driven because they just want to be seen as different kind of book retailers so that they can attract the kind of like minded consumers. So this is what I try to try to argue in the book when I talk about political freemine. I basically, I keep saying that independent bookstores in China that not politically driven. Instead they apply this political framing strategy in order to differentiate themselves from the state owned bookstores, their main competitors. That's the kind of one of the main argument that I make in the book. And apart from political free, me and I also identified moral positioning and cultural distinguishing. So in terms of moral positioning, it really, this strategy allows or enables independent bookstores to differentiate themselves from those non independent privately owned booksellers. So also I talked about there are two main visions involved in moral positioning, namely the educational vision and the respectful vision. So the educational vision describes how many of these independent bookstores would actively consider or position themselves as providing educational or providing some moral guidance to their or to their consumers customers through the books that they choose. So they really focus on, you know, choosing what they consider high quality, high quality intellectual books or very, you know, high quality literally works. So they do not shy from saying that we are here to help our customers to find the most kind of educational or the books that really nourishes them intellectually. So this really set them apart from American independent bookstores in a way because. So Laura G. Miller is a sociology professor and about 20 years ago she published a very, very important book on American independent bookstores. That book, Miller specifically described how American independent bookstores would, you know, they would specifically avoid saying or considering themselves as providing educational guidance to their customers. But the Chinese independent bookstores, that absolutely have no problem of saying that we're here to even educate our customers. And the second kind of vision involved in moral positioning, I call it the respect for vision, is basically it's a strategy these independent bookstores adopt to distinguish themselves also from those non independent, privately owned booksellers by saying that we do not sell those high discounted books which a lot of those non independents would be selling. To say that we basically consider books as something, you know, in order to make a book, to publish a book, there are so many kind of human intellectual work and even emotional work going on in this. So we're going to treat books as something that is quite valuable and quite noble. And this kind of idea also I trace this idea back to how in the Chinese, traditional Chinese culture, we do. In the traditional Chinese culture we do have this kind of tradition of respecting papers bearing written text on it. So we call it jinxi zi zhi. Which means. Well, I go into a lot of details in the book if you want to know about that. I thought that that's actually quite interesting because you will say that these bookstores, you know, actually they're very kind of quite deeply rooted in the traditional Chinese culture as well, because they would consider selling books in incredibly low, low prices would be a kind of offense to the authors and editors who put a lot of effort in publishing that book. Yes. So that's moral position. That's why I call it moral position, because there's a strong sense of morality shaping the development of this specific strategy. And the last strategy being in culture distinguishing. So basically here, these independent bookstores. So we will be shortly talking about how these independent bookstores manage to survive financially. Right. So basically the strategy they adopt here is to, you know, to target those wealthy customers who are looking for a sense of cultural distinction through culture consumption, through consumption of culture goods or services, you know, premium culture goods and services, to give them that kind of sense of cultural distinction. And many of the independent bookstores who were quite successful actually leverage this, you know, the kind of rising market of these wealthy and well educated middle class Chinese customers who would be willing to pay, to pay for the premium cultural goods and services. And. Yeah, so these are mainly the three key strategies that I described in the book that would help the readers understanding why the independent bookstores basically do things the way they do.
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C
Yeah, and yeah, could we talk a little bit more about kind of practically what this means, like walking into a bookstore, for instance. How would you know what strategy is being used on a random Wednesday? What are the booksellers doing to enhance stacked this?
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D
Yes, that's a very good question actually. Yeah. So I basically, I described a lot of this in chapter four, but let me walk you through this. So basically you've got the political framing Moral positioning and culture distinguishing strategies. And independent bookstores apply these strategies into three everyday bookstore business practices, namely book selection, store decoration, and organizing events. So basically, yeah, while selecting books and stalking books basically is the first and foremost, most important thing for a bookstore to do. So I think that the independent bookstores apply political framing into book selection and moral positioning as well. And cultural distinction. Yeah, I think all of the three strategies affect how independent bookstores select books. And here, once again, I need to introduce another concept which might not be familiar to Western audience or Western readers, which is called, you know, scholarly books. Scholarly books isn't what we tend to call, you know, in the Western context when we talk about scholarly books or Islamic books, it means that, you know, the kind of books that are public, that are written by and, and for academics like myself, like ourselves. Miranda, really? So, so that's what we call academic books. But in the Chinese context, especially when it comes to independent bookstores, what they call scholarly books or xue shu shu in Chinese, hopefully we'll have some Chinese audience listening to the podcast will understand the Chinese words. So basically those independent bookstores would like to call, would. Well, they, they were mostly interested in stalking what they call scholarly books, which can be understood as high intellectual nonfiction books and high quality literary works. So these are what these Chinese independent books bookstores mainly stock. And as I said at the beginning of the interview, I said China being one of the largest book markets in the world, but the most lucrative segments or lucrative types of books are educational books, school textbooks and exam prep materials. But on the other hand, you have this high quality non fiction intellectual and literary works. And these books are kind of tend to be the least lucrative or the least profitable types of books on the Chinese book market. And independent bookstores, they do, many of the independent booksellers I spoke with, they do even consider, you know, they kind of would determine whether a bookstore qualifies as an independent by saying, you know, whether or not they stock those kind of lucrative books or this kind of what they call scholarly books. Because these books, on the one hand they are considered very high quality, they're considered as good for customers, book readers, but on the other hand, they are the least kind of profitable books on the Chinese book market. So basically these books also help with political freeing because all of these books would be those kind of books dealing with social and political issues or even, you know, standard academic books published in, you know, sociology or political science or law or philosophy. So political freemind definitely affects how independent bookstores, you know, why and how they would focus on stocking this kind of high quality intellectual book and moral positioning as well. As I said, moral positioning involves differentiating themselves from those book booksellers selling mainly those low priced and highly discounted popular books, best sellers. And instead of that, independent bookstores focused more on those high quality but less profitable books and cultural distinctions as well. You will never be able to, to claim that you are a bookstore that is culturally distinguished if you sell those exam prep materials or those bestsellers, all those teen novels, that kind of commercial books. You could only claim you are being culturally distinguished if you sell mainly or solely exclusively those higher quality but less kind of commercially commercial books. So that's how these three strategies affect book selection. But also they also very much affect how independent bookstores choose to construct their bookstore aesthetically or visually. Which means how these bookstores choose to decorate their bookstores to present themselves visually to their customers and to the public. So if you go to a Chinese independent person bookstore and you would immediately, a typical one, you would immediately feel that those bookstores, they sort of like brimmed with a very distinctive Western cultural vibe. So it was, it was, it was very distinct actually. So basically when I was doing my field work, so I go to a bookstore and then I would see, oh, these books are very similar because they all disciplines, for example, Western, you know, pictures of those Western novelists or western thinkers, e.g. oscar Wilde and, and Hemingway. I think you, you, you just, it just feels so different because if you go to a state owned Xinhua bookstores, it's just a typical, a little bit boring bookstores and where there are so many books. But if you, you know, enter independent bookstores, you will see a lot of English, English language signage and you will see these pictures of Western novelists or Western thinkers or Western people. But you don't really get to see pictures of Chinese figures or Chinese kind of thinkers or writers really. And so yeah, I showed some pictures that I took in these bookstores in the book and you will see. So these pictures really, I really honestly do not think that I, I, in any of the independent bookstores I visited, I saw a picture of a Chinese kind of writer or Chinese thinker. So yeah, why would these Chinese bookstores, you know, why are they doing this? I think, you know, they just try to look a bit different and they try to appeal to those customers who are seeking a sense of cultural distinction. And in China it's still very well, even today, still for some customers, they still feel that Western culture or the Western lifestyle, Western way of living a life are kind of more superior in a way. So I think by decorating their stores, these bookstores are actively kind of utilizing their culture, distinguishing strategy, but political framing as well. If you think about it, you, you can't imagine yourself seeing a lot of pictures of Western writers or novelists, thinkers, pictures hanging in a state owned Xinhua bookstores. But it doesn't mean that in the state owned Xinhua bookstores we have some pictures of our leaders. It just means that the independent bookstores really make a lot of efforts for themselves to appear very, you know, to, to, to, to, to highlight their Western kind of, not their western links but you know, they just appreciate more Western culture than the Chinese culture I think.
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C
Yeah, no, it's a signaling mechanism which is interesting to hear about. Now we've talked a bit about kind of the differences between these bookstores and western ones. So I'd rather talk a little bit more about kind of the extent to which these strategies actually are financially successful. Right. Like you've described a bunch of ways in which, which they are signaling something very distinct. So on that level the strategies are working. But does this make money? Like do these independent bookstores actually have any economic success?
- [46:04]
D
Well, it depends on, you know, in terms of books I can see that most of the independent bookstores are, were not making a profit from the books that they were selling. Actually as I said, those books are generally less profitable in terms of the relatively low sales. Yeah, I would see more than half of the independent bookstores I interviewed, I studied, they were not making a profit from bookselling. But how, how did they manage to survive? So there are three things that they could do and most of most of them were actually actively doing so. The first one being diversification. It's quite similar story here. So currently UK bookstores, independent or chain, you will see many of them have a attached kind of in house coffee shop thing. So it's quite similar in China. Nearly all of the independent, the vast majority of the independent bookstore, apart from several quite small one person shops, apart from those small shops, most of those independent book bookshops had a kind of coffee shop thing or a tea house thing attached to them to help generate the vast share of their revenue. So diversification. And also many of them, if not all of them were actually selling premium non book merchandise number goods, including you stationery which is very common in the UK bookstores as well. But in those Chinese bookstores that I visited, I encountered a wide range of non book merchandise being sold in those bookstores even you have, I had seen clothing, bicycles, cookeries, gift sets, very highly priced gift sets and so on, so forth. It's just in terms of the range, it's not something that you normally would expect to see. For example, at a Waterstones branch, at Waterstones branch you've got stationary, you know, board games, something like that. But they do not appear to be premium, don't they? But in the Chinese independent bookstores you feel that okay, I can probably afford those books but, but I can't really afford those non book kind of products. So yeah, diversification really help these bookstores to generate the much needed revenue for them. But apart from generating revenue and some of the bookstores also find a way to reduce their costs. So one of the most distinct things about these bookstores being in some of the quite famous and popular bookstores, they basically got invited by those large shopping malls or real estate developers to open new shops in their shopping malls or you know, office buildings or something rent free. So this really contributed to why you would, you would say, you know, some of the bookstores announcing that we are going to open a new store in this city or in that city simply because many of these popular independent bookstores were getting a lot of invitations from those shopping malls to open new stores rent free. So this enabled some popular bookstores or larger chamber independent bookstores to expand basically to help reduce their cost. There was a third thing was oh, subsidies. So basically by subsidies I mean I use this term kind of in a, kind of a broad sense. It doesn't mean that the kind of, you know, subsidies you, you get from the government. But government grants also do help some independent bookstores. The Chinese governance from both the central government and local governments do give bookstores physical bookstores grants, including you know, the, they not just give them to the Tsinghua bookstores, they give them to the privately owned bookstores as well. But what I mean by subsidies is that there are basically two kind of processes going on here. So on the one hand, some of the one person independent bookstores or independent booksellers that I spoke with, they actually had got their own kind of full time jobs or they have their own businesses or you know, other income sources. So basically they do not rely on their livelihood on the independent bookstores, which means that they do not have that much kind of financial pressure to be profitable for the bookstores to be profitable. They oftentimes can subsidize their bookstore businesses which tend to be very small scale businesses. Sometimes they just hire one person, you know, just being There. So normally some of this. So basically some of the small independent bookstores I studied, they operated this way financially. So by, you know, for the owner to subsidize these businesses by drawing their other kind of sources of income. So another kind of process is some of the larger independent bookstore chains were actually owned or founded or invested. Invested by large corporations. As I said, those large corporations would very much like to invest in the broad culture industry. But instead of all in culture industry, they consider investing in bookstores or bookselling industry would be a kind of low risk or relatively low risk investment option. So some of the larger independent bookstores were actually financing themselves this way by being founded by a large cooperation. Yeah.
- [52:26]
C
Okay, so a whole range there, which is interesting. And I think that's been the case kind of throughout our discussion. Right. Lots of different reasons to have this kind of bookstore. Multiple strategies for how to differentiate customers, multiple strategies, as you've just explained, to make money from this. So sorts of lots of different elements all throughout this.
- [52:48]
D
This.
- [52:48]
C
Is there anything else you're really hoping readers take away from this book?
- [52:54]
D
Yes, maybe a couple of things. Yes. I think your summary was very accurate actually. I think when you sort of like look at, you know, the Chinese economy, I think it's not just the publishing industry or the book industry. It really is not something is driven by only one mechanisms or one major forces. It's really a combination of a variety of forces. I mean, who would have think that these independent bookstores might be founded by some owners who actually those corporations may be in the manufacturing and then suddenly they decided that they want to invest in independent bookstores. I mean, those kind of things are very unlikely to happen in the UK I would imagine. But in China of it's really kind of very interesting. So I think if there's one thing that I want the readers or audience to take from this book is that when you try to understand businesses or economic developments or maybe something as small scale as independent bookstores, you really want to be very open minded. You really do not want to limit your understanding or limit, limit your way of thinking by thinking that, oh, China, you know, the states exert a lot of controls. The, the state basically tells everyone to do you, you know, whatever they want them to do. Otherwise they, you know, it doesn't really work in that way. In China. You will see actually all of these independent bookstores, they do have a quite high degree of freedom in terms of the books that they choose to sell and the events that they host and the kind of speakers that they can invite to speak in their, in their bookstores. So I think that probably readers would benefit from a kind of more open mind when they kind of try to understand or the business developments or some new culture phenomenon that is happening in China. And another point that I wanted to point is that, so it relates to what I'm currently teaching for the business school. So I'm currently lecturing innovation management and I teach a lot about digital transformation and value creation. So I really want to see that even for these kind of small scale, sometimes very struggling culture enterprises, it is still possible to strike a balance between your cultural commitments and commercial value. I think the key thing here is for these booksellers to think how you can create unique value for your customers. And you know, I think it wouldn't be, you know, very helpful for these booksellers to keep complaining about how those big platforms steal their customers or sales or to say that how, you know, the cost of living or the high rent impact their business models. I think, I mean, all of these are true and very kind of impactful for these smaller businesses. But I think it is very important to be always thinking about innovation, to think about how you can innovate your business models to create unique values for your customers. So I think that the rise of independent bookstores in terms of how they present themselves both culturally and commercially, it's a kind of business innovation and business, business innovation can lead to success. I think this independent booksellers probably, you know, it's just an example of how business innovations can really make a difference. Even you find yourself in a kind of struggling or even declining business sector. But I'm not saying that book selling is a declining sector. It's still very important. Yeah, it's definitely still very important. Especially in the uk, it's important for your local community, it's for the kind culture life that will benefit everyone. I'm just saying that, you know, since I'm lecture innovation management, just to say that, yeah, it's quite important actually.
- [57:14]
C
Yeah, well, in addition to your teaching, is there anything you're currently working on you want to give us a quick sneak preview of?
- [57:21]
D
Yeah, definitely. So basically, as I said at the beginning of, of this interview, my research really concerns with how culture processes but as well as technological innovation and business businesses interact to shape social and economic life. So over the last few years I've been studying a lot about the innovation in the Chinese AI industry. So you may think, oh, it's something quite different from the culture industry. But yeah, I think I apply the same sociological kind of concepts and perspectives in that. And I also I still am very interested in what's happening in the Chinese book industry, especially given, you know, AI AI is here. So I'm also also doing some research on how AI is transforming China's publishing, book publishing industry. So this is what I'm currently doing.
- [58:15]
C
Well, certainly very topical. So best of luck with the research and teaching. And while you're doing that, listeners can read the book we've been talking about titled Cultural Mavericks, the Business and Politics of Independent Bookselling in China, published by Columbia University Press in 2026. Jung, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [58:33]
D
Yeah, thank you very much, Miranda. Thank you. Bye. Bye.