Unique stores owned by small publishing groups
Different from online bookstores that own over 500,000 book titles, the bookstores set up by small- and medium-sized publishing companies only store about less than 10,000 titles and most of the books they sell are published themselves.
Because these small online bookstores only sell books published themselves, they view opening an online bookstore as a new publicity channel to advertise their own books and make profits from that, which at the same time helps the publishing company to expand its influence.
Currently, most small- and medium-sized publishing companies open online bookstores on Taobao, a Chinese language web site for online shopping. Similar to eBay, it is more convenient to handle than opening their own online bookstore page.
A small Beijing publishing company, called Motie, sells about 1,700 different books online and the selling volume has increased month by month after opening the online bookstore. Run by seven people, Motie's Taobao bookstore attracts many buyers, and they sometimes even sell books at only 5 to 7 yuan ($0.78 to $1.08).
Through the platform provided by Taobao, these online bookstores can open online services to buyers, which Dangdang and Amazon do not have, and allows buyers to ask questions and receive answers in just a few minutes. Recently a teacher used this service to ask questions about a book that was sold by another publishing company on Taobao.
Because the teacher received answers that solved her problems and eliminated her concerns immediately, she ordered 1,000 books at a time for her students.
"Many buyers prefer this service, which makes them feel that book sellers are more real and it helps to solidify virtual business on the Internet," said an industry insider.
"But because many small publishing companies do not have their own distribution team, many buyers complain about the longer time they need to wait for the books they want," said He Yongbin, a manager of a small publishing company.
Still needs time
No matter what kind of online bookstores are opened by publishing companies, only time will tell if these bookstores can continue to exist and work.
"It is a risk for publishing companies to open online bookstores," said Wong Changshou, professor from Renmin University. "No matter what publishing companies' reasons are for opening them, whether or not they can keep customers, ensure a high quality of services, and build up a professional business team, still remains to be seen."
