Physical bookstores are facing a grim future at the moment, as the public turns to digital literature. But Page One, a Singapore-based Asian chain, has bucked the trend with its opening of a second branch in Beijing, and plans for a third.

There were already concerns within the industry when Page One opened its first store last April in China's World Trade Center Tower 3. At the time, Liu Gui, Page One's general manager in China, said that the firm was prepared to wait for three years to make a profit after offsetting initial costs.

Page One, originally a small shop selling art and design books in Singapore, now has dozens of branches in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand. On May 28, its second shop in Beijing, the Indigo bookstore in Wangjing, opened its doors.

Liu told the Global Times that Page One plans to open a third store this October in Sanlitun Village, Beijing. "Given the business status of the first store, in addition to two stores in Wangjing and Sanlitun, we could be profitable sooner than planned," Liu said.

He said that Page One had tried to be low-key in the opening of the Indigo bookstore and invited only a few media outlets to the opening ceremony. But this didn't keep them from being a focus of attention, particularly against the background of a shrinking book market in China.

E-menace

Page One's opening comes as other bookstores are shuttering their windows. O2Sun, a Xiamen-based privately-owned bookstore chain, closed all its bookstores in Xiamen and Beijing by last October due to decreasing profits and increasing rent. And Disanji, the largest private bookstore in Beijing opened in 2006, closed its doors in 2010 after losing almost 50 million yuan.

Just as the Indigo store opened, there were reports that the One Way Street Library, another famous store, might move to a new location under pressure of high rents.

Good bookstores are cultural landmarks of a city. But more and more bookstores are disappearing from China's streets. According to a survey from the All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce, nearly half of private bookstores were closed in the past 10 years.

Thanks to rampant piracy, consumers usually can download books online for free or at a much lower price than paper books. Even with legitimate services, big online bookstores such as dangdang.com and amazon.cn are posing unprecedented threat to traditional ones, with their much cheaper prices and range of stock.

A salesman surnamed Han at Xinhua Bookstore admitted that even State-owned enterprise like theirs were in shock. He said the number of customers is dwindling. "If it wasn't for Xinhua's advantage in textbooks, it could hardly keep going," Han said.

Liu also admitted that e-books and online bookstores have impacted Page One greatly, particularly in the mainland. "Their price advantage is a result of the market economy and the shrinking of pager books is inevitable," he said. "But regarding e-books, since the market is a bit chaotic, I'd like to see what the outcome will be after it is regulated."

But Chen Shaofeng, deputy director of the Institute of Cultural Industries at Peking University, warned that even with strict regulations on the e-book market, the profit in books would remain relatively small.

He suggested that there should be supportive policies to assist the struggling traditional bookstores, which are cultural symbols. "It is necessary to reduce their tax or even lift it altogether to protect them from the impact of e-books and online bookstores," he said.

Widening services

Many booksellers have turned to offering other services, from coffee to stationary. Others are going online themselves.

Han said that several major branches of Xinhua Bookstore in Xidan and in Wangfujing have opened online shops and they are also considering making textbooks into e-books.

But he added that since the demand online is large, only book stores with great variety and of a certain scale are capable of opening online shops.

Liu also revealed that the new store in Sanlitun, which is expected to cover 1,500 square meters, will boast a larger range of products, mostly imported, as well as a cafe.

But diversification is not enough, as the shutdown of the O2Sun Bookstore shows.

A senior industry figure, speaking anonymously, told the Global Times that O2Sun closed because it mainly provides books in Chinese, which make little money compared to English books. Besides, the brand appeal of O2Sun was not sufficient to allow it to negotiate with the proprietor about the rent, he said.

In spite of the shock from e-books and online bookstores, Liu believes that even though the number of paper books and traditional bookstores will decrease in the future, they are irreplaceable.

For Liu, the severe challenge requires the bookstores to be more precise in finding their target demographic. He explained that Page One also invests hugely in the design of stores according to the local culture and customers. "Only the logo stays unchanged," he said, "So customers can have different book-buying experience in different stores."

Unlike books in its first store that target middle-class white-collar workers, the books in the Indigo store concentrate on art and design and children's literature because the store is close to the 798 Art Zone and is located in a shopping mall ideal for family shopping.

Page One has been changing and adjusting with the times, based on their annual analysis of readership and the market.

Liu remarked that bookstores like the One Way Street Library are doing well in maintaining their individuality. "Faced with the tough situation, they need to persist," he said.

But Chen is not optimistic about the future of traditional bookstores. For him, the trend of decline is irreversible. What's behind the shutdown of bookstores is a depressed publishing industry, which have yet to make the transition to a new age.

"Bookstores and paper books will not disappear totally, but their number will continue to decrease. Only bookstores of characteristics can survive. A city will have only several bookstores in the future and the bookstores will rely less and less on paper books to make profit," Chen said.