Booksellers and Bookstores in Mainland China: the Age of Common Prosperity

A Bookselling Research Network Symposium

Date & Time: May 26, 2023 02:00 PM London
Zoom Meetinghttps://bangor-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/98327456202 (Meeting ID: 969 7521 0663)

This talk considers the place and importance of books in Chinese society and in the cultural life of the people. Our research gives new insights so that we can have a better understanding of the relationship between books and what has become known as common prosperity in mainland China. This, in turn, feeds into wider societal concerns as it raises questions about the place and purpose of bookstores within the broader social culture. The growth and development of the Chinese book trade will be covered but whereas other studies base their findings on data taken from sales and finance our focus is on official government publications to give a fresh perspective on the apparent expansion and development of physical bookstores in mainland China. How does an examination of the government policy regarding booksellers, as set out in the Five-Year Plans and the Laws of the People’s Republic of China, help us to understand the importance of literacy and culture in the wider Chinese society?


Simon Mahony is Professor of Digital Humanities, Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai, Emeritus Professor at the Department of Information Studies, University College London, and Visiting Professor at the Department of Information Management, Peking University. His research focus is digital humanities with specific interests in education, information studies, equality, diversity, inclusion, and the open agenda.

The Spaces of Bookselling with Kristen Highland

Date & Time: Mar 31, 2023 02:00 PM London
Zoom Meeting: https://bangor-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/98327456202 (Meeting ID: 983 2745 6202)

Claiming Space: Sidewalk Bookselling and Belonging in New York City

Highland, K. 2023. The Spaces of Bookselling: Stores, Streets, and PagesThis talk explores sidewalk bookselling in New York City as a dynamic space and practice for redrawing cultural, social, and legal boundaries of belonging for the bookseller and their customer-readers. Sidewalk booksellers everywhere must erect their tables on the unstable and shifting space of the sidewalk as regulated and politicized public and social space. In New York City in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, while sidewalk booksellers benefited from First Amendment exemptions for vending print material, municipal space management strategies continued to circumscribe and contain street bookselling. Within this tension, New York City’s sidewalk booksellers crafted geographies of belonging through diverse strategies of evading regulatory enforcement and cultivating intellectual and social exchange. Using the liminal and contested space of the sidewalk not only to make a living but also to create an inclusive space that incorporates the book and bookselling into the dynamics of urban social exchange, New York City’s sidewalk booksellers assert the value of books on streets.

Following Kristen’s talk, she will be interviewed by Eben Muse about her recent CUP Element, The Spaces of Bookselling, followed by an open Q&A session with all attendees.

Kristin Highland Kristen Highland is Assistant Professor of English at American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Her research focuses on book history and the material dimensions of literary culture, including the social and cultural life of American bookstores, as well as digital humanities and mapping. She has recently published The Spaces of Bookselling: Stores, Streets, and Pages with the Cambridge University Press Elements in Publishing and Book Culture series.

Bookshops: Online and On the High Street

The 2nd Annual Bookselling Research Network Conference, in association with the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing

When: 3rd-4th July 2023
Where: University of Reading
CFP Deadline: Extended to 15 March

Jeff Deutsch, in his recent In Praise of Good Bookstores, reflected that because “we no longer need bookstores to buy books…bookstores might well be an inefficient and inconvenient way to buy books in the twenty-first century.” Yet, as he goes on to show, and the industry seems to confirm, “good bookstores” are evident everywhere. The second annual Bookselling Research Network conference looks to discuss both the impact of bookshops in an era of online retailing and how booksellers, the book trade, and book-reading communities use online environments to return people back to the bookshop – wherever in the world these might be. What are the affordances, pitfalls, and challenges of bookselling in a digital era? What innovative, unique, or era-defying practices are evident and thriving? How have changes in bookselling affected literary production and reception? What cultural or political concerns remain prevalent for booksellers? What does it mean to operate a bookshop today?

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Feminist & Queer Bookshops – Community and Censure

A BRN Online Symposium — open to the public

Join Dr Kathy Liddle and Dr Sarah Pyke as they present their work on feminist and queer bookstores as places of contested cultural interactions.

Place: Zoom (https://bangor-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/94503166927 / Meeting ID: 945 0316 6927)
Date and Time: Feb 24, 2023 02:00 PM London

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BYOBooks-Bookshops

To celebrate the coming of winter and the holiday that comes with it, we met on Friday, the 16th of December to talk about books about bookshops. Eben Muse, the author of Fantasies of the Bookstore, started the conversation off by presenting some of the books on his bookshelves that celebrate bookshops, fantasize about them, direct you to them, or tell you how to run your own. The discussion that followed included some other gems, including (in no particular order):

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Geraldine Cox at Kirkdale Bookshop

Geraldine Cox, owner-manager of Kirkdale Bookshop in Sydenham, London

As part of their series exploring what contributes to the enduring success of established booksellers, Kate Gunning, Acting Membership Manager for the BA, talks to Geraldine Cox, owner-manager of Kirkdale Bookshop in Sydenham, London. [This interview previously appeared in the December 2022 issue of the BA’s Bookselling Essentials magazine.]

How did you get into bookselling?

I worked in the local library in the holidays and helped run the school library, so when I was applying for university after my A levels, my father asked if I would rather start a bookshop with him; I decided to give it a go. In September 1966 we started cleaning an old motorcycle shop in Sydenham, southeast London. We opened officially on 13th October 1966. The shop started off quite small and gradually extended over the years. There isn’t an inch of space left!

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Matter of Bookshops 2022

Conference Programme

Wednesday, September 7th
11.30 Registration & Lunch

12:30 Introductions and Welcome from Meryl Halls (Booksellers Association)

13.00 Panel 1 Bookshop Histories
 Kristen Highland: The Monumental Bookstore
 Maria Vassilopolous: The light and dark of the book trade — Christina Foyle and her bookselling years
 Andrew Nash: Bookshops and Publishers’ Travellers in the mid-1930s

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