Lately a popular eight-floor bookstore in Hefei,Anhui province,hasrisen to famebecause it becomes the world's first shared bookstore,in a move meant to encourage more reading among Chinese citizens.
It comes to people's attention as more than 200,000 visitors flooded the store on its first day as a shared bookstore on July 16 this year,a record high since it was reopened to the public in 2013.Some 4,000 books were brought home on the first day,Thepaper.cn reported.
Customers are allowed to borrow up to two books valued under 150 yuan per visit after registering with an app and paying the 99 yuan deposit fee(押金).
All books on sale in the bookstore are available for sharing.Returned books that are damaged are sold at a discount.The bookstore also provides a bonus for bookworms.People who finish reading 12 books in three months receive eight percent of their deposit back,and members can be rewarded one yuan for every book read.
"We want to bring down the cost of reading so people could read more books,"Xu Xinwei,who helps run the bookstore,told Thepaper.cn.
Some parents buy a lot of books for their children,but they usually end up collecting dust as their children grow up.Similarly,some popular novels for young people also fall out of fashion,according to Xu."Books are more effectively circulated when they're shared."