Visiting the bookstore is a matter for amateurs to watch the excitement and experts to watch the doorway.

Many people are used to choosing books online. In fact, visiting the ground bookstore is also a super fun thing. If I don't go to the bookstore every once in a while, I will feel that I haven't been shopping for a long time, and I will try to arrange a time to go.

Compared with online book selection, the biggest difference between bookstore and online book selection is that you can actually hold the book in your hand, and the texture, size and thickness become heavy in your hand, instead of the online standard map. Even a book in plastic packaging is more real than the pictures on the Internet. Plastic packaging is a thin plastic film on the outside of a book, which is usually added in a printing factory. This is an extra packaging layer to prevent losses during transportation and sales. This is a very environmentally unfriendly packaging method, but it is very effective for protecting the appearance of books.

As a book editor, I also fought for this matter for many years, until our publishing house reluctantly told me that some online stores no longer accepted books without plastic packaging, and I reluctantly accepted them.

In many bookstores, especially large-scale humanities bookstores, every book is usually unpacked and packaged for the convenience of everyone, which is also a criterion for me to judge whether a bookstore is strong and reader-oriented. Only when you open a book, carefully read the table of contents, preface and postscript, and quickly read the text, can you judge a book most accurately. If a bookstore operator is a real book lover, he will definitely consider this demand of book buyers.

Visiting the bookstore is a matter for amateurs to watch the excitement and experts to watch the doorway.

Let's take a look at the usual layout of bookstores first. Regardless of the size of the bookstore, there is usually a display area for new books and bestsellers at the entrance. Most of the books here are sold lying down, indicating that these books are in the promotion period, or the sales volume is particularly large, occupying the top position in the rankings. If you want to know about pop culture, keep up with the leaderboards, get to know star authors, increase your talk and master fashion topics, this is your best place.

This area is usually beautifully decorated, and there are many onlookers, but when choosing, don't be confused by those colorful posters and beautiful and dazzling yards, and don't naively think that the most publicized books are the books that sell the most. In fact, it is more likely to be books that publishers and bookstores are focusing on marketing. The so-called stacking is a means of promotion in bookstores. Dozens or even hundreds of books are piled together to form a beautiful shape, creating an effect that books are selling well to attract readers. As for the quality of books, it may not be guaranteed, which is related to the marketing strategy of Dachuan Publishing House and the management mode of bookstores.

Going inside, it is generally a classified exhibition area, which is classified according to literature, history, psychology, philosophy, science, children's books, teaching materials and so on. Some bookstores will classify bookcases according to the standard book classification, and some individual bookstores will classify them according to their own preferences. Most books stand on bookshelves, with only the spine facing outwards. Readers can only see the title, author and publishing house. If they want to read them more carefully, they must take them out one by one In the middle of the bookshelf, sometimes there is a row of places where books can be put. Here are the latest books of this kind, or books that sell well.

I often feel dizzy in those big book cities and book shopping centers, because the area is too big and there are too many books, and I will be very tired after a while, and I am often too tired to find a specific book. And to some small bookstores that hit it off or humanities bookstores with distinctive features, you can find good books in particular. I think Wansheng Bookstore in Beijing and Xueyouyou Bookstore in Guangzhou are particularly easy to find books. It's like they're guessing the thoughts and needs in my head. The book I am looking for can always be found quickly, and just like a big tree spreading its branches, you can find the treasure on the branches next to it along the trunk. It's a very happy thing to encounter such a situation when visiting a bookstore, but it may also bring you a lot of pain, because you want to buy too much and have to face the pain of choice.

At the entrance of the bookstore, there will usually be a list of our stores, such as the top ten this month and the top ten this week, and some will have more detailed classification lists, such as literature and social sciences. These lists are of great reference value, but don't believe them all, because for publishing organizations, there is a kind of promotion behavior called "playing lists", that is, publishing organizations or authors buy back some books, and the number can naturally exceed other books sold, and naturally they will be on the list.

Strictly speaking, this is a kind of fraud, but now it seems to have become a conventional marketing tool. Therefore, we should pay more attention to the bookstore ranking, and don't naively think that it is the choice of natural readers. Fortunately, even if there is a best-selling list, there are only a few books in a sales list, and some bookstores disdain this behavior to ensure their reputation and word of mouth.

So many bookstores, how to judge the taste of a bookstore, whether it is worth frequenting? I have several criteria.

1. Take the most familiar category as an example. What do you think of its book arrangement? Do you have your own logic and ideas in it? Can you easily find some more professional and classic books you want?

2. Is this a bookstore that only sells new books? Can you find some best-selling books that have been published for five years or more?

Is this a bookstore that only sells bestsellers? Can you find some interesting but relatively small books?

4. What is the ratio of test books to teaching AIDS in this bookstore? If the proportion is too large and you don't have this demand, the score should not be too high.

Set five books that you are interested in, not too popular but not too unpopular, and see how many books there are in this bookstore, which is a good way to judge your fate with this bookstore.

6. What's the atmosphere in this bookstore? Do you feel comfortable inside? If its decoration has a special sense of design, is this sense of design for design or to create a reading atmosphere? Do you like it?

According to these six criteria, I can quickly judge the fate of me and a bookstore. In Guangzhou, my favorite bookstore is the one closest to my home. Their head office is in the west gate of Sun Yat-sen University. The first floor is very lively, and people come and go. Best-sellers, magazines and exquisite stationery are the main commodities here. My favorite is the second floor, where all the humanities books are. More importantly, there are few people. There are often only one or two waiters on the whole floor, and there are few readers. It's wonderful to find a corner to read casually. Basically all kinds of books will have an open plastic package for readers to read. If you can't find an unopened one, the clerk will tell you enthusiastically that you can open one even if you don't buy it. Here, often after picking up a book, I will pick up more books one after another, because related books are always put together, and the arrangement of books is particularly suitable for me. It seems that you can find more good books along your interests, which is really important for a real book lover. Learning excellent decoration is also particularly beautiful. The calligraphy on ground glass is never tired of being photographed by many people. I often go to the bookstore to take photos and record videos.

Fang is also a great bookstore. The storefront is decorated as beautifully as an art gallery, which is suitable for taking photos and punching in. The choice of books is also great, especially art books, foreign books and Taiwan Province books. It's just that there are too many people at night and weekends, which makes it difficult for people to settle down and choose books.

Besides, Sisyphus Bookstore, United Bookstore, Fu Guang Bookstore, Yanjiyou Bookstore and April Bookstore are all great places.

Every time I go to a city, I try to visit bookstores. Nowadays, bookstores are becoming more and more personalized and beautiful. Even if time is tight, just taking pictures is a very happy thing.

This abstract is selected from Mai Mai's You just need to read a better life.