Children not allowed to read at Bookazine

[RileyC]

HK bookstores are crap and overpriced. I miss the bookstores in London. Even Taiwan has far better bookstores than HK.

I buy all my books online. There's a good online bookstore in the UK which ships for free worldwide including HK (no minimum purchase amount required). They often charge slightly less than the UK RRP although admittedly don't give the same discounts that Amazon can offer. I "browse" and read the reviews at Amazon, but often place my order at bookdepository.com.
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[carang]

i do purchase books online, too. but i much prefer browsing in a shop to ordering online. i always find stuff that i wouldn't have been looking for...good for me, bad for the pocketbook.

 

[jvn]

Sorry, back to the original post! They have a reading area with beanbags and a little table, what do they expect the kids to do there!!! Maybe it was just one stroppy member of staff, I've been there with my nearly 2 year old and he looks at the books while I browse. I usually do make the effort to buy something if he's been looking at a lot of books though ;-)

Agree with those who've said HK bookshops are particularly crap, they only have 'bestselling' authors, they are poorly laid out and that book wrapping thing is idiotic - I just take the wrapping off myself, no-one's ever said anything about it.

 

[RileyC]

Carang I agree with you that it's nice to actually be able to flip through the books in a bricks-and-mortar store.
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[carang]

same reason i haven't bought a kindle... i LOVE the flipping pages, the real, paper books! just not the same... tapping a computer screen...

 

[thanka2]

My thoughts are that the purpose of most, if not all, businesses in Hong Kong is to make money. They aren't all that interested in treating the customer well or presenting a good image. So, if you and your child are hanging out in the bookstore reading books and not buying in their minds you're taking up space, wasting their time and not filling their pocketbook so you'd better leave. I'm not saying that this is the way I think it should be but this is my impression of the way it is. Having said that, if some bookstore worker came up to me and made a stink about it, I would make just as big of a stink about it right back at them. In fact, I would refuse to make my child stop reading their books and force them to seek higher management to deal with me. Then, I would write a letter to the CEO of their company or whatever to voice my opinion. Often, I find in HK, people with very little authority try to throw whatever weight they have around and all it takes is you just saying, "Uh, no. I won't be stopping what I'm doing and what are you going to do about it?" for them to back off and leave you alone. Anyway, I hate the bookstores here because they never have what I need/want even if it's a popular book. So, I'm going to be shopping at Amazon.com from now on.

 

[ozmerc]

Anyone see the full page ad for Bookazine on the back page of the SCMP 'Family Post' section? A large photograph of children enjoying reading books INSIDE the Bookazine store. Ha!

I order real books and Kindle books from Amazon. I LOVE my kindle, mainly because it's an instant book fix. And I was surprised it's nothing like reading a computer screen.

 

[bridiemexico]

Did anyone else see the ad in the paper today for Bookazine with kids laying on the floor reading? Thought it was quite ironic given the chat here.

 

[rani]

Bookazine posted a reply here:

http://hongkong.geoexpat.com/forum/32/thread193565-4.html