How are you supposed to know if you’ll like a book if you can’t read some of it.
It had a nice little cafe too, its not like they won’t make money on people buying a few coffees and snacks as they read a book they might not buy.
Soo why go there to buy a book instead of ordering it cheaper online?
Maybe you know the title of the book you’re looking for (e.g. you have already read it or heard about it) and just need the title?
Yeah, that bookstore looks pretty upscale, nearly a boutique, especially in a developing country. Not unlike others built for bookworms where browsers are free to read almost anything.
In such a bookstore, the customer is not always right.
Asides from the protection from humidity and dirt, I feel they also don’t want to sell a frayed damaged book or magazine – I feel that would count for them as a loss – unless the customer paid for it, so they put limits on casual browsing. This, RFID tags and CCTV cameras to deter shoplifters.
Otherwise and in some places they put out a selection of open unwrapped publications and let anyone, provided they also pay for the coffee or hang around and pay by the hour, to read at their leisure in a dedicated cafe.
Only sure way for you to know a new book is to scope out the copy online if it has an ebook equivalent.
How are you supposed to know you’ll like a book if you can’t read some of it?
Judge it by its cover, obviously.
more plastic misuse. distusting.
Some online booksellers will let you download a few pages of a book to read before purchase.
You can do that and decide if you want to buy the physical copy.
That said, fuck this place. The joy of opening a new book and reading some of it is part of the process. I’d never come back.
you pirate it first and then buy it from a different store. Go in there with a pen and paper to write down the titles you will look up later or just take pictures with your phone. If they ask say “Im going to look up if I want to buy these later since I cant look inside it” and then if they’re responsible for the decision behind the wrapping you tell them “thank you so much for treating your customers as annoyances and opting to hinder their purchasing decision-making. I appreciate the efficiency in communicating your priorities”
Why everything gotta involve plastic.
Because it’s a byproduct of the petrochemical industry and is not only basically free, but they actually cannot stop producing it or the cogs of the industry will seize up.
We must continue poisoning our environment or the poison the environment machine will break down.
It’s pretty common in Japan, but specifically for manga.
It’s really weird that Tsutaya would do this because although it was frowned upon in Japan to spend too long reading a book without buying it, Tsutaya was the one to change that norm. They even introduced cafes on premise where you can bring books that you haven’t paid for.
I went to another book store, and only 90% of the books were wrapped in plastic, so I guess its just a Cambodia, Taiwan, and Philippines thing. Weird part is that I never saw it in Vietnam or China.
You read the synopsis on the back? That’s why that’s there. It also makes sure that books stay new instead of getting covered in greasy fingerprints and folded pages, people genuinely do not care about other people’s stuff.
A god compromise could be to have one unwrapped copy for display and browsing purposes and all other copies are wrapped, so you can use the unwrapped copy to read through a few pages and then grab a wrapped copy for purchase
The summary or press endorsements are totally inadequate imo. I always read a page or two somewhere in the middle to check if I enjoy reading it. Fortunately books tend to be sold unwrapped where I live. And no, they’re not grimy or anything like that, people do respect them.
Graphic novels do tend to be sold wrapped where I live (at least in my usual store), so those I look up online to read a few sample pages. Imo never judge a book by it’s cover.
Additionally the summary far to often contains major spoilers.
I also read the first few pages and a random place in the middle which is not achapter ending, works very well.
Books here are in Germany also open and in perfect condition. In Italy, where I sometimes browse stores, its the same.
I live in Taiwan and the humidity kills books and makes them damp and stinky. So some places our books are wrapped.
Most commercial establishments in the US are air-conditioned. Taiwan has — as you point out — a pretty warm, humid climate. Are Taiwanese bookstores not not typically air-conditioned? I’d think that they’d be a prime candidate.
I was reading about public library humidity and temperature control a month or two back, and it sounded like it was also pretty much the norm to air condition those, for the preservation reasons that you mention.
Even if they are air conditioned it’s quite likely that the air conditioning does not run 24/7
Conditional air conditioning as it were. Novel.
A lot of cultures also don’t run AC as cold as the US does.
Growing up, the AC was consistently set to 28C (83F). It was only on from around 2pm to 11pm (via a sleep timer). This was also in a location with extreme humidity.
Dehumidifier in the store…?
You don’t understand how much humidity is on tropical islands. When I open a bag of chips, the time it gets stale is measured in minutes, not days.
Even with a humidifier on 24/7, you can never drop the humidity to a point that books don’t start rotting.
Cover the books in oil so it repels water?
But what if we refined that oil into plastic and used that to cover the books instead? That way people wouldn’t get oily fingers from reading.
You jest but there is a semi-recent invention of waterproof paper used in journals and the like and it’s ~18% plastic.
Maybe the properties would be similar to plastic.
Sounds like people shouldnt bother living in such shitholes.
Ranking 4th safest country in the world. USA ranks 89th, UK ranking 87th. Not sure what you mean by “shithole”.
You really want to throw stones from the UK?
Sometimes the ignorance that people show is astounding.
Sounds like Fully Booked in the Philippines. Books aren’t allowed to be browsed before you buy them, sofas aren’t allowed to be sat in before you buy them. It’s nonsense.
No way in hell I’m buying a sofa without sitting in it. They never feel like one would expect.
Do you got a source for that? I wasn’t finding anything to explain why or if this is true. Not trying to call BS, I just need to know more.
The source is me living in the Philippines for many, many years. Go to the department stores, and they will direct you away from the sofas if you sit on them. Can’t sell a used sofa. Most businesses in the Philippines operate in this way with squeezing a profit from every little thing they can.
It was Tsutaya in Cambodia.
Is Fully Booked popular? I’ve never seen a bookstore do this, but its the first one I’ve seen in Cambodia so maybe lack of competition lets them get away with it.
Japan does love to wrap literally everything purchasable in stores in plastic. Abroad wouldn’t be immune to this since shared supply chains.
The whole idea plastic waste is bad doesn’t seem to have made it over to Asia.
When we wrap out books, it’s usually manga. But it’s weird for Tsutaya of all stores to do it because the ones here aren’t wrapped and they were the first to promote customers to read before purchasing.
I only saw hentai books wrapped in plastic in Japan but I didn’t go to many bookstores while there.
Hilariously before you named the store I was thinking back of my experience in exactly a Tsutaya in Tokyo.
Found some cool origami books that I had to take a chance on buying them, since I couldn’t look through them as they were also wrapped in plastic.
Extra fun tidbit, I bought them tax-free, which is super straightforward in Japan, and then they told me I should not remove the plastic wrap and “use” the books, since that would invalidate their tax-free status and I’d have to repay tax…
Fully Booked is popular, but that’s probably because it’s the only actual bookstore franchise in the Philippines. Most other book stores are family owned stores that sell used books. National Bookstore is a joke, and mostly sells stationary.
National could barely able to sell publications as by 2010s nearly everyone went to spend more time online – ebooks, social media, etc. – and even the browsers have disappeared as magazines started to end publication due to mass disinterest, so leaving the stationery business the only thing keeping it afloat.
Strangely, asides from Fully Booked and that small Japanese bookstore in an uppity part of Manila, the Big Bad Wolf book festival draws a large crowd of bookworms. That for used books, a chain called Booksale is still alive and well – there I bought a 20-year-old paperback copy of Blackhawk Down in fair condition.
Who still buys books without investigating them online first?
Seems you got downvoted because some are fanatical about cracking open a book by their own fingers, rather than going online to see how that book is actually faring in the market.
Could it be the books are wrapped to protect against humidity? This may not be the whole reason why they do it but it wouldn’t be the worst one.
I remember some manga stores in Japan where the staff would go around stopping you from opening them whenever they saw it. I’m a very slow Japanese reader. I just wanted to get a taste of it and wouldn’t have read that far, but they would have none of it.
I only buy manga that’s wrapped. Because when you unwrap it there will be anime boobs inside.
Ok, I can see where that would be hentai-cing.
The sound of Sydsnap panting heavily slowly fills the room
I went to a bookstore two days ago, because I knew they had a copy of LOTR and I wanted to see if it had the map included before buying it.
It was the only book that had plastic wrap on it. I didn’t buy it…
Might have had the plastic so the map didn’t come out?
Schrödinger’s map. It’s both there and not there until you remove the plastic.
Store employee should be able to contact the publisher to ask if it’s there or not.
