The 2023 Taipei International Book Fair closed yesterday, with a record of 550,000 people, twice the number of book fairs held during the epidemic last year, and almost catching up with the level of the 2019 Book Fair before the epidemic (580,000) people). Wu Yunyi, chairman of the Taipei Book Fair Foundation, said that the deepest impression this year is that “people are back, sales are back, and confidence is back.” Minister of Culture Shi Zhe said that he saw a lot of hugs and talks at this book fair. Use “a grand cultural reunion” as the annotation for this year’s book fair.
Shi Zhe has been visiting the book fair for six days. He said that the number of visitors this year is double that of last year, and promotional activities have increased by 62%. It is inevitable”, and participated in several book fair salons to “heal my anxiety”. He provided this experience to the whole society, “We build self-confidence through culture, so that we can truly think and discern. This is a large-scale healing process for society.”
The performance of Lianjing and Gaia Culture, which have not participated in the exhibition for three years due to the epidemic, has increased by 10% compared with 2019. However, publishing houses that participated in the book fair last year, such as Times, Yun Chen, and Reading Republic, thought that although the crowds increased this year, the buying momentum was not as good as last year. Li Xueli, general manager of Reading Republic, said that the book fair is only open until 6:00 p.m. on working days, which is inconvenient for office workers. It is suggested that it should be resumed and extended to 8:00 p.m. in the future. Li Xueli and Times Chairman Zhao Zhengmin both believed that the 100 yuan gift certificate for book purchases subsidized by the Ministry of Culture last year had significantly stimulated the book buying rate of the book fair, and hoped that the government would resume this subsidy in the future.
The closing press conference also announced the best booth design award this year. The gold, silver and bronze awards for small and medium-sized booths are respectively for National Taiwan University Publishing Center, Jiuge, and Mind Workshop; the gold, silver, and bronze awards for large booths are: Reading Site, Lianjing Publishing House, and Xinyi Publishing House. Mind Workshop also won the “Green Sustainability Award”.
further reading
