Imagine a place, if you will, with interlacing aromas--freshly brewed coffee, zesty teas, tasty pastries--where you can snuggle up with a book. The lanes and corners of Taipei are sprinkled with charming little shops of this sort.

After Commonwealth Publishing established a bookshop named "Coffee Encounter" near its office, Union Bookstore, founded 30 years ago, followed suit. It formed a cultural retreat by moving in next door to Starbucks on the ground floor of the United Daily News Building on Chunghsiao East Road Section Four. And Japanese writer Haruki Murakami's newest work can be found displayed in the window of the China Times Cultural Foundation's new bookshop on the first floor of an office building near the exit of the Lungshan Temple Station of the MRT.

Despite their symbiotic relationship, bookstores bellying up during the present two-year economic slump have obliged publishing houses to grab hold of the economic reins. Not only are they opening their own bookstores to reduce their dependence on bookstore franchises, but they have also organized reading clubs as a means of rallying book aficionados.

Calling all book lovers

Reading clubs are really nothing new to Taiwan. Cite Publishing has its Bookworm Club and Yuan-Liou Publishing has its Murdershop. Set up five years ago for whodunit fans, Murdershop offers member discounts on new mysteries. Today's clubs, however, differ in that members pay up front to buy a certain number of books within a given period.

"Commonwealth's publisher, Professor Charles Kao, has been a long time reading advocate," explains Maggie Liu, associate manager of Commonwealth's Reader's Society. "Therefore, we have assessed several factors on our website, including our book purchasing process, after-sales service costs, and whether we offer enough selections." Liu says that when Commonwealth accumulated 1000-plus titles in July two years ago, they felt it was time to launch a reading club headed by experts and supplemented by titles selected by the chief editor. The club has an impressive 15,000-plus members paying a yearly fee of NT$2,800 to purchase ten volumes at NT$500 or less each. A plan by Commowealth that employs an organization learning card used to buy 120 titles for only NT$28,000 each year has won support from businesses like Sinopac Bank and Cathay Life Insurance. Sinopac bought 500 cards and donated them to a charitable organization, and Cathay gave 350 to its employees.

Last October, the China Times Cultural Foundation introduced its Reading Times Club. Members, currently numbering six thousand, can buy ten titles a year for NT$2,300--equivalent to a 40% to 50% discount.

The abundance of bookshops in Taiwan makes book buying convenient, so to draw new members, in addition to discounts reading clubs have to offer club activities like book readings and speeches, and mail out book release announcements.

Organizing reading clubs is no easy task. Publishers have to meet certain conditions, like having plenty of titles and big name authors, if they are to succeed. The China Times Cultural Foundation, for example, has over 5000 publications, including works by writers like Haruki Murakami, Oe Kenzaburo, Banana Yoshimoto and Kenichi Ohmae of Japan as well as leading international political and economic writers John Naisbitt, Peter Drucker, Lester Thurow, and Jonathan Spence.

While major publishers rely on their wealth of resources to run reading clubs, their diminutive counterparts are forming alliances to the same end. Late last year, five of Taiwan's smaller specialty publishing houses--Fembooks, PsyGarden, Taiwan Interminds, Cultus, and Think Tank--struck back by forming the Good Reading Publishing Alliance. They are pooling their resources and collaborating with Books.com Co. and Eslite Bookstore to organize theme book exhibitions, to bring works on gender, spiritual growth, biographies, as well as the arts and humanities to the readers.

I read, therefore I buy

In addition to clubs formed by publishers, statistics indicate that Taiwan has more than 2600 registered private reading associations. Publishing houses would love to hook up with them, but it is still unclear just how much effect these private reading associations would have on reading.

"How many private reading associations have more than one thousand members?" Yuan-Liou Publishing's web consultant Whale Lin asks. For these reading associations to truly reach their potential, we would need a spokesperson along the lines of US talk show host Oprah Winfrey, whose Midas-touch recommendations invariably send book sales through the roof.

The Oprah Book Club began introducing one book a month to her viewers in 1996. With her charisma the rallying flag in her "Get-off-the-Couch-and-Read-a-Book" revolution, Oprah joined viewers in reading books and asked authors to be on her show--a special honor, indeed. Every book that she recommended became an overnight US bestseller--bar none. Oprah Book Recommendations displays can be found in major bookstores and cafes throughout America.

When the plug was pulled on the Oprah Book Club in April of last year, the publishing world let out a collective groan and national television stations and USA Today scrambled to set up their own clubs.

Reading groups, organized privately or by publishers, have been around in Europe and North America for years. Germany's Bertelsmann Verlag, the world's most famous and long-standing reading club, was founded over half a century ago.

Reading clubs are a big shot in the arm for book sales in Europe and North America. Professor Wu Chia-hsing of Nanhua University's Graduate Institute of Publishing points out that 25% of all book sales in Denmark, 33% in Switzerland, and 20% in the UK can be attributed to reading clubs.

Unlimited shelf space

Taiwan's reading clubs have a lot of catching up to do before they will impact book sales like their Western counterparts. Publishers still rely heavily on bookstores. Lin Chiao-hung estimates that sales through stores make up 60% to 80% of their total sales. Other channels, including reading clubs, direct sales, and online bookstores, account for between 20% and 40%. Changing consumer habits, however, are causing these mediums to build up steam.

Online bookstores, for instance, have great potential. Books.com rebounded nicely last year after incurring tens of millions of New Taiwan dollars in damage from Typhoon Nari two years ago.

Online bookstores have the dual advantages of unlimited display space and an increasing number of Internet users. "Even if you only have one million customers, if you keep them happy, that is more than enough," remarks Books.com General Manager Chang Tian-li. The most difficult thing about running online bookstores is the complicated software systems, that is why Amazon Online needs 1000 computer engineers.

Late last year, Books.com overcame a major technical obstacle, enabling readers to visit their book warehouses directly over the Internet. Now, when you visit their website, it looks as if you are browsing actual books on actual shelves in an actual store. Books.com is also working with thousands of convenience stores around Taiwan to make picking up purchases much easier. "We are not encroaching on the brick-and-mortar bookstore pie--we've created an entirely new pie," explains Chang.

Taiwan's abundance of bookstores makes buying books convenient, but the target niche is customers that do not normally have time to browse bookshops. The Internet makes book buying even more convenient. New channels--reading clubs and online bookstores--allow publishers to step out of the shadows to serve Taiwan's bibliophiles directly.