一个书虫的卖书逸闻 - 2015年06月12日

“LIKE money, books must be kept in constant circulation,” novelist Henry Miller once wrote. “When you have possessed a book, you are enriched. When you pass it on, you are enriched threefold.”

Kang Xia had no idea just how enriched he would become when he offered to sell his collection of 1,471 books online before leaving for New York to study at Columbia University.

Kang, 26, a self-confessed bookworm, posted his book sales offer on WeChat on May 16. Within 24 hours, he received 772,599 yuan (US$124,697) from 6,500 buyers, far exceeding the supply.

He says at most 300 buyers will have their orders filled. The rest will get their money back.

“A friend told me that a book is dead if left on a shelf,” Kang tells Shanghai Daily. “It is given another life when reaches the next reader. I wanted to share my treasures with all other book lovers.”

Kang, who hails from Heilongjiang Province in China’s northeast, graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University, studied broadcasting in Britain and became a journalist for the Chinese version of Bloomberg Businessweek.

He has resigned from that job to pursue a graduate degree at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Faced with a July departure date, he had to decide what to do with his large book collection, which overflowed from the shelves of his apartment in Beidaihe, a coastal city about 285 kilometers east of Beijing.

“It was a very difficult decision, and I hesitated for days, lingering in front of 25 packed bookshelves that occupy a whole wall of my apartment,” Kang says. “I will be abroad for at least three to five years and nobody will have the access to the books. My parents don’t read. It would be a waste to just leave them here.”

So Kang made an attractive offer online. He would sell seven books for 99 yuan or three books for 60 yuan. Buyers could express their choices in books or reading preferences or just let Kang choose books for them.

It is an eclectic collection with something for every reading taste. Some books are in Chinese, some in English. The books include the complete set of works by British historian Neil Ferguson; an old-version comic book by Chinese cartoonist Zhang Leping; an autographed essay volume by famous Chinese writer Yu Hua; Harvard Professor Ezra Vogel’s “Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China;” novels by the likes of Charles Dickens, Jonathan Franzen and Umberto Eco; Jack Kerouac’s classic “On the Road;” and British writer Mark Kitto’s “China Cuckoo,” a book not available in China.

Some of the books are quite valuable, including limited editions and atlases printed on copperplate paper. Some are brand new because Kang had already read the digital versions and bought them merely out of respect for the authors.

His personal favorites? Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” and “Dear Theo” by Vincent van Gogh, a book he says he has read more than 20 times.

“If you ask me which books I wanted to keep most, I would tell you all of them,” he says. “So it’s better not to have to make that choice at all.”

Kang instructed buyers to transfer money for the books to his account with Alipay, the online payment arm of e-commerce giant Alibaba. He finally had to close the account because of the overwhelming response.

Kang has more than 6,000 followers on his WeChat account, a platform he uses to share his reading experiences and make recommendations on books of interest.

He says he is not selling his books primarily to make money and had expected no more than 20 or so buyers. The reaction he got was “surprising, scary and then out of control,” he says. Requests keep coming in, even though the offer is closed.

The outpouring of interest will mean he has a lot of work to do, packing up and sending books to the addresses buyers gave him. Keeping track of what goes to whom is consuming all his time, he says.

“I’m torn as I spend more that 16 hours a day trying to match buyer information with books to send,” he says. “I will follow the ‘first come, first served’ principle. As for fulfilling buyers’ preferences when selecting books for them, I can only try my best.”

Some buyers were pretty demanding.

“One sent me a picture of his own bookshelf and asked me not to send any books he already has,” Kang says. “Another buyer said she was very fond of the movie ‘The Graduate’ and wanted me to select books that would give her similar feelings.”

Kang says he was approached by the owner of a private bookstore who wanted to buy his full book collection at any asking price. Other respondents offered to babysit his collection until he returns from the US. He declined.

Chen Nan, a follower of Kang’s WeChat account who works in public relations, was one of the first to place a 99-yuan order.

“I know Kang has a good taste in books, so I didn’t request any particular titles,” the 30-year-old tells Shanghai Daily. “I’m really looking forward to the choices he makes for me.”

Another WeChat follower, Wen He, placed a 99-yuan order, with a note saying she prefers novels and stylish writers. “I know that Kang is a romantic man with his feet on the ground,” Wen tells Shanghai Daily.

To be sure, not all responses to the book sale were so glowing. Some people left negative remarks on Kang’s social media sites, questioning his integrity and intentions.

“This is a successful marketing stunt,” said one online comment. “Maybe he is just trying to collect money and earn some interest before making refunds.”

Whatever the truth, the Kang book sale underscores the speed and popularity of social media.

“Kang and his books attracted so much attention because of the bandwagon effect of people’s curiosity,” says Tong Xiao, a professor of social development at East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai. “The Internet and social media platforms are good at detecting innovative issues. When a person makes use of the Internet for exposure, he should be braced for possible consequences.”

Kang admits he wasn’t.

“If I had known what would happen and the situation I would put myself in, I would have done things differently,” he says. “In my eagerness to share the books, I didn’t think it all through carefully enough. The delivery costs alone will be high. Books are really heavy.”