A Different Kind of Book Business

What Taiwan Taught Me About Reading, Space, and What I'm Really Building

I want to do something a little different this month (and maybe a little longer). Most of my posts so far have been practical, focused on how to find books, how to assess condition, identifying the right editions, and while all of that matters and there's plenty more of it to come, this post is about something I've been turning over in my mind since I started this journey of connecting people with books. I recently returned from a trip to Taiwan and it prompted some thoughts about what a bookshop can be, what it can mean to the people who walk through the door, and honestly, what I want Ink & Signature Books to become.

1. Taiwan and Books: A Different Relationship

Taiwan has a reading culture that feels, to an Australian eye, almost old-fashioned, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment, because bookshops there are not struggling curiosities tucked away on the edge of a high street, they are anchors, destinations, places that people actually plan their day around.

Part of this is historical, and it explains why a place like Eslite exists. From my understanding, for much of the twentieth century, access to information in Taiwan was tightly controlled, which meant that books, and the freedom to read widely and openly, carried a cultural weight that those of us who grew up in places where that freedom was taken for granted might find hard to fully appreciate. When political restrictions eased in the late 1980s, the hunger for ideas, for culture, for things to read and discuss and argue over, was enormous, and into that exact moment stepped a businessman named Robert Wu, who had no background in bookselling whatsoever.

2. The Story Behind Eslite

Wu had built a successful career in kitchenware before a heart attack and open-heart surgery at 38 years old stopped him completely, and on the other side of that experience he decided he wanted to do something different with whatever time he had left, something that he described as creating "a haven for the soul." The concept started as an art gallery, but by the time the first Eslite opened in Taipei in 1989, it had grown into something harder to categorise: a multi-purpose bookshop with a coffee shop, a performance space, a shopping area, and a guiding philosophy of "Charity, Love, and Aesthetics" that prioritised cultural enrichment over profit, and from its very first days it did something that no bookshop had done before, which was to set aside seating and reading copies so that customers could simply sit, read, and linger for as long as they wanted, even if they never bought a single thing.

In retail terms, that is a radical act, and the market responded accordingly: Eslite didn't turn a profit until its fifteenth year in business, and Wu kept going anyway. By 1999, a decade after opening, the flagship store became the world's first 24-hour bookshop, a decision that was not a commercial calculation but a statement of belief about what books are for and who deserves access to them, at any hour, on any night.

3. What I Saw When I Got There

What I can tell you is the feeling the place produces, because walking into an Eslite is genuinely not like walking into a bookshop, even a very good one, because the books are there in their hundreds of thousands, but so are design objects, craft workshops, small galleries, spaces to sit and eat and think, and the whole thing has been built at an architectural level around the idea that the people inside it deserve to be comfortable, stimulated, and occasionally a little surprised. It is a place that trusts its visitors to do more than transact, and that trust, I think, is the entire point of it.

4. What I'm Building Toward

A bit more background about me. I have always been an avid reader. I would stay awake late at night under the covers with a torch reading kids, YA and then fantasy books. Both my parents were teachers, and I even studied teaching briefly. I have a strong belief in the value of books, reading and learning. Since starting my journey into selling rare books, I’ve started to realise that a lot of rare book dealers aren’t the warm and welcoming place I want to emulate. To me that felt exclusionary, they felt like putting literature and reading out of touch from everyday people.

This is where the two visions align. While I still love and will sell rare books, my true passion and goal is to create a space where people can fall in love with reading, (and creativity and design), either for the first time, or again. What struck me most in Taiwan wasn't the scale of Eslite or the elegance of the fit-out or even the extraordinary selection of books, it was the conviction underneath all of it: that books are not just products, that a bookshop is not just a shop, and that the people who walk through the door are not just customers but people who deserve a space that takes them seriously. I want to connect people with books, to build the same love of reading that I have.

Eslite spent fifteen years losing money on that conviction before the world caught up with what it was trying to do, and I find that, genuinely, quite encouraging.

Over to You

Do you have a bookshop, anywhere in the world, that felt like more than just a shop, a place that changed the way you thought about reading or about what a space built around books and ideas could actually be? Tell me about it in the comments below, because I'd love to know.