The 2022 book week started on Saturday. Intended to attract the public to the bookstores. That is not so easy these days, because a book can also be ordered on the internet in no time. Moreover, reading is under pressure, because the temptation of the mobile phone or an evening of Netflix is great. What should the bookshop in 2022 do now to get people, and especially young people, inside?
Evelijn de Jong of Dominicanen bookshop in Maastricht: “We compete with the internet, which of course means looking flat at a screen. How do you entice people to come to the city? By offering something more than just opening the door “Bookstore 2.0 is much more accessible than it used to be, more focused on entertainment. Apart from books, we have exhibitions, a coffee corner, writers’ performances. Everything is happening.”
Spotlight
The book week is important for the turnover of the bookstores, says De Jong: “Because the spotlight is once again focused exclusively on the Dutch-language book. We can present ourselves as a bookstore. Come on in, sniff, you don’t have to What we also see during the book week is that many people have postponed their purchases, only to receive the book week gift during the book week.”
The bookstores and libraries can also help you find the right book. “And that is important, especially to get young people to read”, says Egid van Houtem, he is program leader at Cubiss, an organization that supports Limburg libraries: “Finding a book that suits a child and that is fun to read reading is really a challenge. Technical reading, learning, that is the domain of the school. But learning to enjoy reading is making miles. Read a lot. And reading the right books is essential.”
Double mission
Children’s book author Manon Berns from Maastricht agrees. A collection of art stories for children will be published next month by her. She therefore has a double mission: to get children to read and to get them interested in art. “There has to be an engine in such a story, an exciting plot. There is no child who thinks, I am going to read about Picasso today. No, they want to read an exciting book. So for example I write about paintings that are stolen, or forged, solving a mystery.. That’s what a child wants to read, but it is often still a challenge to find the right books to stimulate that reading pleasure.”
book tok
Yet it is not all doom and gloom with regard to the reading behavior of the youth. Thanks to the internet, Evelijn de Jong explains: “There are many young people between 15 and 25 on Instagram and TikTok, who encourage each other with the love for the book. Via Booktok, for example, a hashtag that is used to put books together. That’s really new. They come in here, usually a group of girls, ignore the ground floor and walk straight up to the English-speaking department, that’s their Valhalla. They stay there for an hour and then with three books to walk outside. In English yes, and that’s not bad at all, keep doing it! Because whatever you read, the most important thing is that you read. They are stimulated on the internet, but they do come to the physical bookstore. That is a profit .”