Weight: The Other Way To Sell Books
16:23 Wednesday, 3 March 2010
A new book shop sprang up on Fuxing Lu last week. This book shop is a little different, it sells by weight: RMB 11.8 per 500g. Another example of content being regarded as free in China. The other obvious example is DVDs. The costs are based on the media not the movie. That is, DVD-9 is more expensive than DVD-5.
In a country which keeps a tight control on (official) content, clearly content is regarded as having a value. The power of words and images etc. But at the same time it is considered to be of zero value - the only value being in the medium. It’s classic China dichotomy.