Bookselling

More than a million copies of books by Han Kang, the first South Korean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, have sold locally since the honor was announced, bookstores said on Oct. 15.

The short story writer and novelist is best known overseas for her Man Booker Prize-winning "The Vegetarian," her first novel translated into English.

Istanbul's Sahaflar Bazaar, once a beloved haven for book lovers, now faces a sharp decline as the rise of e-commerce reshapes Türkiye's book market.

With the industry estimated to be worth 4 billion Turkish Liras ($117,268,000), small bookshops are bearing the brunt of this shift.

Those who took the plunge to open a physical bookstore during the Covid pandemic faced the challenge of balancing their love of books with the harsh realities of a notoriously complex tax system and, above all, with the dominant trend of the time: Constant screen-based stimulation pulling people away from reading.

Locals and visitors of the famous mountain village of Apeiranthos on the island of Naxos sit on the steps in an alley to watch one of the poetry evenings, PeriPoisis, organized for the second year by the newly founded bookshop of the village, "The Captain," which operates all year round.

The 2024 Paris Olympics' opening ceremony will be held on the famed River Seine, taking place outside of a sports venue for the first time in the Games' history. But for the booksellers who have found a centuries-old sanctuary on the riverbanks, that day is all but ceremonious.

A total of 302,786 people applied to state employment agency Hellenic Manpower Organization (DYPA) for €20 vouchers to be used to buy books in the first half of the year, compared to 231,857 in 2022 and 166,125 in 2021.

The recipients have a discount of at least 10% on books written in Greek from registered bookstores and publishers.

Small Bookshop Week kicked off in Greece on Monday, with the country's independent booksellers hosting a series of interesting events to acquaint readers with their important work and to share the joy of reading with the uninitiated.

The open-air booksellers of Paris, a fixture along the banks of the Seine for centuries, are seeing their numbers dwindle after two years of Covid, with stalls going empty thanks to a dearth of local and foreign customers.

The book market on ''Slaveykov'' Square will return to its place after the huge reconstruction of the whole space together with ''Graf Ignatiev'' Street.

The key question for now is when this will happen. Obviously, the return of the books will be delayed and until now the Sofia Municipality has no specific deadline.

The Eleftheroudakis bookstore on Panepistimiou Street was expected to close its doors on September 30, according to a statement released by the company. The flagship was the last of the Eleftheroudakis bookstores that was still operating, following several outlet closures in recent years.

A family business, the Eleftheroudakis company was originally established in 1868.