Creating an online bookstore
I visited Pak Chong of GerakBudaya on July 12, just to catch up and follow up on what we might be able to collaborate on for book publishing. I had a couple of ideas to show him. Earlier, via phone call, we had briefly spoken about the state of the book publishing and book retailing industry. Like the broader retail sector, book sales are not good either. All publishers and all bookstores are suffering, it seems. I asked him about e-commerce and how that's coming along and whether he had done some digital marketing. He said he didn't have the right people to do this. This made me think about how I might be able to help. My thinking all along was what could I do to assist and how could I be compensated for it without incurring too much burden on them? When I was at their bookstore and I saw so many Malaysian-centric books all around me a thought flashed across my mind. How about taking a radically different approach to helping them boost sales by opening up an online st...