The Historical Evolution of Life Bookstore

Established in June 1925. 1July, 932, Life Publishing Cooperative was established on the basis of Life Weekly edited by Zou Taofen, named Life Bookstore. Life Bookstore was an important progressive cultural institution before liberation. A large number of progressive books on social sciences, literature and art were published, reaching more than 1000. Life Bookstore has been self-publishing and has a perfect distribution organization. In addition to publishing edition books and periodicals, it also sells progressive edition books and periodicals, thus becoming a distribution center for the new publishing industry. Life Bookstore had no outlets when it was first established. 1at the end of 933, Life Weekly was forced to stop publishing and moved to Taoyuan Square on Joffrey Avenue (now Huaihai Middle Road), where the earliest outlets were established. 1934 Life Bookstore moved to Fuxing Lane, Fuzhou Road. 1938 At the beginning of this year, Life Bookstore closed its sales department in Fuxing Lane, Fuzhou Road, and opened a branch in the name of "Far East Book and Magazine Company" at No.378, Fuzhou Road to continue its business. 1940, "Far East Book and Magazine Company" was renamed as "Brother Book Company". /kloc-in the spring of 0/943, Brother Book Company was reorganized into Guangxin Company, dealing in books, stationery and department stores. The following year, Guangxin Company also closed down. After the victory of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, Life Bookstore opened in the downstairs of No.6 apartment building on Chongqing South Road, and opened in June 1945+00. In the increasingly severe situation of white terror, on February 2nd, 1947 65438+ Chongqing South Road Sales Department was forced to close and moved to the fourth floor of Li Fuxing, Fuzhou Road to continue its business. 1948 February 12, three bookstores, including Life Bookstore, were evacuated from Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong on the eve of the secret order issued by the Shanghai Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. Mail order is an important business of Life Bookstore. 1937 In the first half of the year, there were more than 60,000 mail-order households in Life Bookstore, and the balance of mail-order households in Bookstore was nearly 654.38+10,000 yuan. The wholesale business of Life Bookstore is also quite huge, often with more than 300 consignment units, which are distributed in major, medium and small cities across the country. In the total turnover of Life Bookstore, local edition and foreign edition publications account for 50% respectively. Life Bookstore also set up a telephone book purchase service in Shanghai in the second half of 1935, and it didn't stop until the Japanese army occupied Shanghai, which was convenient for readers. Before the Anti-Japanese War, Life Bookstore had only two branches in Wuhan and Guangzhou, and later opened branches in Xi, Chongqing, Changsha, Chengdu and Guilin, with a total of 55 branches. Life, Reading and Xinzhi Bookstore merged in Hong Kong after leaving Shanghai at the same time the night before liberation. 1948101October 26th, the integrated management office of life, reading and knowledge joint publishing house was established in Hong Kong, and the merger of the three stores was officially completed. After the national liberation, in April of 195 1, publishing institutions such as Sanlian, Zhonghua, Commerce, Ming Kai and Joint Venture joined forces to form "China Book Publishing Company" and set up a branch in Shanghai. From 1954, China Book Publishing Company was merged into Xinhua Bookstore, and Shanghai Branch of China Library Co., Ltd. was merged into East China Branch and Shanghai Branch of Xinhua Bookstore.