Beyond Bookstores explores the books, spaces, stories, and raisons d’etre behind some of Taiwan’s most interesting booksellers.

Beyond Bookstores immerses readers in the compelling stories behind exceptional bookshops across Taiwan as shared by shop staff and owners. Interwoven with genuine warmth and appeal, these stories, while centered on these shops, embrace life’s full palette of experiences, with each “bookshop” serving as a stage on which human kindness entwines with threads in the local cultural fabric.

Featured bookshops include venerable standbys, newbie upstarts and everything in between. Alongside indie venues are beloved familiars like perennial student favorite Tonsan in Taipei City, King Books Secondhand in Tainan, and vanguard of Taiwan’s feminist movement, Fembooks. Readers also drop by Taiwan’s “cheapest bookseller” Shuijhun Bookstore in Taipei and cozy community-focused booksellers such as Small Small Bookshop and the indigenous culture-infused Fan Yi Art Books House.

Apart from shop stories, listen in on conversations with shop owners that spotlight their tenacity and passions as well as those unique traits that led them to create such distinctive spaces for bibliophiles. Whether planning a visit or enjoying vicariously from afar, the text and beautiful illustrations within its pages form the ideal guide to Taiwan’s unique booksellers. With book readership on the decline, Beyond Bookstores certainly whets the appetite for a return to the tactile pleasures and relaxed airs of reading.