BONSERNEWS.com – Bad news for book lovers: Gunung Agung Bookstore will close all of its outlets by the end of this year.
News about the closing of the Gunung Agung Bookstore is “trending” today, Sunday, May 21, 2023.
According to reports circulating, the management of the Gunung Agung Bookstore will also carry out mass layoffs.
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That means that Gunung Agung Bookstore will soon end its seventy years of work in the world of education in Indonesia.
The closure was carried out because operational costs were greater than sales so far, even though management had made business efficiency.
The announcement of the closure of the Gunung Agung Bookstore when Indonesian people have just celebrated national book day, which falls on May 17, is indeed not pleasant to hear.
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Since its establishment in 1953, Gunung Agung Bookstore has become an inseparable part of efforts to improve reading culture in this country.
For book lovers in Indonesia, Gunung Agung Bookstore is an alternative bookstore besides Gramedia.
Apart from all that, the closure of Gunung Agung Bookstore is very likely related to other things. For example, Indonesian people’s reading interest is low.
According to UNESCO, the number of readers in Indonesia is only 0.001 percent. In other words, out of a thousand people, there is only one person who likes to read.
Meanwhile, according to a study, Indonesians can only finish one book in one month, while Japanese people can finish four books.
In addition, the availability of books in electronic form or “e-books” may affect sales of conventional books.