The online shop's success is built on what seems to be a changing attitude to ownership by which younger Chinese are giving greater emphasis to the right to use things rather than the right to possess them, which means they are more likely to pass on used items to others.[Photo provided to China Daily]

A report on China's book market last year published by Beijing Open Book Co Ltd, a provider of data and information for the publishing industry, said the book market in China had turnover of 803,200 million yuan last year, 14.5 percent more than in 2016. The increase indicates that the book market in China is still growing.

Hu Xiaoming, 29, who runs a book shop in Tianjin and has been buying secondhand books for several years, says he enjoys wandering around old book stalls along the street and coming across good old books that he likes. With the growing business of online bookstores, he began to buy secondhand books online.

"It's convenient and the books are clean, which people appreciate," he says.

Hu suggests that these days people are overburdened with material possessions, which helps make recycling an attractive proposition.Many online bookstores buy only books published this century, Hu says, a policy he disagrees with. Since many old books owned by older people are as valuable as more recently published works, he says, online secondhand book dealers should be more open to books published earlier.

"I once met this 70 year old selling his books to street waste recycling stations. He bemoaned the fact that because his children did not want them and he could no longer read them, he had no choice. I wish online bookstores would buy older books so more people could make better use of them."

Though online secondhand book stores provide plenty of convenience and seem to have bright prospects, more conventional, physical bookshops, are still showing their resilience. During the National Day holiday in October, Duo Zhua Yu rented a shop in Beijing for a week, its first offline store, and says it sold 180,000 secondhand books in just six days.

Hu, who has managed bookshops for 10 years, says that while the internet is a great sales channel, there is nothing quite like stumbling on a good book in a physical shop.

"You have to touch the book to ensure it's the one you want, and it's important to start reading it as soon as you have paid for it."