About opening a book cafe.

6 min readMay 12, 2021

“That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.” — Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake [1]

Introduction

I belong to a family where someone is always pouring over books, newspapers, or magazines. At school, we had a library and a library period dedicated to reading. However, much to the annoyance of my friends and family, I was not a child who was keen on reading.

During college, I realized the value of reading books outside the curriculum. To open your mind to black holes and understand the intricacies of human nature is important. To quote Mark Twain, “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read”.

Through discussions with friends about books, I understood the relevance of libraries and book clubs. We as humans are a sum of our past experiences and our uniqueness enables us to generate perspectives not obvious to others. Don’t get me wrong, you do not need to dissect the text, analyze and debate about it. However, if you choose to do so, it can leave you with a deeper understanding and sometimes be more appreciative of the text.

With the advent of the digital age, the popularity of libraries and book clubs seems to be dwindling. But a newer avatar in the form of book cafes is popping up in the metropolitan cities. In this project, I have undertaken a study to understand people’s reading habits with the broader aim of opening a book café someday. I hope you enjoy reading this project as much as I did while creating it.

Want to head to a book cafe right now?[2][3][4]

Oxford Bookstore and Cha Bar, Kolkata
Bibliotheque Book Café, Gangtok
Literati Bookshop and Cafe, Calangute, Goa
The Bibliophilia Cafe, Guwahati
Café Turtle, New Delhi
Ivy & Bean, New Delhi
Kitaab Khana, Mumbai
Leaping Windows, Andheri West, Mumbai
Atta Galata, Bengaluru
Illiterati Books and Coffee, Macleodganj
Lehling Bookshop and Coffee House, Leh
Pagdandi Bookstore Cafe, Pune
Book Café Song, Pune
The Coffee Cup, Hyderabad
Books N Brew, Chandigarh

Methodology

The main objective of this study was to find out if people want to read books without buying them.

P: Population parameter of people wanting to read books without buying them

p: Sample statistic of people wanting to read books without buying them

Sampling:

Sampling frame: My contact list — Phonebook and Facebook
Sampling type: Convenience
Sample size(n): 120
Confidence level: 90%
Sampling error: 7.5%

Sampling error = Z * sqrt(σ^2 /n)

Z = 1.645 at 90% confidence
σ^2 = p(1-p) for binomial distribution
p = 0.5 assumed, i.e., equally likely to swing either way
n = 120, our sample size till mid-March 2021

Data collection:

I sent the Google form to all my contacts through different communication channels. I received 120 responses till 15–03–2021. Data was collected anonymously because I wanted the user preferences to be unbiased. Also, there was no need to identify individual preferences. Hence the sentiment of the sample was captured to understand the population sentiment.

The Google form can be accessed here.

Data understanding:

How the data set looks like:

Analysis

Readership analysis:

Do people read paperbacks and hardcover books these days?

Observations:

From graph 1, as expected, more people read paperbacks than hardcover books. This is as expected but it's better to have data confirm our hunch.
Also, maximum readers read from paperbacks or hardcover books. These support our idea that people would prefer reading from physical books. Hence people might come to our book cafe to read books.
From graph 2, we can see that maximum no. of genres is read by ebook readers. However, we do not plan on providing an ebook reading service to our customers.
What is noteworthy is that even though the no. of paperback readers are more than hardcover readers, the median no. of books read by paperback readers is more.
The range of different genres read by paperback and hardcover book readers are the same. We need to probe further to find out the different genres read by them.

Henceforth all our analysis is on physical book readers.

Genre analysis:

The most-read genres need to be identified. We need to have those genres.

Observations:

In graph 1, all the genres read by the people in the survey are ranked from the most read to the least read.
The fiction genre is read by more than 50% of people in our survey
There are 7 genres that are read by more than 20% of people in our survey. We have to stock these genres in our cafe, to begin with.
From graph 2, we can see that there is a weak correlation between the no. of genres read and the no. of books read. It implies that if people begin to frequent our cafe more, we will not necessarily need to stock more diverse genres.

Interest among readers about a book cafe:

We have understood the reading preferences of readers, but will they want to read books without buying them, and are they stoked to meet fellow readers?

Observations:

A high percentage (60%) of readers want to read books without buying them.
Above 85% of readers are open to socializing with other book readers.
About 48% of readers want to meet fellow book readers.

Choice of beverage:

Now that we are planning on providing the reading experience in a book cafe, we need to know the beverage preference of our readers.

Observations:

Most(42%) readers prefer coffee.
30% of readers prefer no beverage.
24% of readers prefer tea.

Total 66% of readers prefer having a beverage while reading. Hence providing a reading experience in a cafe is a good idea.

We need to understand how many of the people who do not drink coffee/tea, would want to meet fellow book readers.

Observations:

Among people who do not drink, 89% are open to socializing and among them 43% are interested in meeting others. Hence, they might come to meet fellow book readers at the book cafe.

Visualizing the decision-making process using a decision tree

Want to read books without buying: [‘No’, ‘Yes’]

Hypothesis testing

Conclusion

We can say with 90% confidence that the percentage of people wanting to read books without buying would be within 56% and 65%. Using the Hypothesis test for the population proportion of 80% we could determine that not enough people want to read books without buying them. So opening a book cafe is not a good business idea.