The Vietnam Publishing Association has proposed to raise the discount limit on books to 80 per cent instead of the current maximum rate of 50 per cent.

Young readers at a book festival in Hanoi in 2016.

The present rate was deemed to be no longer suitable.

Association vice president Le Hoang told Thanh nien (Young People) newspaper on Monday that the proposal submitted to the Ministry of Industry and Trade was the result of discussions between several publishing houses over regulations on book discount.

The Government Decree 37, issued in 2006, set the book discount rate at no higher than 50 per cent, while the period of sales promotion of a book was capped at a maximum of 90 days a year.

Such regulations, according to the publishers, were "too outdated" for the growing book market, causing difficulties for them to run book sale promotion campaigns and limiting opportunities for readers to buy much cheaper books all year round.

A freshman of the HCM City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nguyen Xuan Mai, said she and her friends were always looking forward to book events to buying discounted books.

"We students have little money to buy books at their cover price from bookstores. If we do, maybe just a book a couple of months. So we keep track of when the publishers have a promotion campaign to buy cheap books and even get gifts," Mai said.

Huy Hoang Bookstore’s southern branch director Nguyen Huy Hai admitted that organising book sales was never an easy job at book festivals. 

The bookstores and publishers were coming up with new ways to attract readers, such as distributing gifts, buy one get one, or one price for all.

Many even broke the rule by stealthily offering significant discounts of more than 50 per cent during the last two days of a book festival without publicly announcing it, Hai said.

Book sales in other countries are allowed to reach up to 70 per cent discount in Singapore or even 90 per cent in the United States, Hoang said.

"Why can the books there can be 70-80 per cent off all year and Vietnam’s cannot?" Hoang asked. 

VNS