Proprietor Jennifer Li’s business card doesn’t read “Owner,” or even “Founder”—it reads “Book Lover.” How apropos for a Hongkonger who loses $6,000 every month running her bookstore. Her labor of love, Book Attic, is a little upstairs haven with immaculately organized shelves containing all kinds of volumes, from novels to non-fiction.

An avid reader from a young age, Li wasn’t fully comfortable with English books until after she graduated from college and worked as a secretary, when colleagues encouraged her to give them a try. She advanced quickly, moving on to tackle weighty biographies, amass a sizable collection of used books and seek out bookshops in other cities while traveling for work. In her home of Hong Kong, though, she found the environment of secondhand bookshops was often inhospitable. In 2004, once she became an independent consultant, she had time to work part-time in new and used bookshops. Four years later, she founded Book Attic at its original location in Wan Chai, downsizing flats and donating most of her personal collection to jumpstart the shop’s.  Li was realistic; she didn’t expect to make a profit—and she didn’t even mind taking a loss.

“My logic is if I had a full-time job and didn’t run this bookshop, I’d spend [money] on clothes, holidays, bags, shoes—expensive things,” she says. “I could easily spend five to eight thousand [dollars] a month, and what do I get? If I use that money to run a bookshop, it is buying myself happiness.”

To sustain the business, Li now works part-time in the mornings—in a secretarial post that was offered to her by a happy customer concerned about the pace of business (he would, Li recalls, call regularly to find out how many books she sold that day). True, an indie bookstore tends to attract some quirky customers, but Li remembers particularly vividly the retired gentleman who would visit the shop to—ahem, pleasure himself—rather than browse. Another obstacle was the other residents of the walk-up tenement building on Elgin, where Li relocated in 2011. They were reluctant to welcome the building’s new tenant in part because the word for “book,” shu, sounds like the word for “lose,” so superstitious neighbors called the police and reported that the shop was jeopardizing their safety.

One more thing that sets Book Attic apart from its brethren is its electric soundtrack, a randomly shuffled hodgepodge of Li’s iTunes library that runs the gamut from classical and jazz to Chinese Opera and recitations of Middle Eastern poetry. Li organizes the occasional book club discussion or poetry reading, and she’s learned how to restore old books to add another dimension to the fledgling operation. Up next, on July 17, is a book launch of The Foxy Lady Project, a huge limited-edition volume featuring life-size photographs of beautiful guitars played and owned by famous musicians. In spite of these efforts, Li still remains pragmatic about the Book Attic’s prospects.

“This year I think I will break even,” Li says. “Excluding my salary. I don’t have a salary. But I don’t see it as a loss—it’s a gain, because some joys, some friendships, you wouldn’t develop in a regular shop.”

Cockloft, 2 Elgin St., Central, 2259-3103, www.bookattic.info. Open Mon-Sat, noon-6pm. Closed public holidays.

From the outside, Foo Tak Building looks like just another average commercial-residential building in the middle of Causeway Bay. But behind its ordinary and unassuming exterior, it is in fact home to a multi-story artist village. On the first floor is ACO Books, an indie bookstore that boasts a wide range of sharp, alternative titles.

ACO Books is a cozy and inviting place. Enclosed by white walls, there are chairs and tables where book lovers can sit down, read, take a sip of coffee and eat some snacks. Locally produced food and soaps are also on display. This is a space that has been carefully carved out by the soft-spoken, demure manager Kobe Ho. “I don’t want every inch of space to be stuffed with books. I insist that there must be plenty of room for people to sit down and read,” Ho explains. “I don’t want to put new furniture in the bookstore. Most of the furniture, including tables and shelves, is either recycled or handmade… I want to create a feeling that this bookstore is different because of the stories and history behind each item.”

ACO Books mainly sells English books and its selection is well-curated. Even though the bookstore was only established three years ago, its history can be traced back to Twilight, a first-generation bookstore well-known among Hongkongers in the 1980s. “In the 80s, Mr. Benjamin Ma Kwok-ming [a prominent scholar of local culture] founded Twilight Bookstore, which only sold English books… Twilight Bookstore inspired and nurtured a generation of local intellectuals,” says Ho. But the legendary bookstore closed in 2006, and Mr. Ma left a huge collection of 3,000 books. Unable to bear to witness the loss of knowledge, the founder of ACO May Fung bought up the entire stock—although she was at a loss as to what to do with such a large collection. The opportunity to open up a bookstore presented itself three years ago, when the apartment on the first floor of Foo Tak Building became vacant—and that’s how ACO Books was born.

ACO Books was set up with the mission to introduce quality, visionary and alternative English titles to local Hongkongers. However, Ho says that the bookstore hasn’t fared so well in this aspect. “Most of the customers who buy English books are foreigners. It is a shame that we cannot reach out to local intellectuals because most of them do not like to read English books,” Ho laments.

1/F, Foo Tak Building, 365 Hennessy Rd., Wan Chai, 2893-4808, www.aco.hk. Open Mon-Sat, noon-8pm. Closed on public holidays.

Sleeping cats. Purring cats. Cats stretching and cats scratching. These felines are a fixture at Sam Kee Book Company, a bookstore in the basement of a low-key shopping mall in Fortress Hill. Furnished with cat beds, cat condos and cat scratch posts, the bookstore doubles as shelter for 30 abandoned cats.

Many cat-lovers and visitors have dubbed Sam Kee the “cat bookstore,” but owner Caroline Chan says that she has no intention to turn her bookstore into a tourist destination in the vein of Asia’s cheesy cat cafés. “I don’t want people to call my bookstore ‘cat bookstore.’ I don’t want to use cats as a gimmick,” Chan says. “It just happens that I also keep cats here.” In fact, Sam Kee—which stocks a wide range of Chinese books—has been in business for more than 30 years and remains a favorite for many local authors and writers. Chan took over the bookstore after the first owner left Hong Kong during the 1980s.

Chan spots strays in the streets on a regular basis. She picks them up, feeds them and takes care of them until they are ready to be adopted. “I don’t understand how people put kittens in plastic bags and discard them alive,” she says.

“I think that you just need to give a little boost to the kittens, and they will manage to live.” Most of the long-time feline residents at Sam Kee, though, are unfit for adoption—they may have chronic health conditions or suffer from mental distress, thus, it’s too difficult for them to adapt to another new home.

To Chan, too many visitors—who come for the cats but don’t buy any books—are either a nuisance for the regular operation of the bookstore or, even worse, they could disturb the cats. “If people come and see the cats, naturally they will want to touch and play with them,” Chan says. “It’s more important for cats to sleep than eat and they usually sleep for more than 10 hours. The constant flow of visitors makes it hard for them to sleep.”

So Chan requests that bookshop visitors refrain from playing with the cats unless they’re invited to. In this case, it’s better to watch and appreciate them from afar as you browse the shelves for your next read.

Shop 19, B/F, King’s Center, 193 King’s Rd., Fortress Hill, 2578-5956. Open daily 12:30-10pm.

Five years ago, Daniel Lee and two of his friends, who all graduated with degrees in philosophy from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, did something unthinkable in this hardscrabble city—they founded a bookstore that sells academic books. There was little guarantee it would be popular, but Lee and his friends succeeded and HK Reader in Mong Kok evolved into a beloved gathering place for local literati and eager readers. These days, Lee has undertaken another challenging venture: opening yet another independent bookshop, The Coming Society, and trying keep both afloat.

HK Reader, tucked away on the seventh floor of a Mong Kok building, stocks both Chinese and English titles, and most of them are geared at lovers of volumes with a little intellectual heft, whether they’re students or not. Apart from the titles they carry, the store also hosts seminars, intellectual discussions and book club meetings.

Then, six months ago, Lee launched The Coming Society in an apartment in a commercial building in Sheung Wan. The bookstore is solely owned by Lee, but friends help manage its daily operations. A departure from HK Reader, this venue attempts to be a hub for activities with a focus on arts and literature. “The space is larger than what a bookstore needs, so we will sublet to artists and other groups,” says manager Chan Ho-lok. A photographer, two indie magazines and a feminist bookstore called Consider the Trouble also share the room.

The Coming Society also aims to link different creative individuals and groups in Central and Sheung Wan. “There are many art houses in Sheung Wan and secondhand bookstores in Central. We want to group different units and do something together,” Chan says. “We don’t want to influence society directly, but there should be a space for people to exchange ideas to change the community.” As such, blues music nights, movie screenings and small-scale art exhibitions will be organized at The Coming Society on a regular basis.

“We have an edgier book selection and most of our books are about literature, history and philosophy,” Chan says. The Coming Society mainly stocks used English books, and Lee and Chan have been taken by surprise by the high quality of books they’ve collected. “Before running the bookstore, I didn’t expect that someone in Hong Kong would read these books, as people like to describe Hong Kong as a cultural desert.” Chan says. “People say that they want to give their books to us because other bookstores may buy their books in bulk and by weight. It’s like paper recycling. They feel like it’s an insult to the books, as they are very valuable.”

The newly established bookstore is still struggling to stand on its own two feet financially, but nevertheless, it’s heartening for the owners to see the shops’ warm reception. Says Chan: “Hong Kong has its own intelligentsia, but people don’t know about its existence. I think it’s much more interesting to run a secondhand bookstore. It feels like I am unearthing the history of intellectuals in Hong Kong.”

HK Reader: 7/F, 68 Sai Yeung Choi St. South, Mong Kok, 2395-0031. Open daily 2pm-midnight.
The Coming Society: Flat 2, LG4, Kai Wong Commercial Building, 222-226 Queen’s Rd. Central, Sheung Wan, 3996-9665. Open daily 1-9pm.

A record-breaking 530 exhibitors from over 20 countries and regions will participate in this year’s Hong Kong Book Fair, to take place from July 18 to 24 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC).

Other than numerous exhibition booths, the Book Fair also features 350 cultural events including various showcases of international authors, local renowned writers and internet writers. The International Showcase highlights children’s book author Holly Webb from the United Kingdom and Indian investment-banker-turned-author Chetan Bhagat, whose novel inspired the hit movie “Three Idiots.” The authors will discuss their writing career in public sessions.

Also not to be missed is the Art Gallery, which will feature a series of personal items and literary works of Leung Ping-kwan, the fair’s Author of the Year.

If you’re looking for a way to escape the heat and enhance your literary credentials at the same time, pay the book fair a visit.

Tickets $25 for adults, $10 for entry before noon, and $10 for children. Visit hkbookfair.hktdc.com for more information.