Chinese-speaking Dopers: What's openbooknet.com and why's it have vending machines?

I’m here in Hong Kong, and at the subway station last night I saw a vending machine with pretty-looking books inside. There was lots of Chinese writing, but the only English was the URL openbooknet.com. No help at the site, though - it’s all in Chinese as well.

Can someone explain the site to me? Were these really fictional novels for sale in a vending machine? All the covers were in a similar style so I wondered if they were blank journals or something.

Thanks–

Interesting, we don’t have anything like that here in Taiwan, so I don’t know. But I think I’ve heard of that sort of thing in Japan.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a book vending machine. In Asia, you sometimes get the impression that there is nothing that can’t be sold from vending machines. Hell, in Japan, it appears that they sell Smart Cars out of vending machines…

The site seems to be the Hong Kong self-publishing website; yes, it’s all fictional books there, ranging from romantic novels to self-help books (I think). But I am not sure what type of books the vending machine sells - the site is more of an e-commerce catalog.

Got a picture?

The vending machines only dispense information about the Smart Car, not actual cars :slight_smile:

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At one of the airports in the UK (probably Heathrow) they also had a book vending machine by at least one of the departure gates.
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