The 7th National Book Expo was held in Luohu district in November 1996. This was the first time the event was held in a non-provincial  capital city. The Book Expo was in the building of the Xinhua Book Store and was exempted from the publishing houses' booth rental. It used a network of computers to power its book sales and saw a daily special issue on the expo published by the China Book Business Report. The sales of the book fair exceeded 20 million yuan ($2.98 million), a record high.