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The controversy over President Pranab Mukherjee’s yet-to-be released book being sold exclusively on Amazon’s e-commerce platform is intensifying. The issue has reached Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, with the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) requesting the minister to intervene in the matter. It claims Amazon’s exclusivity will be “abuse of competition”.
Rupa Publications, publisher of Mukherjee’s book, The Dramatic Decade, The Years of Indira Gandhi, has inked a three-week exclusivity deal with Amazon, triggering protests and threat of a boycott from top traditional book retailers.
Ahead of the December 11 launch, brick-&-mortar book retail chains like Starmark, Crossword and Sapna have asked Rupa to withdraw its plan of selling the book exclusively on Amazon for the first three weeks. These retailers have threatened they will boycott Rupa and stop selling its books at their stores if the publisher sticks to the exclusivity plan.
CAIT, which has been protesting the deep discounts being offered online, has come to the centrestage of the book controversy as well. While expressing “immense respect for His Excellency, the President of India”, CAIT has said in its letter to Sitharaman that it was appealing to the commerce minister, instead of lodging a complaint with the Competition Commission of India, “with a sense of hope that necessary action will be taken by you”.
The President’s book, in the pre-order stage on Amazon at present, has already reached the third position among bestsellers on the platform, after works by Chetan Bhagat and Sachin Tendulkar. The book is to be released on Mukherjee’s birthday on December 11. According to offline book sellers, the exclusivity move is a disadvantage for them and a disruptive step.
“This will set a dangerous trend. The online sellers just gain market share using predatory pricing which is not a healthy competition. So, we along with Crossword and Sapna have written to Rupa to reverse this decision or else we will not buy or display their books in future,” Emami Frank Ross’ Starmark division chief executive officer Gautam Jatia told this newspaper.
Rupa declined to comment on its next course of action. The launch of the book is slated for next Thursday but Amazon’s limited licensing agreement says such a licence will continue in perpetuity, unless either party terminates it by giving the other party 30 days’ prior written notice.
This implies it could be too late for Rupa to call off the exclusive deal. But according to experts, there could be surprising outcomes, given the kind of pressure and protest the deal is generating before book launch.
A book written by the country’s President being made available only on one platform could create disruption in the market and there might be very little opportunity for traditional sellers to cash in a month after its release, a source said The e-tailing sector is expected to grow to $15 billion in the next two years from about $4 billion at present.
Though this is not the first time a book is being exclusively pre-booked and sold on an e-commerce platform, the curiosity regarding Mukherjee’s book is significant. On Monday, when the campaign went live, Amazon’s daily order rate for the book jumped four times. Right at number three, Mukherjee’s book is marching much ahead of works by former president A P J Abdul Kalam, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and former comptroller and auditor general Vinod Rai, among others.
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FIND IT ONLY ONLINE A look at products that rode the e-commerce frenzy in India through exclusive online launches |
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BISCUIT: In a first of its kind moves, bakery and dairy major Britannia Industries last month launched an exclusive tie up with e-tailer Amazon India for a pilot launch of a new chocolate chip cookie, Good Day Chunkies. The 15-day offer is currently on and closes on December 5, after which the product goes to offline retail stores. BEVERAGE: In September this year, Coca-Cola launched its sugar-free soft drink Coca-Cola Zero in India exclusively on Amazon.in for two weeks. The product got 1,700 online bookings within four hours of the launch. The brand was available in US, Mexico, China, Brazil and Japan before its India launch. BOOKS: President Mukherjee’s book is not the first one to have got an exclusive online launch. Author Chetan Bhagat’s latest release, Half Girlfriend, had an exclusive pre-order on Flipkart. Sachin Tendulkar's autobiography, Playing It My Way, was also launched for pre-orders on e-commerce websites. MOVIES & SONGS: Series of several shows, like House of Cards, have been exclusively launched on NetFlix. Also, many international songs have been exclusively launched on Apple Inc’s iTunes Store. Games: Microsoft's third generation gaming console Xbox One is till date available exclusively on Amazon in India. GADGETS: Exclusive online sale of mobile phones first caught attention when Motorola Mobility’s Moto series of phones (which included MotoG, MotoE and MotoX) were offered to buyers exclusively on Flipkart. Even as Indian users had no experience of using these phones, the sale triggered an overwhelming response with 20,000 units of MotoG (which was the first launch in the series) getting sold within hours. This was not the first exclusive mobile phone launch on Flipkart, as the e-commerce major’s website crashed for the first time since inception in July 2014 when it offered high-end smartphone Xiaomi Mi3 exclusively. The first batch of these phones was sold within 39 minutes.
Compiled by Itika Sharma Punit |
