Controversy has broken out over President Pranab Mukherjee's book, The Dramatic Decade: The Indira Gandhi Years, even before its release on December 11. For the first three weeks, the book will be available only online and exclusively on Amazon.in following a deal with the publisher, Rupa. Brick-and-mortar bookstores have termed this as unfair and monopolistic. Thomas Abraham, the managing director of Hachette India, speaks to Ritika Bhatia about the tug-of-war between the online and offline spaces and how the government should deal with the issue
The exclusive deal between Rupa and Amazon over the President's book has book store owners up in arms. They are terming it "abuse of competition". Your thoughts.
There is nothing wrong with exclusivity per se in the legal sense. Each company chooses its own strategy.
The controversy seems to have snowballed with the Confederation of All India Traders using this issue to complain to the commerce ministry about the deep discounts offered online. But this is not the first time an exclusive deal like this has been inked. Why has this one, in particular, caused such a furore?
This is not new and has been building up for some time. A decade ago, it was the independent publishing houses versus chains. Today, with the advent of the online market, it's brick-and-mortar against online because things have begun to hurt much more than before. In a country like India, which disrespects intellectual property rights completely, I am sceptical that the government will do anything. Unless the government legislates otherwise and brings about a level playing field like France has done, which I personally think they should do, nothing can really happen legally. (Earlier this year, France passed a new law popularly dubbed as "The Anti-Amazon Law", to protect its iconic bookshop culture from American e-commerce giants. This law has banned rebates on book sales and free shipping by online portals. France has around 3,500 book shops, one-third of which are independent stores, struggling to compete in increasingly monopolised market. This law follows 1981's fixed book price law, "The Lang law", which allows for a maximum of 5 per cent discount to ensure a 'level playing field'). The government's view is bound to be whether or not the industry is crashing and the consumer is getting books cheaper, so it can't intervene. I doubt if it will see bookstores as cultural institutions that need to be preserved.
Some of the retail chains such as Sapna, Starmark and Crossword have threatened to boycott Rupa's titles. Do you think this will achieve anything?
This is for Rupa or non-competing industry observers to comment on.
Author John Green said this about the Amazon-Hachette dispute in the US (where Amazon has a 40-plus per cent share in the books market): "What's ultimately at stake is whether Amazon is going to be able to freely and permanently bully publishers into eventual nonexistence." This was seen by many people as symptomatic of a larger, pressing issue - the ongoing battle to maintain a diverse retail marketplace. Do you think that India is on its way to battle with the same problems?
I cannot comment on the Amazon-Hachette dispute since it was a contract negotiation involving one of our group companies. But India has seen the same problems now over the past 15 years that beset the West with the added disadvantage of low prices to boot. First, there was the onset of the chain stores, with their scale-up and high discounts that put a lot of independent publishers out of business. Now there is the onslaught of online with even higher discounts which have put many chains and some more individual publishers out of business. So the question is: how does the government view the bookstore as an entity? Does it view short-term consumer benefit as paramount or a long-term fostering of books being necessary to the building of the reading habit, which, in turn, is integral to cultural development and nation building? A diverse marketplace does not mean fostering monopoly and monopsony.
Where does this leave the author?
The big author is right now unaffected by volume impact. In the short-term, he will have more books sold. The mid-list author is seeing sales dwindle because there aren't enough stores to represent his books. And if more and more stores shut down - places that offered browsing choice - then in the long-term, it will impact them severely, even the best-selling ones.
The exclusive deal between Rupa and Amazon over the President's book has book store owners up in arms. They are terming it "abuse of competition". Your thoughts.
There is nothing wrong with exclusivity per se in the legal sense. Each company chooses its own strategy.
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This is not new and has been building up for some time. A decade ago, it was the independent publishing houses versus chains. Today, with the advent of the online market, it's brick-and-mortar against online because things have begun to hurt much more than before. In a country like India, which disrespects intellectual property rights completely, I am sceptical that the government will do anything. Unless the government legislates otherwise and brings about a level playing field like France has done, which I personally think they should do, nothing can really happen legally. (Earlier this year, France passed a new law popularly dubbed as "The Anti-Amazon Law", to protect its iconic bookshop culture from American e-commerce giants. This law has banned rebates on book sales and free shipping by online portals. France has around 3,500 book shops, one-third of which are independent stores, struggling to compete in increasingly monopolised market. This law follows 1981's fixed book price law, "The Lang law", which allows for a maximum of 5 per cent discount to ensure a 'level playing field'). The government's view is bound to be whether or not the industry is crashing and the consumer is getting books cheaper, so it can't intervene. I doubt if it will see bookstores as cultural institutions that need to be preserved.
Some of the retail chains such as Sapna, Starmark and Crossword have threatened to boycott Rupa's titles. Do you think this will achieve anything?
This is for Rupa or non-competing industry observers to comment on.
Author John Green said this about the Amazon-Hachette dispute in the US (where Amazon has a 40-plus per cent share in the books market): "What's ultimately at stake is whether Amazon is going to be able to freely and permanently bully publishers into eventual nonexistence." This was seen by many people as symptomatic of a larger, pressing issue - the ongoing battle to maintain a diverse retail marketplace. Do you think that India is on its way to battle with the same problems?
I cannot comment on the Amazon-Hachette dispute since it was a contract negotiation involving one of our group companies. But India has seen the same problems now over the past 15 years that beset the West with the added disadvantage of low prices to boot. First, there was the onset of the chain stores, with their scale-up and high discounts that put a lot of independent publishers out of business. Now there is the onslaught of online with even higher discounts which have put many chains and some more individual publishers out of business. So the question is: how does the government view the bookstore as an entity? Does it view short-term consumer benefit as paramount or a long-term fostering of books being necessary to the building of the reading habit, which, in turn, is integral to cultural development and nation building? A diverse marketplace does not mean fostering monopoly and monopsony.
Where does this leave the author?
The big author is right now unaffected by volume impact. In the short-term, he will have more books sold. The mid-list author is seeing sales dwindle because there aren't enough stores to represent his books. And if more and more stores shut down - places that offered browsing choice - then in the long-term, it will impact them severely, even the best-selling ones.