If you happened to wander down the aisles of the Delhi Book Fair that concluded recently, you would think that India is soon going to be swamped by a tsunami of ebooks, heralding a digital revolution in e-reading like never before. Almost every other store had something about soon-to-come ebook offerings.
The reality is that the Indian publishing industry in its offline form is still flourishing, churning out 100,000 titles a year and growing at 12 to 15 per cent a year. Many of the biggies in the book selling business seem impervious to all the noise about the business of reading digitally. Leading online book chain, Flipkart, had earlier said it was studying the space, but refused to comment on ebooks for this story. Snapdeal, the online marketplace, says that it is treading cautiously. Snapdeal co-founder and chief executive officer, Kunal Bahl, says that he too is analysing opportunities, but first wants “to ensure that there are enough devices for people to access ebooks.”
Deliberation makes sense. For ebooks to thrive, one needs reading devices. Those that abound — like the iPad or the Kindle — cost as much as mid-range laptops in India. Then, there’s the issue of formats. A book downloaded onto your Android phone may not be accessible via your Kindle, or your tablet.
First movers
Yet, there are companies that are banking on India quickly becoming e-book savvy. Amazon.com officially launched its India Kindle Store a few weeks ago, offering over 1 million titles to its customers here. The company has also struck an exclusive deal with Croma Retail stores, from the Tata stable, for the sale of Kindle e-readers across the country. Then, just a few days ago, Landmark, the largest book retailer in the country announced its foray into ebooks, instantly upping the ante.
Why did Landmark do so when others think it is still too premature? “Being the largest retailer in the books category, it is important for us to keep all our customers engaged,” says Ashutosh Pandey, chief operating officer, Landmark. Moreover, “worldwide ebooks sales have surpassed the physical sales and eventually the same would happen in India,” he adds.
The coming wave
Pandey could be making a prescient bet. In the UK, Amazon recently released figures that showed that it sells more ebooks than paperback and hardback print editions combined, on its site. On Amazon.co.uk, for every 100 print books sold, 114 ebooks are purchased, it claimed, at a time when the company was celebrating two years of the Kindle in the UK.
Across the Atlantic, the story is much the same. First quarter figures showed that American publishers were making more money from ebooks than hardcover books. Adult ebooks in the US recorded revenue of $282.3 million in Q1, a 28.4 per cent increase from the same period a year ago. Young adult’s and children’s ebooks showed a growth of 233 per cent to $64.3 million. In contrast, sales of adult hardcover books grew just 2.7 per cent to $229.6 million.
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Stoked by the realisation that a similar revolution may be around the corner, Landmark has listed 300,000 ebooks in its online store versus its 1 million titles in the catalogue for physical books,. Over the next couple of months, the company is expecting 6 to 10 per cent of total sales coming from ebooks. “The ebooks sold on our site are not restricted to any particular device or software. They can read with any application or hardware supporting the DRM content.”
Obstacles
DRM, or a digital rights mechanism, is fundamental to keeping at bay, a publisher’s paranoia about theft. Vikram Khosla , founder and managing director, hooked on book.com, who runs a library through online membership, is planning to launch an ereader and also a software to check piracy in ebooks. According to Khosla, who put up a stall at the recent Delhi book fair, piracy is stopping companies from going all-out on ebooks. “The publishers want to be sure they are safe.” The ebook that Khosla is planning will have an encrypted tag that won’t allow any sharing. Other e-readers allow limited sharing.
However, the main impediment to e-book growth may be something else. Hachette, an international publisher, has over 70 local titles out of a list of 430 available physical titles, converted into ebooks. However, a company spokesperson said that “in India, we don’t have a single local vendor, though Amazon has just switched on their India facing store.” She added that ebooks in India is not being distributed actively at the moment because of the vendor issue. “But, if the high street retail slump we are seeing now continues, then this may automatically become the preferred method of reading. So, expansion is inevitable.”
The ebook industry, like many others, can suffer from a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum. Will hardware boost software sales, or vice versa? Here, the answer may lie elsewhere. ebooks tend to give significant discounts off the MRP to retailers. Retailers themselves pass on a further discount to Indian consumers who end up spending as much as half of what they would on a physical copy, for an ebook which is sure to drive up sales. Plus, the market for educational ebooks —from textbooks to exam guides—is massive in India, and a potential answer to rampant offline piracy, given sensible price points.
The most important catalyst, however, may be this: globally, tablet sales, according to Gartner, are expected to reach 118.9 million units by the end of this year, a massive 98 per cent increase from last year. With this kind of growth, it’s hard not to imagine that, no matter how much we adore our walnut bookshelves, or the smell of a brand-new hardcover, ebooks will soon be a permanent fixture in our lives in India, much like our smartphones and our flatscreens.
And the first movers in this space will naturally have the upper hand.