Once upon a time, people following the books trade in India didn’t have to pay very much attention to what the books trade in the West was doing. If in New York one big publisher gobbled up two small ones, what did it matter to us? If the head of one big company quit and joined another, who here bothered? If a media conglomerate offered a retired politician (is there such a thing?) or current football star millions of dollars as a book advance, well, amusing, but so what? The West was a different world.
No longer. Now what happens in New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt, will be closely followed here. This is not just because major global publishers now have local arms here and dominate the English-language market. It’s also because business methods here are aligning with those in the West. And it’s because of the Internet.
Here’s one recent development that is exciting comment. Amazon.com has started doing its own publishing. It has six imprints already, for products ranging from thrillers to romance, “short books”, “exceptional books”, “cult favourites” and more. Traditional publishers sound both worried and scandalised — as it is Amazon has squeezed their margins pitilessly, now it wants to take over their core business! What business does a bookseller have getting into publishing?
Well, that’s because of where the online retailer sits: between publisher and reader. Why not cut out the other two middlemen — that is, literary agent and publisher — and get directly between author and reader?
Does this mean that the services that publishers provide are now worthless? The services, that is, of choosing good books, editing them to make them better, bringing them out nicely, and marketing them well.
Well, yes and no. Publishers are not perfect at any of those tasks. The relentless pressure to sell more units and make more profit (publishing was once a business of small margins; no longer) has already made publishers much less effective at those tasks.
Now, gloom-and-doom and declinism are in more or less constant favour, not least among traditional publishers. The thing is, by turning publisher, Amazon will compete with other publishers, not replace them — yet. It is thinking like a publisher — a publisher, that is, with unmediated access to tens of millions of book buyers.
Publishers in India, especially the global ones, have been happy with the growth in the local market. They say it is growing at a double-digit rate. In mature (but bigger) markets like the US and Europe, book sales are not growing. Low growth is not attractive to modern companies. So, publishers hope for good things from India.
Let them beware. Just take a look at how well Flipkart.com, India’s equivalent of Amazon, is doing. A few years old, it is already India’s biggest books retailer. As much as 30 per cent of some Indian publishers’ books sell through Flipkart alone. No bookshop can offer as much variety. Most can’t match its discounts. A great success — and yet, one keeps hearing mutters that when Amazon enters India (sooner rather than later) it will take over Flipkart.
Two more things: Flipkart has brought Indians without credit cards into the realm of e-commerce, by allowing cash-on-delivery. So, the reading market is potentially bigger, but accessible only via Flipkart. And, with the launch of the cheap Aakash tablet, the government has shown that it will invest in widespread Internet access. Now, if tens of millions more Indians go online, and they can e-shop, and online retailers are there to maximise their own opportunities, imagine the pressure traditional publishers will face.
They had better enjoy the good times while they last.
