Cordoba effect

BOOKS: Springer offers Indian science an e-leap, while Amazon-forerunner A1 Books woos online buyers.

It's mindblowing. Info-geeks say that the world is adding on more gigabytes of shareable information every four years than it ever did in all of recorded history.

The question of what's important, therefore, assumes a critical dimension - even as the Internet grants galloping access to reading matter. Among the significant upper-end moves, of late, has been the Heidelberg-based scientific publisher Springer's decision to put its eBook Collection online.

Aimed at researchers and scientists, it's a cerebral library with over 10,000 books in e-format already (available for a subscription fee).

"It will help academics," says Sanjiv Goswami, managing director, Springer India, "for what drives research is the search process. And you need an easy way to link databases."

Hence: SpringerLink, a search-ready platform for academia. UGC, CSIR and TIFR, among others, have signed up. Founded in 1842, the ¤1 billion Springer is the world's premier publisher of academic works (math being its speciality).

For the general market, meanwhile, the Internet serves as a retail platform. The good news here: A1 Books is ready to start operations in India.

A1 Books? It's just a $20 million firm based in New Jersey, but with a database of 2 million books and having served some 3.5 million customers so far, it's a name familiar to everyone in America's books business.

What's more, its founder Shinu Gupta even has the distinction of being Jeff Bezos's forerunner in selling books online, having started his US website in February 1995, a few months before Amazon.

So why did A1 get left behind? "We started as a small business," says Gupta, "they got a lot of funding upfront. Also, my business model was different since my idea of e-commerce was virtual. Bezos began big, and had vast operations of warehousing, stocking and so on for 1.5 million books."

Amazon set itself up in Seattle for a logistical edge, having worked out inventory details - before going all out for surfers via its website. "They'd spend some $27 to acquire one customer," muses Gupta.

An IITian, Gupta is more of a techie, proud of his software tools. "We were the first to develop a dynamic price comparison technology using spidering," he says.

Does he regret losing the big front-end market to Amazon? Not exactly. A1 does brisk online sales in the US, and is Amazon's biggest supplier too. But Gupta hopes not to lose out on the Indian market. And one big learning from Amazon's success is that online retail works on reliability - which necessitates close links with publishers (and the trade).

FirstAndSecond, to his mind, failed precisely on this count: without a well coordinated backend, it couldn't deliver the orders. A1 Books in India, however, won't be a retailer, but a platform for publishers and others to post their offers, strike deals (with a 20 per cent cut for A1) and do the order fulfilment themselves. In that sense, it's more eBay than Amazon.

Still, won't A1's offer list need to be comprehensive for the platform to succeed? Yes, admits Gupta. To kick off operations, he is banking on an 8,00,000-title strong database, but is busy enthusing publishers in India with his plan. Regional languages, translations and so on are part of the broad vision - of penetrating India deeply with books.

It won't be easy. Payment mechanisms are lax. The publishing industry remains "very laid back", with inventory systems in disarray and operations in need of an efficiency wrench. A1 will have to work with every cog in the system, even as it vies for brand attention: setting the website abuzz is no less of a challenge.

"Got books?" is A1's slurpline. And Gupta's weighing the idea of a pair of Gandhi specs to go with it. Information is an explosive universe of 0s and 1s, but imaginative simplicity retains appeal.