"The future of books is looking rather good," says Ramu Ramanathan

For starts, the Repro and Macmillan news.

Prior to which Carlyle sold its ownership in the Chennai-based publishing services firm Newgen Knowledge Works to a consortium of private equity and venture capital firms including Franklin Templeton Private Equity Strategy, Aureos South Asia Fund and ePlanet Capital for an undisclosed sum. Media reports had put the value of the Newgen deal at Rs 100-crore.

More recently Future Ventures upped its stake in Amar Chitra Katha by 30%, thereby increasing its shareholding to 56%.

Then there’s the German Book Office’s Jumpstart event in Delhi on 25-26 August and the Publishing Next conference in Goa from 16-17 September.

This is followed by the Frankfurt Book Fair from 12-16 October and an Open House in November to be hosted in Thiruvanthapuram where PrintWeek India shall be the knowledge partner with Welbound Worldwide to create the first-ever forum for Indian book print firms.

So is the old fashioned book out of fashion? Our big interview with Pramod Khera quite clearly says, no. He speaks of the education textbook market in India which is worth Rs 30,000-cr.

I don’t have children and therefore no textbooks to purchase. This means I don't have to hope and pray for NCERT textbooks to be printed and distributed in time. But I buy at least Rs 25,000/- worth of books per month (My one bad vice). Some of these books are for my family (Almost everyone is cursed with the reading habit); and now a bunch of friends; including my fab-team at PrintWeek India.

I purchased books for two of our youngest team members, Monica Rohra and Tanvi Parekh. We selected Antoine Saint Exupery, J M Coetzee, Milan Kundera, Steig Larsson, Jerome K Jerome, P G Wodehouse and so on.

I told the girls (actually, they are young ladies) about a designer friend who purchased the entire P G Wodehouse collection with his first salary; dumped all of Bertie, Jeeves and P Smith into a cab and disappeared home.

Prior to his salary-days, he purchased his books from a secondhand bookstore.

An old favourite was: The New & Secondhand Bookshop of Dhobi Talao, where everyone I know began their book-buying career. Opened in 1905 and run by three generations of the Vishram family, it closed in February in 2011, reportedly because it wasn’t selling enough.

I stood and mourned in front of the book store when that happened cause it was a historical legacy. It was a bookstore in which old friends have spoken of procuring a 1902 Edinburgh-published Jonathan Swift collection from a rare and out-of-print section. Or rubbing shoulders with Dr Ambedkar. And even the great modernists like Prabhakar Kolte or Akbar Padamsee sipping a cup of chai and doing a quick sketch.

The fact is: the modern books trade undercuts the advantages of trade in leisure. Today, publishers provide a 45% margin on MRP to distributors. While standalone bookstores get the stock at a 33% discount, the chain stores (Landmark, Crossword, Odyssey) manage to get 42% from distributors.

But the generation that Tanvi and Monica belong to are not bothered about this. They simply log onto Flipkart and select the book. These online stores get similar discounts as chain stores from distributors. Their overheads are low. And all they need to invest in is: packaging and courier. Today, Flipkart.com has become one of HarperCollins’ top five retailers in India. And sells six books a minute now, up from 2,000 a day early last year. In this Flipkart is competing with music, movies, games, computers, mobiles, etc.

The collection of books on Flipkart is 10 million titles.

And the cost of the book is as follows. For example, Amitav Ghosh’s latest is Rs 499/-. Estimated cost at which an eCommerce web site gets it from the publisher is Rs 299. The book cost to deliver it in any of the eight national cities is: Rs 344 (this includes delivery costs). The book cost is inclusive of cash on delivery (CoD) charge levied by logistics partner which makes its Rs 379. And so with a competitive strategy (possible because there’s no dead stock or storage issues), a reader can procure Amitav Ghosh for Rs 324.

As supply chain and technology infrastructures improve; and the choice improves, this look likes the future of reading books. I agree. And the great news is, so do young Monica and a younger Tanvi.

Happy reading; and buying of books.

Ramu Ramanathan is group editor. He edits Campaign India and PrintWeek India