The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Online book sales up by leaps and bounds

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 31, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Online book sales up by leaps and bounds

J. Malarvizhi

CHENNAI : A book sells every 18 minutes on eBay India while Oxford Bookstore has seen a 40 per cent increase in daily online buyers at its site over the last two years.

From all pointers, online book sales are rising and most book retailers have sites of their own or will be launching one shortly to enter the new field of e-tailing.

Hemu Ramiah, CEO, Landmark, believes that `the net is going to change the way people view shopping.' While the chain of bookstores has an exclusive portal at Sify and is one among other brands at Rediff, its own site should be ready for launch in two or three months. People are slow to understand the utility of online shopping, she feels.

For people in small towns, for instance, the net provides access to find rare titles.

The numbers tell a different story. The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) Power Shopper report put the size of the Indian e-commerce market to be Rs. 2,300 crore for 2006-07.

Books are the most popular e-commerce buy in India, with over 41 per cent of all Indian e-commerce buyers buying books online, according to the report, followed closely by electronic gadgets and airline tickets. Chennai with about seven per cent of total respondents is at rank 3 for maximum buyers of railway tickets, airline tickets and magazines, among other categories.

"Online sales are almost doubling every year. We also see the number of visitors with unique ID going up every day by almost 15 per cent. Almost 95 per cent of our online sales are book sales," says Rajiv Chowdhry, CEO, Apeejay Oxford Bookstores Private Limited.

After opening of the Oxford Bookstore on Haddows Road last year, the number of online orders from Chennai had also increased, he says, with fiction and history being the most popular categories for online buyers from Chennai.

Publishers now give customers links to sites that sell their books. Orient Longman tied up with Fabmall, now called Indiaplaza, for the purpose.

Penguin has listed the sites on which its books are available on its website while eBay India, formerly bazee.com, offers the auction, fixed price and classifieds formats to buy or sell.

Users range from big retailers and distributors to individuals selling their second hand books.

Some retailers and websites listed here are accessible at books.ebay.in, oxfordbookstore.com, landmarkonthenet.com and indiaplaza.in.

The Power Shopper report is available at www.iamai.in

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