WHAT SELLS: TRACKING MARKET TRENDS

It was back in 2006 at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest trade fair for books, that a lot of Indian publishers first heard about an e-reader, picking up on the buzz around the newly-launched Sony E-Reader, one of the first to use the famous E-Ink technology. It seemed like reading was at the brink of changing at a very fundamental level. Ananth Padmanabhan, the CEO of HarperCollins India (HCI), was there too. “My then colleague from the US had the device,” recounts Padmanabhan. “I very vividly remember seeing the first ebook download onto it. The sheer convenience… it was revolutionary!” A year later, and exactly ten years ago from today, Amazon’s Kindle launched in the US, both beginning, and spearheading the ebook movement. Soon, other e-readers like Barnes & Nobles’ Nook and the Kobo eReader would follow, launching in 2009 and 2010 respectively (the iPad was launched at the start of 2010 as well). “In 2009, on an editor’s trip organised by the German Book Office, I was taking a train from Munich to Berlin with Ravi DeeCee (managing partner of DC Books), who had a Kindle with him. That was the first time I’d handled one,” recalls Arpita

Das, the co-founder of Yoda Press. “I was blown away by the fact that I could flip a book! I kept flipping and flipping the book for so many minutes that Ravi took it away from me for the fear that I might do it some damage.” But as it is with almost every new technology, the e-reader had its share of critics, and not everyone was quite as impressed. The most common question was – ‘Why would we read on this?’ A publisher I spoke to remembers how, when confronted by the e-reader, panel discussions across the country emphasised on the tactility of the book – the touch, the smell and the pleasure of turning the page.

Would a device that offered you a reading experience devoid of all these aspects really work? There were doubts. And yet, the idea caught on, and before long, India had launched its own set of e-readers. Infibeam’s Pi hit the market in the early 2010 and EC Media’s Wink was launched later that same year. Neither could really make their mark though, and with the gradual rise of smartphones and tablets, both exited the market before 2012 rolled around. And then, in the August of 2012, Amazon first made the Kindle available in India, at the starting price of ₹ 6,999. Before that, Indians looking to own a Kindle had to have the device internationally shipped and sometimes pay up to $80 in shipping and import fee deposits alone. The Kindle’s entry in the Indian market meant that the movement had well and truly reached us. By November Flipkart too started selling its own ebooks. Of course, with this movement came both the concerns and the challenges associated with it. Would ebooks cannibalise the space and sale of physical books? Interestingly, despite ebooks posing a threat to brick and mortar bookstores, Indian publishers largely thought of the format as just another platform to capture their tech-savvy young readers. Perhaps this was how they’d get back the readers they were losing to the screen.

INITIAL EUPHORIA

Indian publishers predicted that over the next few years ebooks would contribute to between 15-20 per cent of their total revenue, tracing the path that publishers had seen internationally. Gradually, the ebooks market did grow. Content became accessible on more platforms, including smartphones and tablets, especially with the increase in their screen sizes. The self-publishing market grew as budding authors could now easily upload their works on platforms like Scribd, Wattpad, Smashwords and Amazon’s Digital Text Platform.

The first hitch in the largely positive predictions came in 2015, when, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) and UK’s Publishers’ Association, reported a dip in the sale of ebooks. With no equivalent of the AAP or UK’s Publishers’ Association in India (Nielsen only tracks the sale of physical books), the dip in the numbers was projected for the Indian market too. But Amazon, one of the largest platforms for ebooks, in its annual report, recorded an increase in both their revenue and the numbers of ebooks they sold that year. Earlier this year in February, AAP once again reported that the sale of ebooks in the US had dropped by 18.7 per cent in the first nine months of 2016. Fans of the physical book rejoiced. There was a sense of joy, especially among the purists, that readers still took pleasure in the traditional form of reading.

But while considering these surveys , it is important to remember a few aspects that might be affecting the figures. For example, both AAP and the UK’s Publishers’ Association do not consider subscription-based platforms such as Scribd and Kindle Unlimited, which were launched in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Additionally, trends like the adult colouring book gave rise to physical sales last year. Even then, it is clear that the two most common and early predictions about the ebook did not come to pass – neither did they cannibalise the physical book, nor did the ebook market grow at the rate that Indian publishers had predicted they would. What seems to have happened, though, is that ebooks managed to find their own comfortable space in the market – despite the rampant piracy prevailing in the country.

And there is no data to support that they are on the decline. In fact, quite the contrary. The 2015 Nielsen India Book Market Report said that 70 per cent publishers had digitised their content. Amazon, after launching Kindle Unlimited in September of 2015 in the country, reported later that year that it had tripled its Kindle India business and was looking at a “200 per cent year-on-year” growth. The year also saw a rise in digital publishing for regional language publishers such as Dailyhunt, Pratilipi and Matrubharti. In the September of 2016, Juggernaut, India’s first “phone publisher”, was founded by Chiki Sarkar and Durga Raghunath. Last year Amazon expanded its reach by launching ebooks in five regional languages – Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, and Malayalam and later that year, reported 80 per cent growth in sales due to this, adding that ebooks had outstripped physical books for Amazon.

As far as the numbers for the current Indian ebook market go, they seem to vary depending on who you ask. “Over the last few years we’ve seen ebooks growing at a steady higher double digit growth – directly attributed to the increase in device sales,” says Padmanabhan, adding that ebooks contribute eight per cent to the overall sales at HCI and that the overall market seems to be at seven to eight per cent. Multiple publishers confirm this figure, while a few others seem surprised by it.

Yogesh Sharma, vice-president, sales and marketing, Bloomsbury India, told me that they have seen significant growth in ebooks in the last years. From nothing to them contributing 2.5-3 per cent of their overall revenue. Rukun Kaul, the digital head at Penguin Random House India (PRHI), says that the growth in ebooks has been incremental for the company. “Not just for PRHI, but for the industry in general,” she adds, but keeps from divulging any numbers. Anish Chandy, the business development and sales head at Juggernaut, tells me that ebook growth has been ‘exponential’ for them in the last year. But for a publisher whose primary target are smartphone users, the company still publishes physical books and that is where it gets most of its revenue from.

LOOKING AHEAD

Over the years, digital platforms have significantly improved and offered a wide range of accessibility to their readers. Kindle for example, from the time it was first introduced, has got rid of its bulky body and its clunky keyboard and has designed for itself a much more user-friendly and stylish interface, introducing advanced ergonomic design. Adding facility for wifi and 3G along the way, to the breakthrough of adding backlight in 1st Generation Kindle Paperwhite (2012) to the latest sleek 2nd Generation Kindle Oasis with water resistancy, so that you can actually read inside your shower if you want.

Access to the Kindle bookstore also means that now, readers have access to books from across the world, and at more or less uniform prices; not to mention the classics, which are available for free. The device also lets you change fonts, increase text size (a feature especially useful for older readers), and carry your entire library with you. In fact, you don’t even have to buy a Kindle any more. Now, you have several apps available on your smartphone that allow you access to ebooks – from the official Kindle app to Google Books, Juggernaut and Scribd.

Despite all this, there are various factors that affect the growth of ebooks to their full potential, not just in our country but worldwide. “People still enjoy reading a physical book,” points out Chandy. “It is perceived to be an escape from being constantly connected.” A form of ‘digital detox’, bringing with it a sense of being ‘unplugged’. Moreover, the physical quality of books has also improved appreciably in the last decade. Readers haven’t failed to notice that publishers are now paying more attention to aesthetics.

And even readers who do read ebooks on a regular basis still prefer some books in their physical form – graphic novels and comics being the obvious ones, as their experience is not replicated well across e-versions. Apart from the usual bestsellers, ebooks tend to do slightly better with genres such as self-help and romance. Chandy tells me that the genres that do well for Juggernaut include “non-fiction that’s trending, classics and erotica”. He also adds that the new literary fiction sells the least. To especially target e-readers, publishers are releasing micro content.

So, almost a decade and some revised predictions later, what does the future of ebooks in India look like? When I ask publishers, almost every one of them talks unanimously about better reach, accessibility, affordability and greater convenience. As for whether the format itself will change, it seems harder to predict. Opinions vary, but most believe that it won’t. For now, the ebook still remains a format that tries to mirror the physical book, trying to replicate the feel and the turn of the page digitally – a sure sign that we are still early in its evolution, and still thinking of it as an offshoot or extension of the physical book, giving ourselves a box to think inside. But we know that with time, technology tends to break the limits we set for it. I agree with Das when she explains that there were centuries in between the time that the Guttenberg printing press was invented and the time we first got paperbacks. “The ebook, too, is going to take some time to find a different shape.” And while the physical book still dominates the Indian book market, it’s safe to say that given the rapid rise in the use of technology, ebooks will only rise in this country. Albeit, at their own pace.