A recent report by market research company, Nielsen revealed that the physical book industry in India is worth an estimated $3.9 billion. It further went on to claim that for books written in English, the country is the second largest consumer market in the world. Despite this voracious appetite for reading in India, the e-book market has not quite taken off as expected, as evident with the latest news that Flipkart is closing down its ebook store.
Flipkart which started of as an online bookstore in India in 2007, exploded into the country’s largest online marketplace after diversifying aggressively into other product categories, including phones, furniture and apparel, much like Amazon. It ventured into e-books in 2012, but has now decided to make the brave decision to close it down, quite like its payment gateway, Payzippy and its music streaming business, Flyte which both didn’t quite get off the ground. The ecommerce leaders’ e-book business will now be serviced by Canada based, Japanese ecommerce company, Rakuten Kobo.
“The Indian book market is overwhelmingly dominated by physical books and this is a market that is growing at a fast clip. Flipkart will continue to be a leading player in the overall books market in India. In its overall strategy for books, Flipkart does not see the e-Books service as a strategic fit and hence the decision of transitioning the e-Books service to Kobo,” a Flipkart press release stated.
The writing seemed to be on the wall for Flipkart’s e-book business after the company recently parted ways with e-book distributor, Smashwords after a two year romance. On its blog in August, Smashwords announced:
Despite Flipkart not being able to make a success in the e-book industry, its closest competitor, Amazon houses the worlds largest online book store and is still going strong in the books category in India. It is hugely promoting its e-book reader, Kindle and in June it ran a costly advertising campaign using popular Indian authors.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
Leave a Comment
