Opportunities and success strategies for e-books in India

Abstract

Globally, on Amazon.com, the sales of eBooks had outstripped the sales of hardcover books in early 2010. However, this does not appear to be the case in India. Amazon’s Kindle, for instance, was launched in India in October, 2009. It was priced at around Rs 18,000. Recent ads in newspapers for the Kindle 3 pegged prices at a much lower Rs 12,296 for the 3G version and Rs 9,315 for the Wi-Fi only version. However even with such significant price reductions Kindle sales estimates by industry experts range from a few hundred to 1,000 units. However despite various opinions questioning the viability of an eBook market in India, we are hopeful for this industry because of two important factors. Firstly, India has a strong reading culture with a plethora of vernacular literature and novels, and secondly, the price sensitive nature of Indian consumers will be matched by eBook technology which inherently offers a low cost model to the publishing industry. In this work we have analyzed the various players in the Indian eBook industry and analyzed how each can benefit from this digital transformation. The eBook format we find is a boon for independent authors who now have access to low cost publishing channels for small print sizes. For the established publishers it is important to understand that although eBooks will probably never replace books, it can garner sizable portion of the market. Hence it is imperative for them to devise their production strategies accordingly. Again for the e-Reader manufactures it is important to have access to the largest amount of content possible as simple hardware sales is not a profitable venture. Hence it will usurp the position of the retailors and traditional bookshops in the distribution chain. However for the retailors which might be feeling the brunt of Amazon’s domination in the US, the same is not true for their counterparts in India, because to successfully market an eBook in India, we need to take the help of traditional channels to gather reach and critical visibility, given the connectivity problems in India and its diverse languages. Hence the report follows the basic of objective of the author or publisher’s task of successfully delivering content to the consumers. We find eBooks emerging as a new channel of distribution among the whole gamut of distribution strategies. Although eBooks have advantages of portability and functionality along with less risk of physical damage, it suffers from usability and lack of feel and touch a normal book can give. Taking everything into account the report provides a comprehensive outlook of this still nascent industry which has huge potential for this country.