Are you finding nothing to buy in bookstores?

Sukumar Ranganathan — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:47:00 GMT

I am, and that feeling of emptiness surely has to be a booklover's purgatory.

Since I know the person who used to run India's biggest distribution chain and because I have met with the approval of the man who runs the excellent small bookstore in my neighbourhood -- he only communicates with people whose taste in books he approves of -- I asked around and seem to have uncovered the making of a disaster -- at least for a trigger-happy book buyer like me.

Here's what has happened

1. Sometime ago, the ownership of the distribution chain changed hands, from my friend to one of India's largest conglomerates. Now, this conglo is run pretty much the way all conglos are run. So, if there's a copy of Dogs of Babel that hasn't sold for, say six months, a bean counter will say, "Let's not order any more books by Carolyn Parkhurst." Much of the pleasure in book buying is finding the unexpected, but the bean-counting approach will ensure that the likes of Boris Akunin, Peter Hoeg, and Frank Tallis will remain undiscovered by Indian readers.

2. In the past few years, most big publishing firms have set up shop here. They import and distribute their own books now, but have a preference for so-called best sellers. This means their slow moving inventory -- which likely includes literary gems -- will never be shipped into and distributed in India.

Well, there's always Amazon.

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Are you finding nothing to buy in bookstores?