Booking profits
Two online platforms with two different stories and a common love for books
Then one website shuts, another opens: not
entirely correct, as far as idioms go, but certainly true in this particularly
situation.
Last month, Friends of Books (FoB) made a
particularly upsetting announcement to its fans on its blog. The eight-year-old
website was closing down. “The reasons for why we are closing are not that
complicated… Suffices to say, there just aren’t enough of our tribe!”
And then, within a few days of the
announcement, I stumbled upon Pen and Parchment (P&P), a website just a few
months old, doing exactly what FoB did: selling curated, cheap, well-preserved
second hand books.
Book lovers know the charm second hand books
hold: there’s something irresistible about giving old books new homes.
Everything about them — yellowed pages, frayed edges, small stains and marks
left by previous owners — speaks of a story entirely different from the one they
already carry within their pages.
So as everything else goes online, why
shouldn’t these books? Four friends, ex-Delhi University students with degrees
in English literature and a passion for reading, think it’s only right that
they do. Shikha Kothiyal, part of the foursome, says that unlike physical
second-hand book markets across the city, which are countless, their website
makes things easier. “A website provides ease of access. We know how it’s
nearly impossible to locate a particular book in a place like the Daryaganj
Sunday book market. On our site, you can just search for it.”
Pen and Parchment is fairly new, and the
enthusiasm that it has begun with is catching. Kothiyal speaks of their plans
for the future: ideas of expansion and diversification and tie-ups. “We have
already got a web developer on board, and they’ve got us a courier partner, so
we don’t have to bother about the technical aspect too much, other than
uploading the books and making minor tweaks to the site,” she says. There is a
kind of optimism that P&P works with, one that can’t quite see how anyone
could resist stacks and stacks of wonderful books.
Back when it began, FoB, a player in a much
smaller e-commerce space than the one today, was no different. In 2008, Arti
Jain and Manish Kumar, a married couple just back from the US, devised a plan
to fill a much-needed space. “We had grown up in India,” Jains says, “One of
the things that really stood out for us in the US was how easy it was to get
access to books. Every neighbourhood had a fairly stocked library. We had
missed this in India. So, FoB began partially out of our own love for books,
and partially to fulfil this need.”
Like P&P, FoB started with a collection
that came from the founders’ personal library. Jain says, “Our first lot came
with our furniture. We had brought a lot of books while still in the US. That
first collection was really the best collection we had.”
Thus far, Pen and Parchment has worked with
own collection too, sourcing from their personal libraries and from friends
willing to part with their books. “In future, we will perhaps tie up with
second hand bookstores,” Kothiyal says. There are other similarities between
the two players: the carefully curated, painstakingly organised details of each
book in their collection, the easy interface that allows for quick,
uncomplicated browsing, the no-frills approach that concentrates entirely on
books, and nothing else.
The Cost of Shipping
But FoB has been around for a while now, and
the sheer passing of time carries with it lessons and challenges. “When we
started,” says Jain, “A lot of the e-commerce business was just taking off, as
were the courier companies. Everyone kind of piggybacked on each other and got
going. There was a lot of willingness on the part of courier companies about
trying new things, picking up books and picking up cash payments, and we had a
good negotiation platform.” The last few years, though, have been logistically
tough for FoB. “Lot of shifts happened in the last four or five years. E-commerce
sites really took off, and a lot of them sell things like clothes etc., and
well, shipping books by the kilo is far more expensive than shipping clothes.
The prices of shipping went up with bigger players in the mix.”
While Jain and Kumar found ways to cut some
costs — using three smaller warehouses in the cheaper neighbourhoods instead of
one big one, devising ways to stock more books in smaller shelf spaces — they
couldn't really control other overheads, especially shipping costs.
Though still new, P&P too has begun to
feel this pinch. “There is not much profit margin when you are selling second
hand books, and shipping is definitely a challenge for us. We are still trying
to figure out ways around it.”
Funding and Diversifying
While it would have lessened the pressure
considerably, FoB consciously decided to stay away from possible funding. “This
was mainly because the moment you get half a million from someone you have to
do their bidding. We wanted this to remain ours. I often say that FoB is a
mom-and-pop book-store, but online,” Jain says. Now, as the site prepares to
close down, its loyal customers have suggested different options, including
diversification into other items. “This decision has been a constant struggle,
and is not totally out of the realm of possibility, but we really have to think
about what we else can sell. We can’t sell a cup of coffee, like brick and
mortar bookstores. At the same time, we don’t want to become victims of our own
image,” says Jain.
On the other hand P&P founders are
already considering the idea of expanding to sell bookmarks, coasters and other
smaller items.
Publicity
Apart from logistics, Jain says that another
area where they got “pummelled” was traditional publicity. Social media and
smaller events like book-swaps, readings and stalls during bookfairs were the
only ways in which the site could reach people, and while this did win them a
fair amount of customers, it didn’t prove to be enough. “We got as big as we
did purely because of word of mouth publicity. But hype matters a lot. Big
companies can and do create this hype every few months. We can’t. And hiring a
social media company means payments that we can’t afford.”
So far, social media and word of mouth
publicity has worked well for Pen and Parchment, and a recent stall at Date for
Development 2016, a youth festival in New Delhi, won them several student
customers. In future, though, they too might need to ponder the question of
publicity. “We are currently doing this part-time, as a few of us are studying,
pursuing higher degrees, or holding day jobs. We might move to this full-time
as the site grows bigger,” states Kothiyal.
Meanwhile, the FoB blog post is inundated
with comments. In eight years, the website has forged relationships with its
customers that Jain remembers with fondness: “Our customers have never been
faceless for us. We might not have been very big, but we’ve been very happy
with the customer base we have had. We are closing now because there is no
point in having the business bleed while we make plans, but we do hope this is
just a temporary move.”
Source | The Hindu | 4 April 2016
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
Upcoming
Event | National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence
(NCFL 2016) during April 22-23, 2016.
Note
| If anybody use these post for forwarding in any social media coverage or
covering in the Newsletter please give due credit to those who are taking
efforts for the same.
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