Ebooks fly off digital shelves as publishers adapt to COVID-19 times

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced every aspect of consumers’ life, including the way they read books. In the absence of physical books, as stores are closed for nearly two months, many readers are gravitating towards ebooks.

While online publishing companies are seeing remarkable growth, traditional publishing houses are focusing on releasing and marketing ebooks.

Various trends suggest a 10% increase in year-on-year sales in the ebook category during the lockdown.

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Online publishing platform NotNul saw sales go up by 50% in April. Neelabh Srivastav, founder and chief executive officer, NotNul, said, “Though many new users are signing up daily, sales are being led by our old users who had only signed up but were not engaging on the platform.”

Natasha Puri, Head of Marketing at Juggernaut Books, mentioned that the digital publisher has made their catalogue free for readers and since then, their app has seen a 10-fold increase in everyday downloads.

Traditional publishing giant Penguin Random House recently launched an exclusive e-bookstore on Amazon Kindle.

Nandan Jha, SVP, Product & Sales, Penguin Random House India, said, “During the lockdown, we did see the spotlight go up on digital formats of reading, which was an interesting development in the business, especially since Penguin has always been format agnostic.”

Jha said the unprecedented nature of the pandemic made it difficult to foresee the future. "Even with bookstores functioning and e-commerce websites delivering, a lot will depend on the consumers' psyche, their needs and demands,” he said.

HarperCollins has also gone ahead with the publication of three titles this month as ebooks. The publisher said the sales of ebooks and audio books have almost doubled during the lockdown. "Online reading and e-books shopping will see a jump. We would all be using digital mediums to interact with customers better. The medium of reaching our audiences can be different, but not restricted,” said Ananth Padmanabhan, CEO, HarperCollins India.

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Akash Shah of Jaico Publishing House feels that the market will rebound if a vaccine is found. "Otherwise, we'll have to wait and watch how rapidly readers move online. This process of embracing the digital rapidly is the key challenge at the moment.”

Revenue in the ebooks segment amounts to $211 million in 2020 and it is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 8.8%, resulting in a market volume of $295 million by 2024, according to global research company Statista.