J P Nagar bookstore is shutting down

An independent bookstore in J P Nagar is shutting down. It is holding a closing down sale of 30% on the remaining stock of 4,000 books till mid-September.

Walking BookFairs opened near J P Nagar Post Office in November 2019 but shifted a kilometre away to Sun City Layout, a residential area, in 2021.

Lack of community support and decline in reading habit are key reasons why founders Akshaya and Satabdi are winding up this 20x20 ft open-air hub, their second and only store outside Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Satabdi’s sister Upali runs the Bengaluru store, out of the front porch of her house.

Bookshops in centrally-located Church Street and M G Road get more walk-ins than stores tucked away in residential areas. And so, the latter can thrive only if the immediate community turns up daily to buy, browse or read books, Akshaya feels.

That did not happen much in their case and the Covid outbreak soon after they opened the shop made it worse. Akshaya says they never promoted the store aggressively or mulled about opening a cafe inside or hosting activities to attract the crowd. A bookstore should thrive on the reading culture alone, they believe.

“An independent bookshop needs a footfall of 20 and a sale of Rs 5,000- Rs 10,000 daily to keep running,” he says. But he also offers the reality: “Hardly 2% of people in Indian cities read for pleasure, I think.”

He explains why this is problematic, “People are not reading beyond the curriculum books. That’s why their worldview is limited. That’s why they don’t understand art, cinema, or freedom of expression. That’s why attacks are happening on authors or why a St Xavier’s Kolkata teacher was forced to quit (after the college objected to her personal Instagram post).”

Ironically, since they put out the message of closing down on Twitter on August 10, they are “getting 100 enquiries, and selling books worth Rs 10,000 daily.”

“Even when we shut down our first location in Bengaluru, we did a sale of Rs 2 lakh. Maybe because people want to ‘save’ something. But this (on-and-off) ‘saving syndrome’ will not save independent bookshops,” he signs off.

At House No 77, 4th Main Road, Sun City Layout, J P Nagar Phase 7. Call 70081 47255