Flipkart to Launch Self-Pub Platform in India
The Indian media retailer Flipkart announced earlier this week that they plan to launch a self-pub platform later this year. Details are still scarce, but I do know that Flipkart plans to enable authors to sell ebooks directly through the Flipkart ebookstore.
Flipkart has been selling Hindi and English language ebooks since November 2012 using their own proprietary format. Readers can access the ebooks via Android, iPhone, Windows, and iPad apps as well as a recently launch web app.
The retailer boasts that they stock 250,000 titles at the moment and plan to increase that to a million titles by the end of the year. They also expect to add more local languages in the next few months, including Marathi and Bengali.
Flipkart is estimated to have a 40% share of the Indian book market, but there is no information on their share of the ebook market. They’re competing against Amazon, Apple, and Google, all of which have launched an Indian ebookstore over the past year.
Comments
Destination Infinity August 9, 2013 um 3:28 am
I don’t think anyone is concentrating on the Indian eBook market. If they were, they would first launch eReaders and Tablets specifically for reading eBooks. Or at least they will enable their eBooks to be compatible with other open eBook readers like Sony, Nook, Kobo, etc. By not giving an ePub version of its eBooks, Flipkart is just concentrating on the clueless people who bought cheap tablets, hoping that they’ll buy eBooks. I’ll tell you what, given the low prices of paperbacks and deep discounts, people will happily stick to their paperbacks. The only way to lure them to eBooks will be to offer them an experience that is much better than physical books. Like what Amazon did with the Kindle.
Looking at the current situation, I feel Amazon has a much better chance to take over the Indian eBook market, than Flipkart. I wonder what Google, the company that can actually shake things for everyone, is doing?
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