Words’ worth

When Barnes and Noble announced a sell-off,they only made a formal validation of the guilt that we have been living with for some time now. “When you have something definite in mind,buying a book from an online portal is only more convenient. Also,while a brick and mortar bookstore can house not more than 50,000 titles at a time,an online store usually stocks 3-4 million titles. Also discounts offered by these portals are more,” says Sachin Bansal,CEO of Flipkart.com,India’s answer to Amazon. Ritam Haldar,a media professional,would agree. “What matters is the book. And we can even browse the latest titles on these portals. And the time you take to buy a book on these portals is what you take to update your Facebook status,” says Haldar,emphasizing the demands of a Twitter-happy generation.

“I would say that,e-publishing is really the next big thing,or rather it is the big thing,but nothing,absolutely nothing can beat the sheer joy you get out of browsing in a bookstore. There are few things to beat the tangibility of books. And page after page on a plastic screen doesn’t quite do it for me,” says Ishani Dasgupta,employed with a Delhi-based publishing firm. Arguments against the vulnerability of bookstores in the face of competition from portals draw from the fact that you stumble upon the best books you read,sifting through lines and lines of covers.

“Online bookstores are all set to eat into a huge chunk of a bookstore’s customer-base. But yes,it can’t quite substitute the experience of buying a book physically,” says Bansal.