Shelving Memories

First Manneys,then TwistNTales and now Book World popular bookshops in the city are closing business and drawing the curtains on an era.

First Manneys,then TwistNTales and now Book World popular bookshops in the city are closing business and drawing the curtains on an era.

Any bibliophile will tell you that the process of buying a book is as important as reading a book itself. Walking into a cramped bookstore,staring at endless shelves of books,running a hand over the titles,mulling over the purchases,small talk with the cashier and finally adding a magazine or two to the pile youre about to take home which is what makes for a complete reading experience. But imagine the neat rows of books replaced by a list and having to scroll down a webpage instead of letting your fingers run over the books and pick random titles. With many of the citys popular independent bookstores shutting shop,browsing through a bookstore and meeting like-minded strangers may soon become an urban myth.

The trend started in January last year,when one of the oldest book stores of Pune,established in 1948,Manneys,shut shop. Its owner Manik Mani says,I needed to retire and there was no one from the family to take care of the shop,so I preferred to shut down rather than allow it to be run by someone else.

Sukhmani Singh,49,who was a regular visitor,compared the closure of Manneys to the closing down of Shop Around The Corner from the 90s hit film,Youve Got Mail. For many of us Manneys was like a second home. We could browse through books and really get to know a lot by just talking to fellow book lovers, says Singh,reminiscing the numerous debates she had with total strangers at the bookshop.

Following suit was TwistNTales,a 11-year-old bookshop in Aundh,that also doubled up as a platform for theatre workshops,book-launches and street plays. The owner of the friendly neighbourhood bookshop, Janaki Vishwanath cites its closure to competition from e-books and online retailers among other things. March 9 is going to be their last working day.

The ongoing clearance sale at Book World on Fergusson College Road,is another tell-tale sign. Owned by Narendra Chandan,the bookstore is shutting shop for similar reasons e-books and e-retailers. Even giants like Crossword and Landmark are diversifying to keep up,revamping its product mix and shifting to toys and games.

However,major publishing houses like Penguin India,Random House and Roli refuse to believe that buying and reading books is going out of fashion. Caroline Newbury,VP,marketing and publicity,Random House India,says they have found that e-books sales are complementing,rather than detracting from printed book sales.

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Meanwhile,the situation is not all grim in the city. Stores like Chapter and Verse and Popular Book House are surviving chiefly due to their loyal client base. While the new store Chapter and Verse plans to make its rare books a USP,Popular Book House intends to venture into the online field too.

Mihir Somik,a sociology student from Pune University and an avid reader,sums it. It is all part of evolution. It is not that people are not buying books. They are just doing it differently. Be it the e-books or physical books,the sales are going to go up especially the young adults section, he says.

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Shelving Memories

First Manneys,then TwistNTales and now Book World  popular bookshops in the city are closing business and drawing the curtains on an era.

First Manneys,then TwistNTales and now Book World popular bookshops in the city are closing business and drawing the curtains on an era.