Westland Books, a publishing firm that Amazon acquired in 2017 from the Tatas, is to be wound down. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the news, saying, “After a thorough review, we have made the difficult decision to no longer operate Westland. We are working closely with the employees, authors, agents, and distribution partners on this transition and we remain committed to innovating for customers in India.” Westland will no longer operate its publishing business after March 31, 2022.
Westland had recently published a series of titles which were expected to do well, including Nalin Mehta’s The New BJP. Among the other titles it recently published were Elusive Non-violence by Jyotirmaya Sharma, The SBI Story by Vikrant Panda and Modi’s India by Christopher Jaffrelot. Westland has also published blockbuster authors such as Amish Tripathi, Rashmi Bansal, among others and frontlined by Chetan Bhagat who was courted away from Rupa in an undisclosed (perhaps a huge multi-book, multi-crore) deal.
Westland CEO, Gautam Padmanabhan was unavailable for comment. Westland started life as East West Books, founded in 1962 by Padmanabhan’s family. The company was merged (or co-affiliated) into Westland (a start-up in the 1990s by East-West and Landmark meant to focus on distribution). However, with Landmark’s sale to the Tata’s Trent in 2008, Westland, which included all of East-West’s publishing, was also included in the deal. The Tatas, however, relatively quickly jettisoned the company which was then was acquired by Amazon. The Tatas retained the Landmark chain which exists with a much-reduced footprint today.
At the time of Westland’s acquisition, Amit Agarwal, vice-president and country manager at Amazon India, had said, “In just three years we have built India’s largest online store that customers can trust to find, discover and buy anything online. Our acquisition of Westland continues our commitment to India—enabling Amazon to bring Westland’s highly talented authors and their books to even more customers in India and around the world.”
The publishing industry too has been caught by surprise by Amazon’s move. Said one industry professional, without wanting to be named, “Everyone was aware that the losses were there, and no other entity would carry these sort of loss levels in publishing, but all assumed that Amazon’s deep pockets would keep them going as part of some long term strategy” Sources, quoting filings by the company, say losses were over Rs 40 crore in the FY closed 2020 (pre-pandemic).
Industry speculation expects that the big brand authors could well move to other publishers but are surprised as to why a pre-announcement sale of lists to a single or different publishers wasn’t explored.
The move by Amazon has also left literary agents and industry experts shaken. Says Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, Ace Literary Consulting, “I am shocked regarding the shutting down of Westland operations by Amazon. Westland’s cutting edge lists are amongst the finest in the Indian/South Asian book market. Their stable of authors represents amongst the best of contemporary literature, across genres. Westland provides a stable platform to new, established and award-winning authors and treats them with equal respect. This decision is inexplicable and a big loss to Indian publishing.”
Kanishka Gupta, Writer’s Side Literary Agency, is equally perturbed. As he says, “It’s a sad day for publishing. Context (A Westland imprint) had been publishing the most cutting edge non-fiction the country had seen, and for this imprint to shut down is a big blow. Ever since the news broke, I have been besieged by calls from my authors. Right now, I am focussed on protecting the interests of my authors who number over 50 or may be even more. Even if the rights to their books are reverted, will I be in a position to resell already published books to other publishers? In my 12-year-long publishing career, this is the first time I am encountering such a challenging situation. I am studying the legalities and nitty-gritty and looking at the situation.”