Westland, a subsidiary of Trent (part of the Tata Group), has started a pilot with five Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) outlets in Chennai to sell its top-selling published titles. “There is a rental agreement with CCD to sell the books at its premises. We would like to take our books across 200-300 CCD outlets,” said Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO, Westland.
Having tasted success with a slew of bestsellers (the latest being The Oath of the Vayuputras by Amish Tripathi), the publishing house is now tapping unconventional outlets to sell its books.
It is also planning to approach spas and salons. “There is an idea to reach out to salons such as Lakme, since there are woman who tend to read magazines at such places and books can become a part of the exercise,” added Padmanabhan.
Westland would also be taking advantage of the Tata Group owned outlets such as Star Bazaar, Westside and Croma to retail its published titles. “We would have joint promotions for e-books with Croma which distributes products such as Kindle,” said Padmanabhan. Westland has already made inroads into its departmental store Westside, having set up racks for its latest Shiva Trilogy.
However, in the bigger hypermarkets such as Star Bazaar, it would be setting up slightly bigger counters (measuring 15-20 sq ft). Star Bazaar’s back-end partner Tesco is already one of UK’s largest booksellers and Westland would be taking cues from it to operate the books section at Star Bazaar.
Other Tata Group retail formats such as Tanishq and Titan or even the latest venture Starbucks could also be possible destinations for Westland’s future titles. “We would want to be at Starbucks, but we are taking one step at time,” he said.
With the advent of e-books, Westland is not threatened with the prospect of a decline in brick-and-mortar book store sales. “In the US, 60 per cent sales are online sales, however, when it comes to discovering new titles, only 6 per cent sales are done online. Sales through physical retail stores still prevail in the books category,” said Padmanabhan.
Westland exited the books distribution business four years ago, when the publishing business was still nascent. With sales turnover of Rs 23 crore this fiscal, the company hopes to make profits by tapping into the potential of Indian authors.