When one website shuts, another opens –– not entirely correct, as far as idioms go, but certainly true in this particularly situation.
Last month, Friends of Books made a particularly upsetting announcement to its fans on its blog. The eight-year-old website was closing down. “The reasons for why we are closing are not that complicated... Suffices to say, there just aren’t enough of our tribe!”
And then, within a few days of this, I stumbled upon Pen and Parchment, a website just few months old and doing exactly what FoB did –– selling curated, cheap, well-preserved second hand books.
Book lovers know the charm second hand books hold –– there’s something irresistible about giving old books new homes. Everything about them –– yellowed pages, frayed edges, small stains and marks left by previous owners –– speaks of a story entirely different from the one they already carry within their pages.
So as everything else goes online, why shouldn’t these books? Four friends, ex-Delhi University students with degrees in English literature and a passion for reading, think it’s only right that they do. Shikha Kothiyal, part of the foursome that has started P&P, says that unlike physical second hand book markets across the city, of which there are countless, their website makes things easier. “A website provides ease of access. We know how it’s nearly impossible to locate a particular book in a place like the Daryaganj Sunday book market. On our site, you can just search for it.”
Pen and Parchment is fairly new, and the enthusiasm that it has begun with is catching. Shikha speaks of their plans for the future –– ideas of expansion and diversification and tie-ups. “We have already got a web developer on board, and they’ve got us a courier partner, so we don’t have to bother about the technical aspect too much, other than uploading the books and making minor tweaks to the site,” she says. There is a kind of optimism that P&P works with, one that can’t quite see how anyone could resist stacks and stacks of wonderful books.
Back when it began, FoB, a new player in a much smaller space than the one e-commerce occupies today, was no different. In 2008, Arti Jain and Manish Kumar, a married couple just back from the US, devised a plan to fill a much needed space. “We had grown up in India. One of the things that really stood out for us in the US was how easy it was to get access to books. Every neighbourhood had a fairly stocked library. We had missed this in India. So FoB began partially out of our own love for books, and partially to fulfil this need.”
Like P&P, FoB started with a collection that came from the founders’ personal library. “Our first lot came with our furniture. We had brought a lot of books while still in the US. That first collection was really the best collection we had,” says Arti. So far, Pen and Parchment has worked with own collection too, sourcing from their personal libraries and from friends willing to part with their books. “In future, we will perhaps tie up with second hand bookstores,” Shikha says. There are other similarities between the two players –– the carefully curated, painstakingly organised details of each book in their collection, the easy interface that allows for quick, uncomplicated browsing, the no-frills approach that concentrates entirely on books, and nothing else.
The Cost of Shipping
But FoB has been around for a while now, and the sheer passing of time carries with it lessons and challenges. “When we started, a lot of the e-commerce business was just taking off, as were the courier companies. Everyone kind of piggybacked off each other and got going. There was a lot of willingness on the part of courier companies about trying new things, picking up books and picking up cash payments, and we had a good negotiation platform,” says Arti. The last few years, though, have been logistically tough for FoB. “Lot of shifts happened in the last four or five years. E-commerce sites really took off, and a lot of them sell things like clothes etc., and well, shipping books by the kilo is far more expensive than shipping clothes. The prices of shipping went up with bigger players in the mix.”
While Arti and Manish found ways to cut some costs –– using three smaller warehouses in the cheaper neighbourhoods instead of one big one and devising ways to stock more books in smaller shelf space, they couldn't really control other overheads, especially shipping costs.
Though still new, P&P too has begun to feel the pinch of this aspect. “There is not much profit margin when you are selling second hand books, and shipping is definitely a challenge for us. We are still trying to figure out ways around it.”
Funding and Diversifying
While it would have lessened the pressure considerably, FoB consciously decided to stay away from possible funding. “This was mainly because the moment you get half a million from someone you have to do their bidding. We wanted this to remain ours. I often say that FoB is a mom and pop book-store but it is online.” Now, as the site prepares to close down, its loyal customers have suggested different options, including diversification into other items. “This decision has been a constant struggle, and is not totally out of the realm of possibility, but we really have to think about what we else can sell. We can’t sell a cup of coffee, like brick and mortar bookstores. At the same time, we don’t want to become victims of our own image.”
On the other hand P&P founders are already considering the idea of expanding to sell bookmarks, coasters and other smaller items.
Publicity
Apart from logistics, Arti says that another area where they got “pummelled” was traditional publicity. Social media and smaller events like book-swaps, readings and stalls during bookfairs were the only ways in which the site could reach people, and while this did win them a fair amount of customers, it didn’t prove to be enough. “We got as big as we did purely because of word of mouth publicity. But hype matters a lot. Big companies can and do create this hype every few months. We can’t. And hiring a social media company means payments that we can’t afford.”
So far, social media and word of mouth publicity has worked well for Pen and Parchment, and a recent stall at Date for Development 2016, a youth festival, won them a whole crowd of student customers. In the future, though, they too might need to ponder the question of publicity. “We are currently doing this part time, as a few of us are studying, pursuing higher degrees, or holding day jobs. We might move to this full time as the site grows bigger,” says Shikha.
Meanwhile, the FoB blog post is inundated with comments. In its eight years, the website has forged relationships with its customers that Arti remembers with fondness “Our customers have never been faceless for us. We might not have been very big, but we’ve been very happy with the customer base we have had. We are closing now because there is no point in having the business bleed while we make plans, but we do hope this is just a temporary move.”
