While Goa has been among the most popular holiday destinations in India, it has now also emerged as one of the reading hotspots in the country. For the year 2019, Goa has topped the list of States where the most number of e-books were read across Amazon’s Kindle devices and mobile applications.
“2019 has been a fantastic year for digital books. We have seen some very interesting reading patterns... For example, Goa was the number one State where the most number of pages from e-books on Kindle were read per capita,” Amol Gurwara, Country Manager, Kindle Content India, Amazon told The Hindu . However, he did not share any numbers.
Goa was followed by Delhi, Chandigarh, Pondicherry, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, Haryana and Telengana.
“If you look at the unified view of overall Kindle e-books consumption... this is not based on what they bought, but what they read.... if we stack them in the form of physical paper, we get a stack that’s 148 times as tall as Burj Khalifa... so that is as much of e-books and pages that Indians have read. This is something from where we have been deriving our energy,” Mr. Gurwara added.
Most popular
According to trends shared by Amazon Kindle, Amish Tripathi’s third book in the Ram Chandra Series released this year — Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta — was the most sold e-book of the year in both fiction and non-fiction categories combined. In the fiction category, this was followed by The Girl in Room 105 by Chetan Bhagat, and three other books by Mr. Tripathi — Ram: Scion of Ikshvaku , Sita: Warrior of Mithila (both from Ram Chandra Series), and TheImmortals of Meluha .
In the non-fiction category How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie topped the list, followed by Robin Sharma’s The 5 AM Club , Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind , Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life and Joseph Murphy’s The Power of Your Subconscious Mind .
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was number one in the list of top rated e-books of the year, followed by Why I am an Atheist by Bhagat Singh, Life’s Amazing Secrets: How to Find Balance and Purpose in Your Life by Gaur Gopal Das and Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki.
‘Encouraging signs’
“We have seen very encouraging signs in terms of just the adoption towards digital books. It is a testimony to the fact that people are getting comfortable reading in digital formats and consuming content via applications. [Amazon] Prime has seen significant growth and by implication Prime reading also sees that benefit. Our other subscription programme — Kindle Unlimited — is growing in high double digits in India, and we expect to double subscriber base in the next 2-2.5 years,” Mr. Gurwara said.
