For decades the bustling lanes near Police Barracks in One Town Area have been a haven for students to purchase pre-used books. Both the sides of the roads are lined with tiny stores with stacks of books. From textbooks for primary school students to essential guides for engineering and medicine, these kiosks have it all.
One would imagine that finding any book in these seemingly random stacks of books would be a near-impossible task. But no. “It just looks unorganised but they are arranged into categories depending on the stream of education and subjects,” laughs C H Satish, owner of SVS Old and New Bookstore. Satish turned to the book business over a decade ago when he could not find a good job after the completion of class 12. “I thought it was a sustainable business as books will never go out of fashion,” he adds.
Books stacked at old bookstores at Police barracks in Visakhapatnam.
But it is dawning on him and others like him that that printed books are probably leading to a dead end. The introduction of e-books and PDF format books, the booksellers of Police Barracks Road may be an endangered lot. “There is nothing we can do about it. We purchase the books at 40% of the cost price. And our profit margin is barely 10 %. Lowering the price further would leave us with nothing,” he says.
Striving for relevance
The last three years have been the worse of the 17 years he has been in the book business, says Raju Gandiboina of Laxmi Book Depot. Initially, it was just novels that went online, but now even the academic books are available as e-books,” he rues. Almost 98% of their revenue comes from the sale of academic books while other books like novels, coffee table books and dictionaries constitute hardly two percent of their sales.
“Students from several educational institutions like Andhra University, Annamalai University and Dr BR Ambedkar Open University were our regular customers. But today we are lucky if we have more than three customers in a day,” he says. Two decades ago there were only 15 second-hand bookstores which increased to 36 by late 2000s. “However, after 2015 business started declining. E-commerce giants lured away the students and there was no way we could compete with their prices,” says Raju .
- Most of the bookstores on the Police Barracks are a part of 80-year-old Visakha Old and New Bookstores Association. The Association that is presided by Raju Gandiboina donates over 100 books to underprivileged school children.
Every time the syllabus changes, the old books end up getting recycled. “This is an additional loss as recycling does not fetch us even the purchasing price,” he adds
More than just academics
Among the piles of academic books, lurkCharles Dickens and George Orwell. But no one comes looking for classics any more says Raju.“They have been lying in my go down for years now. If I do not sell them in the next few years I’ll have to give them up for recycling.”
Raju Gandiboina, president of 80-year-old Visakha Old and New Books Association along with Jai Surya, a student who works part time at his store
Many students work part time in these stores and one of them is Jai Suryawho works part time at Raju’s store. He laughs as he shares, “Shiv Khera’s You Can Win is undoubtedly the most sold novel here. Every student turns to it for motivation and we sell that for a much lesser price than the fancy bookstores.” Chetan Bhagat, Sudha Murthy, Shiv Khera and Sidney Sheldon are the also sought after in the store, he adds.
