Online bookshops gaining ground

The online bookselling business is flourishing and gaining popularity day by day as an increasing number of booklovers are opting for buying their desired books online instead of going to the market.

The virtual bookshops are getting a huge number of orders every day from the readers, said traders involved in the business.

With the help of online bookshops, not only books by local writers but rare books written by foreign authors are also reaching readers’ doorsteps across the country.

Industry insiders said apart from selling the books of different authors, nowadays, online bookshops are also playing a big role in promoting books written by new authors.

They said the Covid pandemic acted as a blessing to the online book business, benefiting both readers and sellers, as a huge number of people then resorted to reading to pass the unending time of several months of lockdowns that forced people to live at home day after day.

During the months of lockdowns, imposed to tackle the pandemic, book lovers spontaneously reached out to online bookshops, resulting in boosting sales big time.

Dipankar Das, the proprietor of Baatighar.com, launched his online bookshop during the pandemic. He told The Business Post, “Online bookselling is gaining popularity due to hassle-free services. Now customers do not have to go to the market to buy books. They can choose and buy books easily from the online shops and we are delivering the desired books to their doorsteps across the country.”

Insiders said over 100 online shops, including Rokomari, Baatighar, Boibazar, Eboighar, Jolpore, Daraz, Bengalboi, Prothoma, Boipori, Kothaprokash, and Ittadishop, are selling books online. 

Rokomari is the country’s first online bookshop that started its journey in 2012. Within a few years, several dozens of online bookshops came into the business and by 2017-2018, online bookselling started gaining popularity in the country. After that, the long hours of staying indoors during the pandemic lockdowns played a vital role in the enormous growth of the sector.

Online bookshop owners said they are selling different types of books including novels, short stories, non-fiction, Islamic, history, and job preparation books. Most of the customers buy job preparation and different religious books.

Traders said after getting a purchase order online or over the phone, the sellers deliver the books to the customer’s doorstep within a short time. Delivery within Dhaka usually takes 2-3 days and outside Dhaka 3-5 days.

At present, books worth Tk 120 crore are sold online annually on an average which was only Tk 12-15 crore 10 years ago, said online bookstore Jolpore.com proprietor Mahbub Setu.

 He said, “We are now getting orders from the remotest corners of the country including the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Recently, we even sold books to buyers from Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar.”

He said recently the book delivery cost has doubled as the courier delivery charge increased from Tk 20 to Tk 40.

Pallab Kumar, operations manager of Eboighar.com Limited, said, “The online book selling is getting good response from the readers. We mainly sell academic books including medical books and students from the remotest corners of the country are increasingly tending to buy their text and reference books online.”

“We are getting around 2,000 orders per month and it is gradually increasing”, he added.

The books are delivered through courier or postal service and few online shops even have their own deliverymen for the buyers in the capital.

The online shops charge Tk 50-60 as delivery fee within Dhaka while Tk 80-100 is charged for delivery outside Dhaka.

Publishers now take pre-orders through online bookstores such as Rokomari, the country’s biggest online bookstore, before publishing new books. Moreover, they conduct paid promotion to buyers of Rokomari through SMS and digital marketing, said an official of the popular bookshop.

“In addition to delivering books to 30 other countries around the world, Rokomari, which sells 90,000 books every month, now handles B2B orders also,” the official said, adding that the online bookstores time and again offer discounts on different books on various occasions to attract book lovers.

The government recently has made e-commerce registration with the commerce ministry mandatory for online bookshops and seven online bookshops including Rokomari and Daraz have registered while applications of many others are under process.

Owners of online bookstores, however, alleged that the ministry is not registering without lobbying or good relation with the officials concerned.

They urged the government to make the registration process easier for the sake of the sector’s ultimate growth.