Let's Go Book Shopping

I spent some time doing book shopping on the net (Indian sites only) and have used the experience to present a comparative study of the various Indian book-shopping sites. The following are the sites in my order of preference:

1. Prakash Books – Offers 21.50% discount on all the books. The range of books is not exhaustive, but they carry most of the popular titles. The site layout is not all that great, but that should not bother you much as you get a good deal. These guys have been around for a long time, but they don’t advertise much and hence not many people are aware that they have an Internet shopping site. Their customer service is very poor. Based on my experience, I can say that they don’t send out email alerts when your order is shipped out. They don’t even respond promptly to your queries.

Shipping Charges: Rs. 36 for the first book and Rs. 26 for every additional book.

2. Indiatimes – Offers quite competitive pricing and free shipping. Once you add in the delivery charges, there should not be much of a price difference between Prakash Books and Indiatimes. Definitely worth a try. If you become a member of the Indiatimes Book Club (there is a joining fee!), the price of the book drops further.

Shipping Charges: Indiatimes offers free shipping (shipping costs might be built into the product price itself).

3. Fabmall – Offers a wide variety of titles. Pricing may not be as good as Indiatimes and Prakash Books. Their site layout is good, helps you find your book easily.

Shipping Charges: Fabmall charges Rs. 25 per book.

4. Landmark on the Net – Probably the only Indian retail bookstore, which is into online and offline models (Prakash Books is not exactly a new format retailer and hence have excluded them for this purpose). The conflict between the online and offline pricing would mean that the online model doesn’t dole out lot of discounts. Since they have a physical bookstore, the range is quite big. Landmark offers its books under the banner of SifyMall.

Shipping Charges: Shipping charges are calculated at the time of check out.

5. Rediff – Prices are quite high. I don’t think they are serious about etailing of books.

Other Players:

Firstandsecond, Gobookshopping – Although players like Firstandsecond started off with a bang, they seem to have lost track along the way. Most of the books are sold at retail prices and hence there is no compelling reason to buy from them. Apart from this, one could also explore Ebay.in for purchase of new books and second hand books. For a book like Two Lives (priced around Rs. 550 in Ebay), I found that the shipping charge was Rs. 60. I think such high shipping charges (Rs. 60 in Ebay Vs Rs. 25 - 35 charged by other sites) could be a potential hindrance to the growth of the Ebay model.

Other Issues:

Avaibility of Cash on Delivery facility: I think sites like Fabmall do offer that, but Prakash Books is not offering the same. This could help in wooing customers who are not comfortable in disclosing their credit card number over the Internet.

International Delivery Option and Applicable Shipping Charges: I think Rediff has a option of shipping to the US, not sure of the others though. The exorbitant international shipping charges would often mean the price of the book is lower than what you pay for the shipping.

I would be happy to hear from people who have bought from the above sites. It would actually help in confirming / refining some of the above observations.