Even Sachin Tendulkar's book can't save the sports book publishing industry

Amid the global publicity blitz of Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar’s autobiography Playing It My Way, which made it to the New York Times bestsellers’ list last week, something very unusual for a sports book happened recently, though the incident was not widely reported. A website put the PDF format of all 514 pages of the book online, shocking the publishers.

Many Tendulkar fans quickly downloaded the PDF version, before the publishers got the website to remove the content. It was an incident that sent shockwaves throughout the publishing world and was perhaps a warning signal for the industry, which is now under threat from modern technology.

The readership — that is buying hard copies of books — took a huge hit after the internet arrived close to 20 years ago, followed by the launch of tablets that encourage people to read books on the move. And the latest threat comes from e-book websites and the likes of Amazon, Flipkart and SnapDeal, which sell sports books, amongst a wide variety of products, at a much lower price than the printed figure.

Despite being priced at Rs 899, Playing It My Way shattered all global records in the pre-order segment — so far, close to 300,000 copies have been sold, making it the highest ever sold non-fiction book in Indian history. But what’s of concern — even for its publishers Hachette India — is the speed at which the book’s price has come down on the websites that are selling it. Amazon’s price is Rs 540, Flipkart’s offering it at Rs 560, and Landmark at Rs 602.

Theo Braganza, owner of the Mumbai-based 58-year-old Marine Sports, the only sports book shop in India and one of only three in the world, says these websites have crippled the sports publishing business and admitted that survival has now become difficult for his ilk.

“Websites like Amazon, Flipkart and SnapDeal have affected sales by about 90 per cent. I’m telling you: it’s a huge number. I would have sold 500 to 600 copies of Sachin’s autobiography, if not for these websites,” Braganza, whose father entered this business in 1956, before he took charge in 1972, told Mail Today.

“I sold 100 copies of Sachin’s book within a week. But a lot of my customers are disheartened because the same book is available at a much lower price at Amazon etc. while I was selling it for Rs 700. The only beauty was that I was providing Sachin’s autograph on each copy,” he pointed out. “While enquiring the price of Sachin’s book, my customers quoted its price at Amazon etc. I’ve lost a lot of business because of these websites.”

Braganza says the changing times have made them reconsider options. “All sports booksellers are trying to survive as the readership has gone down drastically. And whatever readership that remained has now gone to these websites,” he said, pointing out that sports good dealers are facing the same threat from websites like Amazon. “We’re in a small kirana shop-like situation; they cannot survive because people are now going to malls.”

The incident of the website putting up the PDF, however, didn’t affect the sales of Tendulkar’s autobiography as publisher Hachette India acted immediately and forced it to remove the content. Braganza said he faced the same situation about two years ago when a website put up one of his golf titles without his permission, but he kept mum.

“The copyright law is there, but the judicial system in our country is so bad that that nobody wants to go through it. I also kept quiet. It was Rs 50 book. Maybe, I’d have had to spend Rs 50,000 to recover the price of a few copies,” he said about the ground reality.