One reason I’ve been unavailable and unreachable has been the Bangalore Book Festival 2009 (organised by the Bangalore Booksellers and Publishers Assocation, scheduled to kick-off at around 11am tomorrow. As a matter of fact, we just got back from there, setting up the stall and whatnot.
We’re at Stalls #183 and #184, just down the lane from Blossoms and opposite ICFAI.
As best as I know, Flipkart probably the only Indian Online Bookstore to participate at any such event. Also, as best as I know, we’re probably the only one to have ABSOLUTELY NO BOOKS in our stall. Moreover, as best as I know, we’re probably the only ones to have a 102cm Big and Widescreen TV in the stall, with 5 computers to boot.
It’s looks like a Sports Bar and a Library Bar had an offspring that was decidedly a cyber café. Now if we can only get the interior decorating right …
The idea is for us to not only meet and greet other Publishers, Distributors and Retailers … but also for curious customers to have an up-close-and-personal look at Flipkart. Maybe even have a “Live Tweet From BBF09″ (not sure what that will be like thought, probably like running commentary at a Chess Tournament showcasing the Nimzo-Indian Defence). Looking forward to it!
Spent a lot of time generating order from chaos, so didn’t actually get to see the complete list of all participants. As Jaya mentioned on the Pothi Blog, they will of course be there, Stall 288. My only interaction with Jaya/Pothi has been in ping-pong sessions between them, authors and us. Sure hope we get to see them and get some ball rolling.
What was heartening to see was a lot of Kannada literature on display. Regional languages (in my opinion) don’t get as much exposure as they ought to — or maybe I’m wrong and they do — in which case I’d like Flipkart to have something to do with them getting better exposure.
Looking forward to bumping into you there!
One Comment
Awesome stuff. Just the way a online store should be.
One very under-developed resource in Indian online stores, is local content for books like reviews. Even while visiting brick and mortar stores, I try to look up reviews of books on amazon on my cell (apart from actually flipping through the books
). However, regardless of how great Amazon’s content is, the requirement of books are different in different countries. IT professionals in India sometimes have different priorities for book reviews (”Would this give me any help in my certification?”), and for this local content is essential.
One idea that you might have also thought about, is to encourage visitors to write reviews for books they liked, possibly with nice inducements.
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[...] lot of computers and a wall full of book covers. Looks awesome! We came home to read about this on the flipkart blog. We also stumbled across the stall of Librarywala, an online book rental startup originally based [...]