Do lower prices increase the sales of a book? It is an endless debate among publishers and their marketing departments but here is a test case for you.

Two editions of Pankaj Mishra?s edited anthology, India in Mind, are currently doing the rounds in the market. The first, by Random House, India, priced at Rs 275; the second by Vintage International at $ 6.75 with an Indian price of Rs 311. Two questions arise. How did this duplication take place and has Vintage violated the market rights of Random House, by gatecrashing into the Indian market? More importantly, which of the two editions would sell more, given that the production standards are on par with each other?

The English language book market is divided into three basic territories: America and Canada; Britain and the Commonwealth; Australia, New Zealand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore are (mostly) controlled by the Americans. What these territorial divisions mean is that an American publisher cannot sell into the British-controlled markets, and vice versa.

That?s in theory. What happens in practice is another matter. American publishers, who have called the ?shots? for a long time, are no respecters of territorial rights simply because they are much bigger than many others put together. Their basic philosophy is to sell; doesn?t matter if the buyer comes from outside their territories. If Indian publishers complain to the American publishers for ?intruding? into their space, they flatly deny that they have done so. What has happened is that the American publisher has sold his stocks to a ?jobber? or wholesaler, who has, in turn, sold it to an Indian distributor. Technically, the publisher has done no wrong.

A classic case was Maulana Azad?s India Wins Freedom. Orient Longman, the Indian publisher, sold 1000-odd copies to an American publisher who was unable to sell the entire edition in his market. So, he sold the unsolds to a jobber who, in turn, sold it to an Indian wholesaler at less than half the price of the Indian edition.

In the Mishra Case, much the same seems to have happened. What all this means is that India is open territory and the big Indian distributor fully collaborates with whoever?British or American? he gets the best deal from.

But the bigger question: which edition would sell more? The gut reaction would be the somewhat cheaper Random House edition. Not necessarily, because in marketing, many factors come into play: discounts, credit terms, facilities to return unsolds, the personal equation of the distributor with key retailers, the frequency of visits by field representatives and so on. It?s the mix that matters; not just the price.

The retailer isn?t interested in handling low-priced books because at the end of the day, he has very little left. So,what he does is prominently display the higher-priced edition and keep the lower-priced one in the bookshelves. Given the time the buyer spends in the shop, the higher-priced edition takes off, the lower-priced one remaining in the shelves.

Hence the conclusion which has been reached in market research studies: price matters but not to the extent that is often imagined. What matters is information for a specific purpose or simply entertainment of any kind.