The great lockdown of 2020 has meant a lot of different things for different people. Some have suffered while some have tried to overcome the obstacles that have plagued them for a while, which they couldn’t give time to before. It’s the latter for independent booksellers around the country who were already facing myriad issues that are inevitable when one tries to build a business from scratch without any form of corporate backing. A conversation had started brewing long before this year laid down some heavy rules on us and the extra time only helped speed up the process for forming an association of independent booksellers around the country. Speaking to Mayura Misra of the Oxford Storyteller Bookstore in Calcutta, we found out what plagues their business that runs on loyalty for incomparable, personalised service that hardly any bookstore chain can offer. Thus was born Independent Booksellers Association of India (IBAI) that is accepting memberships from around the country as long as you do not have corporate funding.

“We started talking about coming together to pool in our resources to help each other as it happens in the UK and the US,” said Misra of the six bookstore team that has now launched their own website. The team consists of Storyteller Bookstore Kolkata, Pagdandi Bookstore Cafe Pune, Dogears Bookshop Goa, Literati Bookshop and Cafe Goa, Rachna Bookstore and Cafe Fiction Gangtok and Trilogy Library and Bookstore. “While I am specialising in children’s books, some other member has a stronghold on art books or fiction for adults. The idea is to just communicate and cater to each other’s audience, thereby serving your audience better,” she added. Sharing orders and requirements on a common WhatsApp group has become a part of their daily routine now, we are told.

Visitors at the bookstore Sourced by the Telegraph

“For years we had been kept in the dark by publishers and distributors who give fair-weathered discounts, send authors to literary festivals or chain stores while blatantly ignoring us for e-commerce sites. We thought we could have a single platform and collectively petition to publishers to associate with us,” she said as the next steps for the association.
Shopping local is an imperative now with conversations slowly steering towards the benefits of supporting homegrown businesses around you and IBAI aims to address exactly that and make the process easier for patrons. Bringing the community together is the single-minded proposition from IBAI. The response has been phenomenal. Mailers have been sent out to bookstores and booksellers have shown interest from Kashmir to Delhi and more. The main criteria for membership are that one must have a physical store.

It is a lonesome journey for independent booksellers as they struggle to make their presence felt amongst patrons.

“Independent bookstores are completely on their own and they have to fend for themselves. From publishers to authors, there is a direct link to buy online but they don’t promote these independent bookstores in any way. The presence we have in Calcutta now is because of the extensive work we have done with schools and all of that has been our own doing, with no external help whatsoever but now we need the extra push,” said Misra.

The extra service that booksellers provide along with the personal touch is incomparable. Children come in with their parents on weekends at Storyteller outlet because they consider it a safe space that gets frequently sanitised. Not just the space, but also the books that are sent out don’t pass through too many hands, a promise that giant e-commerce sites are unable to make. “In this lockdown, I have even taken parents through books to help them with home-schooling over a Zoom call,” added Misra and it is instances like these that make you reaffirm your faith in everything IBAI aims to achieve.