A former bookseller explains why bookshops will find the post-pandemic period especially difficult

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The future of bookshops has been dark and uncertain for a while now. The pandemic makes the dangers all the more imminent. For someone who ran a small independent bookshop for over 30 years in New Delhi, the last few years alone have been particularly difficult. Many booksellers like me had to shut shop because we could no longer afford to pay the rent. Sadly, no amount of love for books could save us.

Yet, anyone who has experience in selling books will tell you that the trade is also a story of survival, which is no stranger to the gloom and doom that pervades every time the economy crashes. Independent bookshops in the past few decades have also fought many pitched battles. They’ve seen the rise of chain bookstores, the onslaught of e-commerce platforms and the emergence of ebooks, and yet the humble neighbourhood bookstore has survived in some form or size.

The book market for the non-educational and non-professional books, as most of you know, is frightfully small in our country. Out of which, sadly, a disproportionate number of readers has already migrated to platforms like Amazon, for the sake of convenience and discounts.

Most booksellers today, however, are worried about what the...

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