Online Bookstores in India Come of Age.

Buy online? Buy books online?!! Buy anything online?!! The consternation used to be universal and unmistakable.

Those were the times when buying anything online was viewed with doubt and skepticism. More so if it was a suggestion to buy books online. Those were the times when e-commerce was still largely unknown; security concerns and reliability factors were still looming large in a prospective online buyer's mind. But things have come a long way ever since. Buying online is much more common now.

A few significant developments have made buying online - and buying books online in particular - a more acceptable idea.

Online bookstores in India were relatively unknown enterprises without any track record since the online business itself was new. Prospective buyers had to take some risk. But most existing online bookstores have been promoted by large business houses with established reputation. Even the others have, over time, established their reputation and reliability.

Payment used to be a big problem for online transactions. Most online stores would not accept cheques - even if they were payable at par anywhere in the country. Going to a bank to purchase a Demand Draft and then sending it through post or courier service was quite inconvenient and involved the additional expense by way of postage. But the increased use and popularity of Credit Cards made it much easier and tremendously convenient to buy books online. More recently, most online bookstores in India have started offering the Cash on Delivery option so that even those without a Credit Card can buy books online.

Security concerns have been very satisfactorily addressed by adopting 'secure mode' involving sophisticated encryption of transactions and by the use of additional authentication of credit cards online. In fact, the additional authentication has been made compulsory by the Reserve Bank.

While these developments have made online buying of books and online book stores in India acceptable, several factors have made online bookstores in India enormously popular. Online bookstores in India have really caught the public imagination. Let us see what makes online bookstores tick so much.

Online bookstores are accessible even to people living in smaller towns and villages. People in small places are no longer at a disadvantage.

People - whether living in cities or in villages - no longer have to travel much to buy a book or two from a book shop; they can just buy books online sitting at home and save the time and money spent on travelling. Even in cities, the time and money spent on a cab or auto often prove to be great; sometimes the cab fare would be more than the cost of the book!  One does not have to travel though polluted roads and annoying traffic jams if one buys books online rather than offline.

Most online bookstores provide access to many more titles - in the order of several lakh titles - than any traditional offline bookstore does; no offline bookstore in India can match the range that an online bookstore in India offers.

Online buyers have the advantage of placing an order for a book with an online store even before it hits the regular bookstores as in pre-publication orders. Pre-publication prices of books are often much less than the regular offline prices.

Offline bookshops seldom offer any significant discounts. But most online bookstores in India offer substantial discounts which are as high as 50% at times!!

There are several stock clearance offers online compared to similar offers offline. "Combo offers" are also more common in online bookstores than in offline bookstores.

Most online bookstores in India arrange to procure even rare books for a customer and often without any additional procurement charge. This is once again a service most offline bookshops - except the large bookshops in select metros - do not provide.

There, of course, are a few disadvantages associated with online bookstores. The most common and significant among them is that a prospective buyer does not get a chance to browse the book and evaluate the content before buying. Nor does one get to have a feel of the quality of the print and paper. But when the availability of a given book is an issue by itself or when the standards of a given publisher are known, such considerations are often secondary.

Some disadvantages of online shopping for books are being handled aggressively by online bookstores in India.

Every book listed in an online bookstore has a brief write up and carries reader reviews as well so that a prospective buyer is well-informed. In case of damaged book or missing pages, the online bookshops replace the copy unconditionally; a few even replace without insisting on the return of the damaged copy. Some even offer to refund the money if the buyer returned the book within a specified time - and no questions asked!

Today, buying books online is a very pleasant and satisfying experience. Online bookstores in India have matured a lot to offer wonderful satisfaction to customers on line. Online buying of books in India has truly come of age.