Bangalore: Chetan Bhagat’s latest to be blockbuster “Half Girlfriend” is available for pre order at 15% dscount on Flipkart the online ecommerce portal.
Rupa Publications, the book’s publisher, has made it clear that Flipkart is the exclusive online vendor of Half Girlfriend and there is an embargo on the online sale and distribution of the book. It said, “Please note that Flipkart India and/or its associates, our online exclusive partner, shall have the sole and exclusive right to sell/distribute through online platforms only, in whatever form, through the e-commerce platform www.flipkart.com, its mobile or other online applications thereof’, including all related online platforms till October 31, 2014.”
Flipkart is accepting pre-orders for Rs 149—a discount of slightly more than 15 per cent on the list price of Rs: 176.
Having exclusive selling rights for a product seems to have become the latest trend to capture eCommerce portals. While Flipkart has shown consistency in keeping with the trend by getting exclusive selling rights to mobile phones like Moto X, Moto G, and Xiaomi in the recent past, it has acquired exclusive online selling rights for Chetan Bhagat’s upcoming book Half Girlfriend too. Though Flipkart succeeded in elbowing out rival Amazon, it faces competition from an unusual source — brick-and-mortar bookstores!
A poster at Sapna Book House, Residency Road on Thursday announces the steep discount offered on Chetan Bhagat’s forthcoming book. Bookstores are offering discounts of upto 25%.
With Chetan Bhagat’s latest work set to be officially released on October 1, city bookstores are expecting to stock it on their shelves from October 24 onwards. They will have to wait till November 1 to sell the book through their websites.
Since most of Bhagat’s books have been bestsellers in the past, and some even adapted into Bollywood movies which have set the box office on fire, it is absolutely a no-brainer that retailers would like to make most of it. Hence the flurry of action on the discount front. Sapna Book House, one of the largest bookstore chains in the country, has upped the ante by promising a whopping 25 per cent discount on the book when it is available in its stores. Sapna’s discount, which would price the book at Rs 132, is the biggest in the city so far.
Other popular stores are also not far behind. An official at Crossword in Forum Value Mall said, “We are not quite sure yet. But the book will be priced at Rs 140 approximately.” But by offering such discounts will the stores be able to maintain good profit margins? “We haven’t been informed about all that. We have just been told that it would be priced at Rs 140 approximately,” the official added.
Gangarams, on the other hand, is planning to offer a 10 per cent discount. A Blossom Book House official said it is getting ready to offer a 20 per cent cut on the list price. But store officials at Oxford and Landmark claim they won’t be offering any discounts whatsoever.
