Shiva Trilogy chapters to be available in smartphones

Westland expects the model to replicate the Chinese success in e-books

Indian mobile consumers can buy and read the blockbuster Shiva Trilogy series on their smartphones in multiple chapters in their local languages.

Westland, the publishers of the popular book series by author Amish, have tied-up with Dailyhunt, the mobile content aggregator to sell the books chapter by chapter to smartphone users in over nine languages including Kannada and Marathi.

Each chapter priced at Rs 15 can be bought by subscribers of mobile operators such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance and Aircel through their prepaid balance.

“We are testing the waters. I don’t think we have any hard figures for what we expect. But if you go by the Chinese thing, they have sold millions of books through this model. We hope that if it takes off, it will become as big,” said Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO of Westland in an interview. “This is similar in concept to what iTunes would do where you price individual chapters and then you have a different price for the book”.

Dailyhunt, which has over 100 million app users allow customers to buy a book on its eBooks store through their mobile bill or prepaid balance.

“We have a revenue share model with the author and publisher. The biggest thing is the use of technology to distribute to millions of users and second is to induce sampling of content consumption by bringing in chapter wise billing,” said Virendra Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder, Dailyhunt. “It is supporting the author ecosystem. They are able to price their premium content into affordable sachets and basically the quality of content will win”

Amish’s Shiva Trilogy — The Immortals of Meluha (2010), The Secret of the Nagas (2011) and The Oath of the Vayuputras (2013) — has over 2.5 million copies in print with gross retail sales of over Rs 70 crores, making it the fastest selling book series in Indian history.

India is witnessing a spurt of publishers who are experimenting with offering customised books on smartphones. Juggernaut, a publishing firm founded by former publisher of Penguin Random House India Chikki Sarkar and funded by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is working with authors to publish books on smartphones.

“What makes this offering (on Dailyhunt) unique is that readers can download and read the book chapter by chapter, one at a time and can also make payments using their mobile bills instead of having to use credit or debit cards. India is a country with only 2% credit card penetration and many Indians do not have a bank account. Mobile payment is the only truly penetrative mode of payment online,” said author Amish.