The end of an era: Amazon pulled the plug on homegrown Westland Books

Aditi Subramanian

Krishna Gowda, the owner of Bookworm, one of the biggest bookstores in Bengaluru was in the middle of multiple calls on Thursday—readers far and wide were trying to get their hands on books published by Westland Books before they went out of stock. Many had made a list of books to read and bought in bulk. While Bookworm has always been popular in the city, the buzz around buying books published by Westland is because the publishing house is shutting down. Earlier this week, Amazon India announced the closing of Westland Books. This came as a shock to readers, authors, and those in the publishing landscape. Founded in 1962, Westland is one of India’s largest English-language trade publishers that published in genres ranging from popular and literary fiction to business, politics, biography, spirituality, popular science, health and self-help. Amazon India acquired the publishing house from Trent Limited, a subsidiary of Tata Group in 2016, giving the publishing house an ocean of opportunities. However, five years later, Amazon decided to shut down the Westland, causing much chatter in the publishing landscape. The publishing house has published many prominent authors: Christophe Jaffrelot’s Modi’s India, for instance, is an extensive book that argues that the political scene of India has changed from a liberal secular state to one that is a majoritarian ethnic democracy; Aakar Patel’s Price of the Modi Years details the history of India since 2014 when Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister; M. Mukundan’s Delhi: A Soliloquy is based on the author’s experiences of living and working in Delhi as a Malayali. The book won the 2021 JCB Prize for literature, the most expensive Indian award for writing; Manu S. Pillai’s The Courtesan, the Mahatma & the Italian Brahmin is an extensive collection of essays on interesting episodes from Indian history.

Other notable authors published by this publishing house include Meena Kandasamy, Indu Menon, and Nisha Susan. After the unfortunate news broke out on Tuesday, many of these authors took to Twitter to express their views; Manu S. Pillai, for instance, tweeted: “My book The Courtesan, the Mahatma & the Italian Brahmin published by Westland will cease to be available from Feb 28. I am grateful to Westland for publishing it, taking it through several reprints, and helping me generally as a writer. I am still hopeful that someone will come in and buy Westland, preventing its closure. If that does not happen, the book will return to shelves with a new logo. That won’t take away the sadness of seeing such an amazing publishing house dissolve, after such good work.”

The news came as a shock to the owners of bookstores in Bengaluru— Krishna Gowda, who had been pacing the bookstore with his phone in one hand and Aakar Patel’s Price of the Modi Years had much to say about Westland closing down: “The news was sudden and unexpected. Amazon could have sold Westland instead of closing it down. There has been a rush at the bookstore ever since— apart from those who are coming here to physically buy books in bulk, our regular customers are calling us and are sending messages on Whatsapp to enquire about the availability of books.”

Mayi Gowda, the owner of Blossom Book House, echoes similar opinions and thoughts. “I have known and worked with them for almost 25 years now. They have published many good books, and the closing of the publishing house affects readers, authors, and the industry. Some good and important books may now go out of trend for a while, and this is extremely unfortunate,” says he

Shreya Sharma, an avid reader, was disappointed and upset upon reading the news. Her questions regarding the sudden decision made by Amazon is one that is puzzling many: “Why did they close Westland? Was it done because of financial reasons? Amazon India reported an increase in revenue and the losses incurred had decreased in the 2021 fiscal year. I hope that the Multinational Corporation gives a reasonable explanation soon,” she says.

Westland has been publishing many non-fiction books that struck a chord among Indian readers. While it has published books of authors across the political spectrum including that of Smriti Irani, some suspect that the closure of the publishing house has to do with politics. David (name changed) says: “I think that Westland was shut down because it published books that reflected reality. Its unforgiving input of the time’s we are living in could be one of the reasons why Amazon decided to pull the plug.”