Crossword Bookstores Is Wooing Kids In Its Latest Avatar

Crossword Bookstores is back with new owners, new stores and a book-first ethos. In its new avatar, it is forging new tie-ups, redesigning its store with kids and parents in mind and going after print-exclusive editions. A candid conversation with Aakash Gupta, CEO, Crossword Bookstores brings to the fore his focus and his motivations. 

1. How big is the children's book market in India? In the world?

Children's books are close to 40% of book sales, globally. This does not include academic books. I’m taking an estimation from Nielsen data, and also extrapolating a bit because Nielsen data leaves out independent book stores and maybe a few modern trade retailers. It does however cover the big book stores and online sales.

2. What are the categories within the children's book market? Which one sells the most?

The categories that are popular are 
a.    Young learners which are picture books or those that can be read aloud and cover the 2-3 age group. 
b.    Activity workbooks are another popular category, such as joining the dots, colouring, writing numbers and letters etc for age 5 onwards. Sometimes, these go all the way up to age 12, for more complex activities. 
c.    However, the highest seller is the young fiction category which is for children aged 6 to 12 . An author like Ruskin Bond for instance, does extremely well in this category.

The young learner segment is very interesting- their sales are nowhere as close to young fiction and hence this category is not dominated by  the big  publishers alone. Parents want to try something new. At Crossword Bookstores, we like to curate our own range of books with a wide range of writers. We believe that we can offer more depth to this category.

3. How can publishers support physical bookstores?

The market, which includes distributors as well as top publishers, already knows that a good chunk of sales is online. Yet, discovery of new authors often happens at physical bookstores. People can intentionally search for a Harry Potter online, but how will they come to know about new authors? Besides, physical sales are clawing back the market share that was taken by online sales during the pandemic.

We are looking to work with publishers to create joint events with authors and exclusive editions that are for the physical bookstores only. Such exclusive editions are quite common in the international market. Also- children’s books in particular would benefit a lot from going ‘live’ first in a physical bookstore. 

The best part of having events at our stores is that thanks to the heavy promotion and physical interaction, authors see improved recall and an immediate pick up in terms of sales.

4. How are you going to incentivise parents to visit the store?

We are open to ideas that promote community engagement- maybe birthdays with books? And we would like to focus more and more on children’s books. In India, the marketing of children’s books needs to evolve. Marketing for children's books is unfortunately negligible. We must learn from authors like Julia Donaldson who perform with their character Gruffalo- they have come to Crossword Kemps Corner as well - about how to create engaging events for children.

5. In what ways are you going to emphasise your focus on children's books?

The way we design our stores is the first step towards letting our customers know that kids are a big focus area. We have just launched a new store in one of India's most premium destinations- Palladium Lower Parel- where we have designed a store with focus on kids. The whole store design revolves around giving the kids their own space & experience which inspires them to read, play & have fun doing it. 

We intend to collaborate with small publishers as well as independent authors to curate new books and experiences for children, while retaining the classics. Within six months to a year, our vision is to present a very different Crossword; we are  re-working  our e-commerce strategies to make more viable offerings to our customers. In this category, we must be the final word. 

6. Any other insights?

We were the single biggest franchise in the Crossword Bookstores network before we finally acquired the brand and company from Shoppers Stop in 2021. Our vast experience in bookselling has given us a strong backend and supply chain capability. We have consciously decided that we will be a books-first enterprise, which was missing when the brand was run by the previous parent company. Within just 9 months, we have set up 21 new stores. Our tally currently is 85 stores across the country. We want to be seen as experts when it comes to the book market in India and in terms of pure operations and economics we will draw on our 30 years’ experience with books.