Typically these days, I look at the book reviews in Outlook and Time and then order. The books I wanted today were Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Interpreter of Maladies", "Picture Imperfect, an English translation of Bengali writer S. Bandopadhyay and two Harry Potter books by J. Rowling. The first two were reviewed in the June 14 issue of Outlook and J Rowling and her books were reviewed in the June 7 issue of Time. I gave the list to my secretary and asked her to call Crossword at Mahalaxmi - they usually deliver the books to the office within 1-2 days.

Today, when she called up Crossword, they told her that they did not have any of the titles. It wasn't that the titles were sold out - they just didn't exist on their inventories. I then told my secretary to call Lotus, Nalanda at the Taj and Strand Book Stall - this list of stores practically covers most of the major book shops in Mumbai. Except for Nalanda which had "Picture Imperfect", none of the other shops had any of the other titles. This was really upsetting. I told my secretary to order "Picture Imperfect" from Nalanda, but they refused to deliver the book. I asked her to call Crossword and Strand Book Stall again to place orders for this book and she was told it would take 6-8 weeks for the books.

I was really mad.

I logged onto Rediff and checked their book store. They had only "Picture Imperfect" - considering my luck today though, I was actually able to place an order online using my credit card. The book was discounted by Rs. 30, against an actual price of Rs. 200 and they charged Rs. 50 for shipping - I didn't mind the extra Rs. 20. I wonder though, when the book will come. They didn't have the other titles.

So, I logged onto the Barnes & Noble site. They had all three titles, all at a 40-50% discount to the published price. I added all three to the shopping cart and tried to check them out using my Stanchart global card. Against a total of 31$, international UPS shipping was 47$. I thought that was ridiculous, but when I calculated against the discount (considering that for new titles, you never get a discount in Mumbai stores), the shipping worked out to about 20$. I was still so mad at the local scenario, that I decided to accept the slightly higher cost and clicked the accept button. I should hopefully get the books in 3-5 days by UPS. If I had agreed to accept the books by surface transport, shipping would have been around 15$, but with a delivery time of 10 weeks - I am still waiting for a book I had ordered in late March from the same site.

Unless our local Mumbai bookshops can manage their house better and improve customer service, I don't see how they can continue the way they are. As a customer, I wanted four titles and couldn't get them - until a year ago, I would have been forced to wait until the bookshops deigned to get them, or until some relative got them from abroad. Today I was able to order the books online from an international bookstore and will get them within 3-5 days. The only downside today is the shipping cost. Hopefully one day, even that will be reasonable, and then we will be able to get whichever book we want whenever we want.

Update: (18 June 1999)
My Barnes & Noble shipment arrived this morning. The Rediff shipment has still not arrived - I had some mail yesterday which said that the book was not available with its partners, though it did not say so on the website at the time of ordering.