Amazon India will now allows customers to buy used books through a separate store on the website and mobile app. The store currently has over 100,000 offers on titles and used books are graded by sellers as Used-Like New, Used-Good and Used-Acceptable based on their condition. This information is visible to every customer at the time of purchase.
Note that people who want to sell books cannot sell it directly to Amazon and settle it as a peer-to-peer transaction. But the books come from sellers on Amazon who have undertaken to list and sell only genuine products. Amazon claims that it has 9400 sellers on the platform selling books. As a launch offer, customers who buy used books for over Rs 399 from the same seller are offered free shipping.
Currently it has four sections for used books – literature, romance. biography and textbooks.
Amazon isn’t the only website which sells used books online. There’s Bookadda which requires users to install a Facebook app to buy and sell and they can contact the seller directly. Second hand books India sells books all across India but offers free delivery in the NCR region and some parts of North and West India. Sellbuybook seems to specialize in academic books.
Kindle Scout programme
In September 2015, Amazon also launched the Kindle Scout programme for writers in India where they could submit never-published, novel-length English-language manuscripts under Kindle Press, the company’s digital publishing banner. In the same month, it launched Kindle Unlimited, a subscription service which would give readers access to over one million books for a limited period.
In 2012, Amazon launched the Kindle Store for the Indian market. Kindle e-book reader devices were first made available offline at Croma retail outlets across India. At the same time, Amazon launched Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) for independent authors and publishers in India, through which authors and publishers can make their books available to Kindle customers in India and around the world on both Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps.
