Online marketplace Amazon has
agreed to acquire the remaining 74% stake in Westland, the publishing unit of
the Tata Group retail company Trent Ltd, indicating its interest in expanding
its presence in India Books Market.
The acquisition would help
Westland’s authors to grow their physical and digital book businesses in India
as well as expand their reach to customers globally. In just three years
Amazon have built India’s largest online store that customers can trust to
find, discover and buy anything online. The acquisition of Westland continues
our commitment to India—enabling Amazon to bring Westland’s highly talented
authors and their books to even more customers in India and around the world.
Amazon, which is the world’s
largest Internet-based retailer, started out as an online bookstore in 1994.
From selling books by third-party publishers on its platform, Amazon has since
started its own publishing unit, Amazon Publishing. Since its founding in 2009,
Amazon Publishing has published in different genres from romance and thrillers
to spirituality, comics, and science fiction.
Chennai-based Westland began as a
book distributor but ventured into publishing in 2007. Today, it is one of the
top five English language trade publishers in the country and its imprints
include Tranquebar Press (for literary fiction and non-fiction), EastWest
(focusing on South Indian heritage) and Westland (for trade books, both fiction
and non-fiction). The present company was formed from the merger of two
companies, Westland Books Pvt. Ltd and EastWest Books (Madras) Pvt. Ltd in
April 2008.
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