tony stark has a heart

you see, everybody's favorite evil corp, Amazon, bought Indian publishing house Westland some six years ago. Now Westland is a very famous and reputed publishing house in India, and has put forth some of the best titles the country has seen. It didn't shy away from controversial and uncomfortable topics, and some of its books quite vocally criticise the current government, which has been responsible for the current state of india as a pseudo-democratic, pseudo-secular, economically ruined country, the most notable one being The Price of the Modi years by Aakar Patel. It also produced Amish Tripathi's pathbreaking Shiva Trilogy.

Now here's the thing that got me nuts.

AMAZON. SHUT. IT. DOWN. A WEEK AGO.

JUST OUT OF THE BLUE, IT IS CLOSING DOWN WESTLAND FOREVER. NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IS TO COME OF THE HUNDREDS OF TITLES PUBLISHED BY IT, OR OF THE AUTHORS ITS CONTRACTED, OR THE PEOPLE EMPLOYED BY IT.

It has triggered a buying surge in India, as people go on shopping spress to get their hands on the titles they want from this house. Short on supply and high on demand, bookstores across India are showing solidarity and moving surplus books around.

here you go with a few links that i think sum up the problem quite nicely, and please guys. just. please support westland.

here they talk about how this is becoming a trend with global corps.

here they talk about the future of indian publishing houses.

this one talks about a bleak future for literature and how it feels like we're living in a dystopian novel

And c. Indie bookstores will ALWAYS have some unique and offbeat reccos and they're all really nice and need our support!

Local bangalore bookstores that you can support instead of amazon:

Blossom bookhouse (ships pan india. has a website that isn't great but you can DM them on whatsapp too and they're very prompt. The OG, browsing there is always a pleasure, you get second hand books too and if you go the the bookstore and browse you randomly stumble across hidden gems.)

Champaca (ships pan India. has AMAZING recs on instagram, has a cool website, you can either order off of the website or DM them on their social media, definitely follow them on insta too they give very unique recommendations across a wide variety of genres. They also have a pretty great subscription service where they send a couple of books along with some cool art pieces by indie artists every month!)

Gangarams (they do have an online/whatsapp ordering system which I haven't used so not sure if it ships outside bangalore but they do deliveries within bangalore. And they ALWAYS give discounts, even on new books AND free bookmarks. And they often have beautiful editions of books and signed copies and stuff.)

(Also if you can go the stores physically, churchstreet has more stores and also indiranagar too.)

On my phone now so I'll add links later, but if you just look them up online you'll get their websites/socials.

Others which I haven't used but have heard of:

Walking book fairs (bangalore)

Sisters of the people (delhi, proceeds go to charity)

_thebookshopjb (delhi)

Others can feel free to add!

ALSO while we are at it, I don't think goodreads is a huge part of Amazon's revenue but it's still a part of their overall reader marketplace and one that dominates its space (along with audible and kindle) SO PLEASE switch to storygraph! It's by a black woman iirc and honestly with much better recommendations and a much better UI. They've already added a bunch of features too. AND you can import your goodreads list to Storygraph so you don't lose any data. And their stats are 💯

How did you get [the bootlegs] past customs? Well, I strapped them to my body like in Midnight Express.