on september 14 2011 wellknown bookshop borders closed its last new york store by the end of the month this chain of bookstores with 226 outlets in the us had shut shop that itself was indicative of the churning in the publishing industry of the worlds largest books market the us sale of printed books was declining and those of ebooks rising its the same story elsewhere in the west where this industry is seeing a growth in ebooks however india is yet to see a similar impact but change may be imminent according to a ficci report india has an estimated 600 million book readers and with penguin the countrys largest english publisher releasing 250 new titles from the last week of june ebooks seem to have finally found a foothold the books include the book of buddha dreams in prussian blue farewell song and ideas of a nation subhash chandra bose harpercollins too should be ready to announce its etitles in a months time while ack media publishers of amar chitra katha among other popular titles have gone on record saying they would launch ebooks this year they however declined to be a part of this story the driver for the ebooks market is the usage of computers internet and mobile phones and india is not just a rapidly growing market for new technology but technology itself has evolved enough for comfortable reading on various devices says ananth padmanabhan vp sales penguin india according to the latest world bank report india has 70 mobile subscriptions per 100 people with one of the highest average mobile data speeds padmanabhan says the bigger challenge however is to see how many ereaders the country can have india doesnt have a massscale reading tradition according to ficcis report india has a low per capita expenditure on books per annum rs 80 as compared to rs 4000 in the uk however lipika bhushan head marketing harpercollins says that the figure for users of various edevices is constantly growing most of these are young indians who are very active online though no publisher can say with surety what impact these figures will have on the ebooks market a change will positively come rahul srivastava director sales marketing simon schuster india says according to a survey conducted this year among 10 countries nowhere have more people bought and downloaded ebooks than in india where 24 have tried at least one this is also that chunk of readership which has made genres like metro reads and college romances popular adds bhushan about 57 years ago a bestseller would be sold in the range of 30005000 but now 50000 is nothing padmanabhan concurs about a decade back penguin bestsellers sold 1000015000 copies today that figure stands at halfamillion the biggest push for ebooks comes from the growth of online shopping flipkart the largest online bookstore in india was established in 2007 and broke even in march 2008 according to ficci flipkart claims to have