In the past two years, Landmark, a book retail chain owned by Trent, lost 7-10% of its sales, primarily in academic and reference books, to online booksellers. Today, the retail chain does transactions of R4-5 lakh every day through its website, sometimes offering discounts matching those from online retailers like Flipkart.com.

For its online buyers, Landmark tweaked its business model. A quarter of its merchandise is books, while the rest includes movies, music, stationery and toys.

Landmark reflects the transformation in book-selling over the years, as buyers flock to e-commerce sites which save them money, get them more gifts and offer a wider choice of books including regional titles.

?Book retailing is no longer about selling books only. It is about enhancing the reading experience,? says Ashutosh Pandey, chief operating officer, Landmark, a Tata Group company. ?Everyone who walks into a bookstore is not a bargain hunter. What physical bookstores need to understand is each customer?s motivation behind buying a book.?

Sensing the threat from online book-sellers like Flipkart, which is seen as India?s answer to world?s largest e-retailer Amazon, Landmark tweaked its business model. Flipkart is known for heavy discounts and quick delivery.

The trend of buying online impacted Landmark. ?Walk-ins and sales dropped by 7-10%. Reference and academic books took a major hit,? says Pandey. ?That is when we revamped our website and started selling online.?

Meanwhile, Flipkart?s sales grew 15-fold in two years from R4 crore in fiscal 2008-09 to R75 crore in 2010-11. Funded by private equity funds, the company has set a R500 crore target for 2011-12 and could become India?s first billion-dollar (R5,000 crore) e-commerce firm in three years.

Another book-selling portal uRead, which launched in March last year, stocks 11 million titles and has grown 10 times in the past one year, says its co-founder Piyush Goel. ?We are growing at 25% every month and will break-even in 2-3 months,? he says.

Book-buying has significantly moved online in the last few years. ?E-sales of books will further go up,? says Purnendu Kumar, vice president (retail), Technopak. ?But physical bookstores are reworking their product strategy and focusing on store offerings and value-added services to lure customers.?

Bookstores like Landmark and Crossword have gone a step ahead, offering reading and browsing areas, coffee shops and kids? play zones.