Baatighar: lighthouse of books in Bangladesh!

Born in Dhalghat village of Patiaupazila of Chittagong and Post Graduate in Bengali Language and Literature, Dipankar Das is enthusiastic about literary and cultural activities since childhood. In 2005, he started Baatighar, a small-scale creative bookstore at Cheragipahar intersection in the city. Later, in 2012, the lighthouse was expanded to Chittagong Press Club building on a large scale and in 2017, the lighthouse started its journey to Dhaka and in 2019, the third branch started in Sylhet. The lighthouse is now known as a meeting place for writers-readers-cultural workers in the country and abroad. Since 2009, Baatighar is also involved in publishing.

Here, Dipankar shares more about their marketing strategies.

AABP: Brief us about your bookstores as to who are your primary customers (age, gender, interests)? What genres or types of books are most popular in your store?

Dipankar: Baatighar is the largest retail bookstore having 6 outlets in four major divisional cities in Bangladesh, namely Dhaka, Chattogram, Sylhet and Rajshahi. Its journey started in 2005, as a minuscule shop of hundred square feet from Chittagong. The bookshop quickly gained popularity and became a favourite destination for booklovers.

Baatighar caters for all sections of readers from students to academics, writers, artists, journalists and above all general readers by maintaining a wide collection of books of the leading publishing houses from around the globe.Baatighar has always encouraged young-adult readers and kept a meticulously curated collection of books for them in the tastefully designed Children’s Corner. This section also contains books in Bangla and English from all over the world. To meet the constantly evolving reading culture and growing demand for technical books and journals, Baatighar has allocated a separate space for IT-related books as well.

Our customers come from all class and section of the society, male and female and the majority of readers should fall in the age group of young-adult and middle aged. Our readers prefer Fiction, both in Bangla and English, nonfiction subjects like History, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology etc. are also on high demand.

AABP: How do customers usually find out about new books in your store?

Dipankar: Baatighar has a dedicated website for selling books through its online worldwide, www.baatighar.com. It is through this site that customers find out about new books. We also have social media account in Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter. All our branches have their own separate pages and accounts to disseminate information to the customers. We regularly post information about newly published books both locally and internationally, post notifications for all imported international books as and when they arrive in the store.

The percentage of sales from online would be around 10% in respect of 90% from in-store.

AABP: What recent trends in book marketing have you noticed?

Dipankar: Readers are very much keen to read books on politics, social and economic affairs of the world. A large number of customers, especially younger readers are greatly interested in all sorts of classics.

AABP: What marketing channels do you use to promote books?

Dipankar: We mostly use social media, email and direct SMS to customer’s phone from our database. Also, in-store promotions and newspaper advertisement. We find Facebook as the most effective of various social media. We have created Facebook pages for each of our branches separately and reach out to a large number of our followers on that page.

AABP: How do you decide which books to promote heavily?

Dipankar: Based on our experience of readers choice, authors and subjects in demand, we select books for intensive promotions.

AABP: Do you collaborate with authors for book signings, readings, or other events? How effective are these events?

Dipankar: Yes, mostly with local authors and sometimes from neighbouring countries. These kind of events mark a significant impact on the readers, they personally experience more about the author and their works by interacting with questions and answers.

AABP: What role does customer feedback play in your marketing strategy?

Dipankar: Customers can directly connect to our management by our social media pages and accounts or by email to provide their feedback on our services, collection of book varieties. Sometimes they take the liberty to put forward a few suggestions on how to improve overall.

AABP: How often do you run promotions or discounts on books?

Dipankar: Percentage at a higher rate of discount is the most effective as per our experience. Every year we have a season of grand sale when we offer upto 65% disount.

AABP: How do you decide on the placement of books within your store? Do you use special displays or sections for new releases or bestsellers?

Dipankar: We have sections for newly released books and for bestsellers. Our store is designed with subject wise shelves where we place books according to the subjects and we also have special moveable racks for displaying or highlighting some books.

AABP: How important is cover design and book packaging in attracting customer attention?

Dipankar: Cover design is one of the most important factors that make the first impression of the customers. A well designed package plays a great role to attract customers attention.

AABP: Is there anything you wish publishers would do differently to help market their books more effectively?

Dipankar: There should be dedicated magazine for online or offline to disseminate information about books published.