What we’ve been up to in 2016

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It’s been 8 months since we launched the app, and we thought a year-end review would be the perfect way to tell our readers what we’ve been up to in 2016:

The launch

When the app launched on 22 April, ‘Juggernaut’ began to trend on Twitter, and the launch was reported across all media:

 

How we did on the app?

Eight months, 560k+ users, 180,000 book downloads, 6 bestsellers, a higher-than-industry average sales, and nearly a tonne of Devan’s coffee later — here we are:

 

30 books were downloaded more than 1000 times on the app:

collage

Of these, the top 5 books crossed 3k downloads, while 2 crossed 5k downloads — an unheard-of figure for digital books in India. Our average downloads per book were higher than the average ebook downloads in India.

How did we do with our books?

We published 30 physical books this year — 23 in English, and 5 in Hindi. Our average sales were 10,000 copies per book, higher than the industry average.

Creating a buzz…

We published some of the hottest books of the year that were argued over, trended on Twitter, and loved and hated equally.
Amma — published to mark the Tamil Nadu state elections in May and the only compete biography of Jayalalithaa — became the go-to-book for the media when she died later this year and shot up the charts. Readers and critics were wowed by the sensitive portrayal of her as a struggling young woman.
amma

 

Could Twinkle Khanna, India’s highest-selling woman writer of 2015, repeat her magic with her follow-on book? Launched with a star-studded event that set Twitter on fire, and an electrifying appearance on Koffee with Karan (making it the show’s all-time most popular episode), Twinkle’s book shot up the charts and found new fans and readers. With over 80k copies printed, we are predicting she will break her previous record of 100k sales!

16twinkle-book-launch16

Yasser Usman’s biography of Rekha brought the spotlight on existing sexism within Bollywood, and began a larger conversation around it: rekha 

 

Before the year was over, Swati Chaturvedi’s explosive investigation into the world of BJP’s digital army made headlines across the country: troll

 

For the first time in India, we tied up with prominent media houses to bring you exclusive digital books that looked at big picture issues, such as demonetisation and the Tata vs Mistry battle. We also commissioned to occasion, publishing books on larger events — such as the biography of Mamata Banerjee as soon as the state elections results were announced. On the app, the blockbuster stories — short stories by celebrated writers such as Benyamin and Perumal Murugan — were a clear success.        

 

By the end of the year, several of our books featured in year-end lists.  

Amazon featured several of our books on their most notable books of 2016:

Amazon-bestbooks2016

Not bad for 8 months! :)

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One Comment

  1. Tarana Khan / January 11, 2017 at 8:31 pm /Reply

    Congratulations!! So proud of Juggernaut and the team. Thrilled to be a tiny part of it all. Hope to watch it make new amazing roads and change the ground reality of publishing industry.

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