Westland was acquired by Amazon in 2017. Some of the bestselling authors of the publishing house include Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi, Devdutt Pattanaik, Harsha Bhogle, Preeti Shenoy, Rujuta Diwekar and others. Mint Lounge confirmed that several people with the organisation have confirmed the news.
SheThePeople reached out to Amazon and the official spokesperson responded saying, “After a thorough review, we have made the difficult decision to no longer operate Westland. We are working closely with the employees, authors, agents, and distribution partners on this transition and we remain committed to innovating for customers in India.”
Westland is a trade book publisher apart from publishing fiction it also published non-fiction books and started an imprint titled "context." It is owned by Amazon Eurasia Holdings SARL.
As per reports the editors of the publishing house where only informed earlier today about the closure.
Since the news broke out on the internet several authors have taken to Twitter and expressed their disbelieve at the news. Writer, editor, podcaster Jairaj Singh wrote, "Terrible news: Amazon to shut down publishing house Westland Books. Here are some of their most outstanding and hard-hitting non fiction books to come out in recent times.'
Writer, columnist and podcaster Amit Verma wrote, "These are some of the recent books published by Westland that have been sharing a shelf at home. They've been shut down today. They've published some of the best & bravest non-fiction of our times. Is that why?"
Several well-known authors such as Kavitha Rao, Kabir Bedi, Vidhie Mukherjea have also been featured at SheThePeople's Women Writers Fest.
*This is a developing story.
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