Two days after Sowmya Swaminathan heard about the closure of Westland Books, the Chennai-based educator decided to do something about it. The 28-year-old put out a call on social media asking fellow book lovers to help her urge local libraries and institutions to stock children’s books by the publisher before they get pulped. “When I heard the news, I was genuinely in shock because Westland is a big publishing house that has published many big Indian authors. I couldn’t just sit and watch because I thought about how many people are really going to be able to buy the books at such short notice,” she explains.

On February 1, Amazon announced the closing of Westland Books, the 1962-founded Indian publishing house, which the American e-commerce giant had bought in 2017. The company will shut operations by March 31. As the sudden news of the closing circulated on the internet, many authors who were associated with the publishing house, and had only recently released books with them, expressed their sadness about the uncertain future of their books. At a personal level, avid readers around the country have been trying to come to terms with the closing.