Book lovers across Bangalore who haven't yet adopted Kindle and Tablets will feel a loss. Strand Book Stall, which was famous for its sales pulled down its shutters and is now focusing on its operations in Mumbai.

Speaking to Explocity, Vidya Virkar, owner of Strand said, "It's sad, but pragmatic. Despite a decline in sales, we tried keeping the Bangalore store open for as long as possible. But peoples' interest in physical books has reduced drastically and it was just not feasible to keep things going."

Virkar reminisced about "earlier times" when Bangalore, due to its cosmopolitan and "quality" crowd, was conducive for book stores. "We used to get a nice blend of customers, most of them young and very enthusiastic about reading."

Talking about the declining population of lovers of physical books, Virkar said, "Everyone has a smartphone, tablet or Kindle now and they do most of their reading online. Piracy hasn't helped either and you can download PDFs for almost any book from the internet. Also, with SMS, Facebook and Twitter being the norm in terms of communication, people have a very short attention span - they don't like reading too much."

Virkar was enthusiastic about the Mumbai store though and said that the store in Mumbai was doing quite well. "In fact", she added, "our annual book sale is a very popular event for book lovers and readers."