Publishers On Publishing
Page 1
In this book, 65 insiders—all from within India’s enduring publishing establishments, emerging niches and the surrounding eco system—share views, trends and stories on Indian publishing.
In interviews and short essays, key themes and issues facing India’s vibrant book business across various genre and languages, are discussed. Local and regional publishers, independents, MNCs and family-run concerns all sit within it covers, alongside burgeoning self-publishing and app-based publishing startups. In the process there is some navel gazing as well as blue sky thinking by the contributors.
Publishers on Publishing is lucid and informative, with emphasis on individual and organizational journeys and views.The Editor’s Preface and Introduction provide the context and frame to view and review India’s vast and varied publishing landscape.
Authors, editors, publishers and bibliophiles, will find in it much to know, debate and share. n i ta s h a d e va s a r has spent 24 years in academic publishing and is Managing Director,Taylor & Francis India. She is Vice President, Association of Publishers in India (API) and sits on the FICCI Publishing Committee. Nitasha is Advisor to the Asian Women’s Leadership Forum in India and was featured as one of Asia’s Women of Substance 2017, by Channel News Asia (CNA).
Contents
Preface xi Introduction
Indian Publishing:An Insider’s Perspective xv Nitasha Devasar
part i • The Sector Today
1 Enduring Issues for Indian Publishing 4 Asoke Ghosh
2 Indian Publishing:Today and Tomorrow 11
Vikas Gupta
3 E-Commerce and Online Selling 18
Thomas Abraham
4 Publishing Services in India 23
Anil Chandy
5 Book Distribution in India 30
Ramesh Chandra Jain
6 Distribution and Supply Chain Management 34
Ramesh K. Mittal and Pranav Gupta
part ii • Indian Publishing Looking at Itself
7 The Author-Editor Relationship 42 Karthika V.K.
The Author-Publisher Relationship 478
Ravi Singh
The Editor:Then and Now 519
Adil Tyabji vi contents
literary agents
10 Emergence of Literary Agents in India 58 Kanishka Gupta
11 The Role of Literary Agents 63
Anuj Bahri
literary festivals and book fairs
12 National Book Trust 67
Baldeo Bhai Sharma
13 Jaipur Lit Fest 71
Namita Gokhale
14 Hindu Lit For Life 77
Rachna Singh Davidar
15 Bookaroo 81
Swati Roy
teaching publishing
16 Training Publishing Professionals 84
S.K. Ghai
17 New Ways of Teaching Publishing 88
Bishan Samaddar
india in the global publishing community
18 Indian Publishing from the Global Perspective 92 Emma House
19 Indian Publishing in Global Book Fairs 98 Prashasti Rastogi
part iii • PolICy lanDsCaPe
industry associations and their role
Federation of Indian Publishers 10820 N.K. Mehra
21 Association of Publishers in India:The Early Years 111
Sesh Seshadri
22 API: Building Partnerships 115
contents vii 23 API: Looking to the Future 117
Ratnesh Jha
24 FICCI Publishing Committee 120 Sumeet Gupta
25 Tax and Compliance Environment 125 Sanjiv Gupta
role of copyright in indian publishing
26 Key Facets of Copyright Today 128 Michael Healy
27 Legal Aspects of Copyright 133
Saikrishna Rajagopal
ethics, freedom and library movements
28 Publishing Ethics 139
Sushmita Das
29 Freedom to Publish 143
José Borghino and Kristenn Einarsson
30 Public Libraries and Library Movements 148 Himanshu Giri
part iv • the BIgger PICture: trenDs anD oPPortunItIes
indian-languages publishing
31 The Role of Sahitya Akademi 158
Dr K. Sreenivasarao
32 Indian Literature through Sahitya Akademi 163 Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee
33 Publishing in Hindi 167
Aditi Maheshwari-Goyal 34 Publishing in Bengali 172
Tridib Kumar Chatterjee
35 Publishing in Malayalam 176
Ravi Deecee
36 Publishing in Marathi 178
Devayani Devesh Abhyankar
viii contents
37 Indian-language Publishing by Global Players 181 Shalini Singh
role of translations
38 Translations: A Publisher’s View 185
Mini Krishnan
39 Children’s Publishing and Translations 190 Geeta Dharmarajan
independent publishing
40 The Tulika Books Story 196
Indira Chandrasekhar
41 Feminist Publishing:The Journey and Way Ahead 202 Ritu Menon
42 Navayana 206
S.Anand
innovations
43 Bringing Books to Phones 211
Chiki Sarkar
44 Offering Chapter-level Content 214
Rohit Kumar
45 Illustrated Books in the Digital Age 217
Bipin Shah
46 Tie-ups and Collaborations 223
Aarti David
part v • genres: enDurIng anD emergIng 47 Publishing for Children 230
Neeraj Jain
school publishing
48 Gearing up for the 21st Century 234 Atiya Zaidi
49 Technology in Education 239
Himanshu Gupta
contents ix
academic publishing
51 Science and Technology 248
N.K. Mehra
52 Humanities and Social Sciences 251 Pankaj Bhardwaj
53 Medicine 255
Ajit Kohli
54 Higher Education 260
Vikas Singh
general books publishing
55 Balancing Creativity and Commerce 264 Thomas Abraham
56 Comics and Graphic Books 268
Gulshan Rai and Arpit Bhargav 57 Illustrated Books:A Changing World 273 Aparna Sharma
58 Illustrated Books:An Affordable Luxury 277 Trisha De Niyogi
self-publishing
59 Online Author Education and Support 281 Keith Ogorek
60 English and Indian Language 286
Naveen Valsakumar
61 Technology-based Solutions 290
Nitin Shah
List of Contributors 293 Select Bibliography 308 Acknowledgements 310 About the Editor 311
Preface Books on India’s publishing industry are few and far between. Ironic for an industry considered both vibrant and with growth potential, in a country that sees its future as a knowledge economy.
This one is both experiential and experimental. It evolved from a continual engagement, within the community, on the need for a volume on Indian publishing, and an increasing realization of the lack of a wider understanding of the role of publishing in today’s information overloaded, digital world.This got me thinking of all that I, as a publisher, would want to showcase in a book on publishing in India and once I had that down, the book just took on a life of its own. On top of the list, were insider views and the representation of a wide spectrum of publishing voices that were usually separated by time and space.The idea was to get individual views and experiences and not a macro sweep of the industry; to cover old ground anew as well as current and emerging trends; and get as many different sorts of publish
ing and allied activities within its ambit, as possible.The challenge was not just how to do this quickly, accessibly, and in a non-partisan manner but also a more fundamental one to be found in how we publishers view ourselves.
The Indian market for publishing is quite fragmented and that has over the last 70 years created both challenges and opportunities.As a result, many publishing universes coexist and rarely come together. English language publishers see themselves as distinct from those in Indian Languages and the latter return the favour.Within the English
universe too, local players and multinational ones are separated by
xii preface size, scale and often perspective.There are niche players, independents, family businesses, and more recently the tech. innovators and disruptors, challenging traditional publishing in varying ways.The allied industries, printing and publishing services, the professional editors and designers, literary agencies and fairs and festivals, all tend to stay in separate yet overlapping cocoons.
As any insider knows,there is rarely one or even a few views on the industry and publishers are yet to find a cohesive voice on the external challenges that impact publishing. How then could we coherently capture the diverse insights and divergent views, that have kept the industry growing at a healthy 20 per cent yearly, in spite of adverse external conditions?
The last few years have been tough ones for publishers of all hues. The bulk, 94 per cent according to the Nielson Report*, of India’s publishing (at least in English) is educational and hence dependent on government policies on and funding of education, both school and higher education and research. In a youthful and aspirational nation like ours, access to education is politically charged and hence susceptible to changing political climates and fortunes.Add to this the digital revolution, the proliferation of mobile connectivity and fading reading habits and you get an industry struggling to sustain itself. Coming together to face common challenges, lobbying government agencies and advocating the importance of the industry for education, entertainment, well-being and nation building is more important today than ever before.
As outreach is vital, I hit on the conversation format as a way to get individuals from the industry to share their journeys and views. Contributors could either answer a bunch of questions on a topic, based on their experience or expertise or write a short piece. However, we needed professionals from the media to conduct these interviews and transcribe them effectively. Speed was also of the essence, for meeting a variety of deadlines, so publishing via conventional means was ruled out. As a result, the partnership with All About Book Publishing came about.
The response was overwhelming and almost all we asked gave
generously. In a few months, we had interviews and essays from 65
preface xiii publishing professionals with formidable collective experience. In the process we captured a multiplicity of views and perspectives.There were both overlaps and contradictions which have been maintained, based as they are on the experiences of people who are insiders in this industry, by either profession or birth or both.
As with all such works, some contributors didn’t stick to topics or formats asked; some chose to deviate from word counts, others gave alternate topics or did extensive re-writes and a couple sent us a bunch of their existing interviews to sift through. In most cases we went with the flow and tried to fill the resulting gaps and pave over the overlaps alongside.A few pieces found their way into All About Book Publishing acting as teasers for the book. My role as editor has therefore been one of encompassing and then continually restructuring and reorganizing, rather than gate keeper and style police. Still, the end product is quite close to what I envisioned at the start.
The volume is by no means comprehensive and was not intended to be so. My own experience is with English language publishing and that shows in the overwhelming focus of the volume and the way in which Indian Language publishing has been approached. Educational publishing, especially school, is well represented and there is a strong coverage of enduring and newer trends and challenges in Indian publishing. Several topics not conventionally clubbed with publishing, like publishing services and supply chains, teaching of publishing and publisher associations, literary festivals and library movements, literary agents, selfpublishing and digital innovations, government policies and India in the global context, all can be found within these covers.
There were some issues on which we had multiple feeds and others that contributors were reluctant to cover.This is perhaps a sign of the times we live in more than anything intrinsic to Indian publishing.What is interesting is that the gaps tell their own story.
Adding a select bibliography on publishing to the book was a difficult but necessary task.This one is based more on my personal collection and word-of-mouth, than on Amazon searches.
This book is about publishers talking to their own fraternity and to
their readers, authors and communities, at a time when the industry faces
xiv preface more challenges and disruptions than ever before but remains optimistic and buoyant nevertheless. It brings together various pieces of the Indian publishing puzzle to create a picture, admittedly partial, of the what, why and how of India’s book business. In the process it raises questions, highlights yawning gaps and calls out for more action both by publishers themselves as also by other partners in the knowledge ecosystem that publishing is part of.
Nitasha Devasar January 2018
*All references to the Nielson report in the book refer to: The India Book
Market: Understanding the India Book Market, Nielsen BookScan, 2015 Introduction
Indian Publishing: an Insider’s Perspective
Nitasha Devasar
The Indian publishing industry has grown and evolved over time and in 2017 was estimated at US $6.7 billion.With a growing youthful population and the fourth largest higher education systems in the world, India is well placed to become a leading knowledge economy.A key requirement to achieve this goal is enhancement in the quality of our educational and research output and its outreach globally.This is virtually impossible without the services and support of the publishing industry. There is also the larger societal influence that publishing output brings at all levels and if you add Indian language publishing to that in English, the impact can be immense.
According to the 2015 Nielsen Report, Indian is the second largest English language, print book market in the world, with over 9,000 publishers producing 90,000 books annually and a CAGR of over 20 per cent over the last few years.These publishers directly employ 40,000 people and indirectly provide thousands of jobs in allied industries. Additionally, according to some estimates, 94 per cent of global content passes through India at some publishing stage, generating yet more employment.
For an industry that is larger than Bollywood and can have such a profound impact on future generation of Indians, some pretty fundamental questions have dogged publishers in recent times.
First, in the era of self-publishing and infinite free content (often called knowledge), what is it that publishers actually do? Underlying this is the
view: why should we pay for books, when it is all out there for free?
xvi introduction A related query, given the immense role technology has played in this free information boom, is: is the (print) book dead?
There is now sufficient data to disprove the imminent death of print, at least in the immediate future. Flipkart stopped offering e-books for download in December 2015, announcing that ‘The Indian book market is overwhelmingly dominated by physical books.’Worldwide, e-books sales have declined and plateaued out in recent years.
The first, more fundamental question, however, not only persists but has steadily gained ground.This may be one of the reasons why the impact of publishing on society is less recognized and issues such as copyright protection and the importance of preserving intellectual property do not get their due.
India is one of the few countries in the world where books are re
latively inexpensive, cheaper even than in many countries of Africa. Most multinational publishers across the spectrum price to market in India, providing special pricing on offerings that are relevant to users locally.This is true for locally published books as well.Yet, piracy is rampant and re-export of these low-priced editions to first world markets creates problems for the industry globally.
So, what is it that Publishers do? *
At a time when there is a problem of plenty in research, knowledge and information (50 million articles are published globally every year and research output is doubling every 20 years), and with self-publishing proliferating, publishers:
• Filter to curate the best, i.e., the most reliable and relevant.
• Frame, setting the format and in case of e-books, the technology.
They provide the branding and the casing or covering. All this to:
• Amplify, marketing and selling, driving discoverability and visibility,
digitally.
• Additionally, in the age of plenty, they provide:
* See Michael Bhaskar, The Content Machine:Towards a Theory of Publishing from the
Printing Press to the Digital Network, Anthem Press, 2013
introduction xvii • Services for authors and other customers, to support their unmet needs, at levels and prices that are accessible.
It is these services, rather than the book itself, that are the arena of
maximum creative activity currently.These could take the form of test prep or evaluation tools and teaching aids at the basic level to audio/ video feeds, specialist networks and communities to support different categories of readers. In case of paid services, most publishers offer special pricing to categories of customers, like students or researchers, located in India. Increasingly, local language options are also emerging, with startups like Pratilipi and Matrubharti as well Indian language publishing by main stream English language publishers, both in the academic and the general books space.