Q:What are the challenges involved in translations?
NKB: When we have so much of good literature available, the crux is to get good translations. But unfortunately there is a dearth of good translators. No academic courses are being offered by universities and institutions. I have no problem in learning English. But it should not be done at the cost of the mother tongue. I find that our youngsters are not well versed in their mother languages, due to mushrooming of English school education.Youngsters are very good in English, especially conversation. But they have no knowledge of their mother tongue.This is an alarming situation. Earlier things were good; mostly people were bilingual, which was our strength. So we have to preserve it.
Translation is one weapon through which the unity of India as a
nation can be preserved. It is about national integration.We need to take Indian literary fiction to other languages of the world. I would be happy for our works to be translated into foreign languages like French, German, Spanish, Italian. For that we need very good English translations. International publishers can only evaluate English version.They have good understanding of English but we need to preserve our essence as well.
If we select say 20 of our best literature marvels in the last 30 years, translate them beautifully to English, and present professionally to international publishers, our Indian literature will be on top. I feel we are capable of winning more Nobel Prizes in literature.
Q:What are the efforts being put in by you and your organization to support translations?
NKB: Translations are very close to me.Whenever I read good Bengali literature or a good author, I feel it can be projected to the national level. I translate it for that reason.When Niyogi Books was planning to diversify, we all were involved in it. I thought surviving only on coffee table books and illustrated books is not enough for publishers. Some diversification is needed. So translation is rejuvenated in a big way. We have three imprints—one for original English fiction; second for translations; and a third for semi-academic non-fiction—which was launched during the New Delhi World Book Fair 2018.We are already publishing in Marathi,Tamil, Oriya, Assamese and Urdu. My intention and ambition is to create own library of Indian literature in Niyogi Books.We are trying to showcase the best of Indian literature.
nirmal kanti bhattacharjee has been Editorial Director of Niyogi Books since 2013. In his previous roles, he was Editor of Sahitya Akademi’s bi-monthly journal Indian Literature and Director of National Book Trust. He entered the publishing industry as a member of the editorial team for the Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature Project undertaken by Sahitya Akademi, and later took charge of the Akademi’s Eastern Regional Office at Kolkata. He has also been Director of K.K. Birla Foundation, a private trust
devoted to the cause of art, literature and education.
33 PuBlIshIng In hInDI
“reinvent and renovate for newer heights ”
Aditi Maheshwari-Goyal
Q: Please tell us about the current landscape and key players in the Hindi-language market.
Aditi: Eminent Hindi publishing houses are mostly located in Delhi, and there are a few in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Kerala and West Bengal as well.The global big-5 of Hindi publishing are Vani Prakashan, Rajkamal Prakashan Group, Rajpal and Sons, Prabhat Prakashan and Bharatiya Jnanpith. In addition, there is Kitabghar Prakashan, Prakashan Sansthan,Aadhar Prakashan and Samayik Prakashan. Besides, National Book Trust (NBT) and Sahitya Akademi (SA) are the government-funded publishing houses producing Hindi books.All of them have done noteworthy work in Hindi literature. The relatively newer ones like Hind Yugm and Nayi Kitab Prakashan are catering to specific readership.The latest trend is Hindi imprints of English publishing conglomerates like Harper Hindi, Penguin Random House’s Hindi imprint,Westland and now Oxford University Press.
The Indian publishing sector is data-starved and experiences lack of analysis and meaningful insights.The only data available for reference is that provided by The Nielsen India Book Market Report, published in October 2015 by the market research firm Nielsen.According to the report, India’s print book market—which grew at a rate of 20.4 per cent, compounded annually between 2012 and 2015—is worth Rs 26,060 crore.The release of Nielsen’s report provides us with an opportune moment to take stock of the industry as a whole.We are still trying to estimate the size of Hindi publishing in this gamut, with more than nine states in India using it as
their dominant language of communication, and with 650 million speakers globally and 450 million who use it as their mother tongue.To give estimated figure of its sales, it could be a Rs 1.5 billion (150 crore) market. And the number of new books published every year in Hindi, might be about 5,000–6,000 books, in addition to about 1,000 translations from over 25 national and international languages.
Q:Why are there so few new publishers in Hindi?
Aditi: Because it is a low returns on investment profession.The balance sheets are always under immense pressure for any new business strategy or operation to take off in this field. Sometimes, commissioned publishing takes care of the cash flow for the new ventures, otherwise they find it very difficult to sustain.The Hindi publishing market has a tendency to grow by the x-axis, which is by the number of books each publishing house publishes each year, and not by the y-axis or the number of copies sold.This assertion holds true for most
publishing ventures.
It requires a lot of patience, perseverance, and, most importantly, passion to manage a Hindi publishing house. It is probably for this reason that most Hindi publishing houses are family-managed businesses.
Q:What are the genres and range of topics Hindi publishing is embracing? What are the latest trends?
Aditi: The range of topics that Hindi publishing is embracing has widened post liberalization in the last three decades. From the traditional kavita, kahani and upanyas, the Hindi readership is switching to popular and academic non-fiction, graphic books, travel writing, environment, self-help and ethnographies.With this, even the use of language has undergone a systematic socio-linguistic metamorphosis.The Shaharnama series is an attempt to talk about our cities and their histories in a new way.The Kavi ne Kaha series brought together Hindi poets. Dastan Kehte-Kehte is a series that brings most ustads of shayari under one roof.The ‘nayi wali Hindi’ campaign has created a buzz among youth.Also, it is after 12 long years that the National Film Award or Swarn Kamal has been conferred on the
writer and publisher of a Hindi book Lata: Sur Gatha. There are important literary magazines like Gyanoday, Alochna, Vak, and Sahitya Amrit along with several laghu-patrikas that underline the active debating culture of the Hindi public sphere.The latest addition to Hindi journals is Pratiman: world’s only peer- and blind-reviewed journal of social and political sciences in Hindi.
Q:What is the impact of traditional, online and retail bookselling mediums on Hindi publishing?
Aditi: All of them co-exist in Hindi. I would identify traditional bookselling with the word ‘passion’, online with ‘new-age’ and retail stores with ‘marketing’.The public library system buys books from publishers and makes them available to the masses in the country.The largest one being the Raja Rammohun Roy Library based in Kolkata.
The traditional book distribution channels have been working with very low operational turnaround cost.The new Goods and Services Tax (GST) has made it difficult for this category to remain self-sustained. The new-age commercial chains changed the financial ecosystem, which most Hindi publishers are finding difficult to adapt to. Hindi publishers do not find themselves comfortable buying bookshelf spaces, organizing expensive book-launch programmes or writing-off discounts that are bordering on the cost price of the books.These marketing activities never get justified against the production figures. Online retail, however, is a boon as it makes books available 24 hours for the readership.
While most Hindi publishers exist simultaneously in the dual world of traditional publi
shing and digital operations, the ripples of transition are being experienced far and wide in this ecosystem.The online bookstores, one of the most comprehensive innovations of the digital revolution to hit the banks of global publishing industry in the new millennium, brought with them an enhanced lifespan for books.They created fertile contexts for rethinking about making a book travel and find its readers globally.With it, however, came the biggest bane for the traditional bookselling business.The online booksellers bargain for heavy discounts with the publishers that get transferred to the readers largely
due to online retail’s low operational costs.
In addition, e-books and audio books are also catching up. Q:What is your take on recent trends like tie-ups with Englishlanguage publishers?
Aditi: I find them very interesting because it marries world-class intellectual property with local treatment in operations. Penguin Random House has tied up with independent Indian publishing company Manjul Publications to produce, market and distribute their Hindi publications.This has happened after they received lukewarm response in the first decade of the 21st century due to the complicated distribution system.The relationship has worked out well for the author, publisher and readers.The Hindi originals and translation list of HarperCollins Publications has also brought forth interesting titles but faces similar distribution problems.Yatra Books produces Indianlanguages translations for Westland Books Pvt. Ltd., now taken over by Amazon and has seen bigger sales in recent times.
Q:What is the role of social media in Hindi publishing? Aditi:The publishers are actively using their own websites, blogs, Facebook,Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram handles to cater to Hindi readership globally. Google AdWords and investment in digital marketing is finding a space in the annual budgets of Hindi publishing firms.
Social media has tremendously changed the face of Hindi book marketing. Earlier Hindi was marred by politics of criticism and handicapped by ever-rising advertising costs in mainstream media.With the advent of social media, every reader became a critic and there is an upsurge of democracy of thought at relatively low cost.Therefore, publishers have also refined their role in a very dramatic way from being the traditional printing facilitator to a public thinker responding to the changes in the socio-intellectual climate.
Q: How do you see the future of Hindi publishing? Aditi:With 48 spots in the country that are important centres of
Hindi readership, which is the largest for any language in India, I foresee a great future for Hindi.The selection of books that are getting translated in Hindi has also widened in the last three decades.The language has attracted major global corporations to set up editorial and operational offices in India.The market is very attractive and the recent announcement by the world’s oldest publisher, Oxford University Press, about entering the Indian-languages market and having Hindi as one of its focuses underlines its scope.
Demographically Hindi is the fourth-largest-spoken language globally.The international readership has improved in the last decade because of online sales and digital books. Hindi literature has become more vibrant and diverse with even more authors choosing to write their first books in Hindi.Also, the demand for quality books in terms of printing and operations has shot up.We find more and more people aspiring to resources in Indian languages as they lead the cultural, sociopolitical and economic growth engines of our country.This, along with logical solutions to pitfalls like lack of distribution channels and dependence on institutional sales, will amount to a glorious future for Hindi publishing.
aditi maheshwari-goyal is Director, Copyrights and Translation Department at Vani Prakashan. She is Managing Trustee at the Vani Foundation and Advisor to Jaipur BookMark, Mumbai Lit-o-Fest and Indore Literature Festival.Aditi is also Curator of India’s first Hindi literary festival ‘Hindi Mahotsav’, and teaches
publishing and editing at University of Delhi.
34 PuBlIshIng In BengalI
“Bengali publishers still rely on traditional ways of distribution”
Tridib Kumar Chatterjee
Q:What is the current landscape and who are the key players in the Bengali-language market?
Tridib: The current landscape of Bengali publications is very bright. New, young and educated people are joining in this field with bright ideas and new authors. Many of them have left their lucrative jobs and started Bengali publications not only from West Bengal but also from other parts of the country like Assam,Tripura, Bengaluru, Delhi. Hopefully, within a couple of years, these new publication houses will achieve success.
At present, some of the key players who focus on conventional book publishing are Ananda Publishers, Deys Publishing, Mitra & Ghosh Publishers, Patra Bharati, Sishu Sahitya Samsad, Deb Sahitya Kutir, Karuna Prakashani, and Sahityam. Some upcoming publishers are Gangchil, Karigar, Cafe Table, Lalmati, Pata Bahar Publications, Parampora,Atmoja Publishers, Osomoy Prakashan, Reekal Books, Feriwala, Dhansiri and Sristisukh Publishers.
Q: Are these family businesses?
Tridib: Bengalis have always had an inclination towards literature and culture.This is because of a 200-year heritage of rich literature.The great social reformer in the 19th-century Bengal Renaissance, Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, was the key founder of Bengali prose. He was also a pioneer publisher of Bengal.The great Rabindranath Tagore also founded
his own publishing house,Visva Bharati. Many of the modern Bengali Publishing houses are not family businesses. But interestingly, it has been seen that often the grandfather started a book publishing which couldn’t survive, beyond two generations.The third generation again started a publishing house with a new name and style and the fourth generation diversified the business by starting another new publishing house. Patra Bharati, my publishing house, is a good example of this. My grandfather started Vidyodaya Library in 1934 which came to an end in 1980 due to family partition. I started Patra Bharati in 1981 and my daughter Esha, after completing her MBA, joined me in 2014 and she not only took forward my business but also started BEE Books—an English publishing house. Mitra & Ghosh Publishers was founded by Gajendranath Mitra and Sumatha Nath Ghosh, both eminent authors of their time.After their departure, this private limited company was carried forward by the shareholders like Sabitendra Nath Roy and Manish Chakraborti. The majority of the key players in present Bengali publishing houses are either controlled by new generations who may be the heirs or new people or the entire house was taken over by another bigger publishing house.Apart from these examples, there are a few other names like Subarnarekha, Signet Press, Chuckervertty Chatterjee & Company, taken over by New Central Book Agency,Ananda Publishers and Deb Sahitya Kutir.
Q: How have marketing and outreach changed in recent times? Tridib: Most of the conventional Bengali Publishers are dependent on traditional offline distribution channels through rural and semi-urban booksellers of various districts and participation in hundreds of book fairs happening in West Bengal,Assam and Tripura. Online business is not possible in many remote places where internet and courier service is not available.
On the contrary, new-generation publishers who don’t have distribution strength all over the states and are mainly concentrated in metro cities are trying to avail of the online platform. But this is merely not more than 5 per cent of the total turnover.
174 publishing in bengali Q:What are the geographies and customer demographics for Bengali books?
Tridib: In general, Bengalis have unparalleled love for books.This is the reason why the International Kolkata Book Fair has grown to an unbelievable figure of 2.2 million people and Rs 25 crore direct bookselling in 12 days.Apart from this mega event, as I mentioned, there are profound customer bases in districts, Bengali-dominated Assam and Tripura. Further, a huge literate and cultured Bengali population of the high-income group stays in the metro cities of India—Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad—which the Publishers & Booksellers Guild caters to every year with books of all eminent authors and publishers during special Bengali ev
ents like Durga Puja, Bengali New Year,Tagore Jayanti, and it always gets very good results.
Q:What are the key creative trends and author base?
Tridib: Bengali has a very strong author base; every year special big volumes of Puja issues of magazines sell thousands of copies.The authors contributing to those volumes have their fiction come out in book form within a couple of months. Most of these fictional books sell well.
As a regional publisher, I have noticed the increasing interest of readers in the following categories of fiction: historical, religious, political, crime and dark fantasy.
Q: Are you selling translation rights of the books to other regionallanguage publishers? How do you view the potential of this? Tridib: Among the Indian languages, the number of books translated into English is the highest for Bengali. But as far as other neighbouring languages are concerned, the sales of translated Bengali books are not so encouraging.
Q:What is your view on big multinationals getting into regionallanguage publishing including Bengali?
Tridib: We welcome it, but before getting into Bengali-language publishing, multinationals must feel the pulse of Bengali publications. Already, many multinationals have started translations of their books written by eminent Indian English authors into Bengali. So far as my knowledge goes, success has not been achieved.
tridib kumar chatterjee is Managing Director of Patra Bharati Group of Publications, a major player in the Bengali-language publishing industry. He is also Chief Editor of Kishore Bharati, a children’s periodical.Tridib writes regularly in various Bengali newspapers and periodicals.
PuBlIshIng In malayalam “experimenting with new ways of writing” Ravi Deecee
Q:What is the current landscape of Malayalam-language publishing?
Ravi: In general and trade publishing, the market for Malayalamlanguage publishing would be Rs 75–100 crore with almost 3,000 titles published in Malayalam every year.They are mostly family-run businesses, traditionally handed over from father to son; one or two are public limited companies.
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