Publishers On Publishing

by Nitasha Devasar

  Q:What are the recent trends, opportunities and challenges in the K-12 publishing segment?

  HG: The major trend is that schools do not want just books, they want a complete solution with digital products, web support material, teacher resources, assessments, worksheets, etc.There are lots of opportunities for players who can provide these kinds of products and services. But the environment is definitely challenging.The market is becoming more and more competitive but we believe only players with long-term vision and focus on customer satisfaction will have the best chance of surviving in the coming years.

  Q: How has the technology interface evolved over the last five years? HG: In the education space, technology has evolved a lot in the last five years.There are new app developments. In the S. Chand Group also, we have a smartclass by our group company DS Digital, which offers a digital classroom solutions with a rich portfolio of interactive K-12 curriculum-based technology products and services in all subject areas. Based on modern educational research and established educational practices, it uses the latest and easy-to-use technological framework for an enriching teaching–learning environment.The solution presents a holistic educational programme with digital and print materials, studenttracking and report-generating facilities, professional development

  services, and technical maintenance provisions. We also offer MyStudyGear, which is an innovative app which makes education and guidance available to students at their fingertips. It is a free model now and we hope to convert it into a freemium model.

  We are also launching first-ever books with virtual reality content for 9th and 10th standards for the school market.These would be available in six books of science (physics/chemistry/biology) by Lakhmir Singh. Students can have a 360o immersive view of the topics.We will also provide a free VR glass which the student can use to have the virtual reality experience.

  We think technology is an enabler and not a disruptor in education. S. Chand has most of its schoolbooks coming with some or the other digital or web support material for learners or teachers.That is what we believe has made books a hybrid solution with print and digital combined into one.

  Q: How do you maintain the balance between content and platform/technology?

  HG: Content and technology are inter-related and we have to first create quality content and then comes technology development for deployment of that content in the best possible manner. For technology development, we depend mostly on outsourced vendors who are experts in their field, with strong internal quality checks and controls to ensure quality standards are met. I believe content and technology go hand-in-hand. Pure content is not saleable anymore; it has to be supported with some kind of technology interface.

  Q:What is the future of technology in K-12 publishing? HG: Augmented Reality (AR) is also happening in books now. Our basic aim is not to be pure print publishers but more of complete education solutions providers who can deliver quality content in accordance with the changing needs of the customer.We want to be more of content and service players, who can deliver on any platform. Today, we are delivering through books; tomorrow we may deliver through web, digital, tablets, mobiles, etc. One thing is certain, a learner or teacher would require some kind of intervention of quality content to teach or learn better.

  Q:What would your focus areas be?

  HG: Our company will always look for new technological development for learners and teachers. Early this year, by the second quarter, we will launch a new product for pre-schools. For this, we have tied up with one of the best education companies in South Korea, which is the largest education technology company.They have a product called NuriNori, which provides state-of-the-art quality teaching materials and tools on- / off-line for teachers. It aims to contribute to the healthy development and growth of kids by enhancing teachers’ capacity and improving the early childhood education environment. In addition, it reduces teachers’ activity preparation time; they can share more time communicating with kids.

  Besides, we are also creating our own TestPrep platform, where we will put lots of our products which are already bestsellers. Children can take tests and improve their learning and performance.

  Q: How would technology have an impact on learning in schools? HG: Schools now have various options like smartclasses, tablets and other solutions. It solely depends on the infrastructure of school and its willingness to adopt technology, on how it can integrate print with digital solution.At S. Chand, we are helping them adopt it in a much better fashion.

  Q: How would it square up with the government focus on using NCERT (National Council for Educational Research and Training) books?

  HG: The NCERT has been selling books for many decades and has also started e-basta. But technology is not about offering PDFs of the book, it is much more. Children need much more interaction in the learning experience, which is not there in PDF content.

  Q:What is the value and volume of K-12 publishing for the S. Chand Group?

  HG: S. Chand has become the second publishing company in India to be listed on the Indian stock exchanges.Today, we sell anything between 40 and 45 million books a year in this segment.The target value will be close to Rs 700–750 crore for the upcoming school season.

  Q:Tell us about acquisitions, focus and potential in the regional market?

  HG: We believe S. Chand has made significant acquisitions in the publishing segment in the last four to five years, the recent one being that of Chhaya Prakashani.We believe there are more opportunities for acquisitions in the regional market, especially in the western and southern markets.We are also talking to a player outside India, which specializes in international schools all over the world, specifically in the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) Board.

  Q:What are the steps taken to stay ahead of competition? HG:As a company, we have to be very competitive and aggressive and nimble on our feet.We have to take decisions and make sure our actions are faster and better than others. So, we do more and more marketing activities to connect with our customers, like teacher workshops, more interactions with teachers in schools, making sure that all our customers are serviced properly.We are also conducting a lot of ground-level activities that very few players are doing, like teacher conclaves and educational tours outside India.We believe these things are helping us get more ground coverage and improve our relationship with schools, which will help us get more business.

  Q: How is the CBSE directive to use NCERT books impacting school publishers and how does your organization plan to handle this development?

  HG: There is no directive that says that schools can use only NCERT

  books. It was more of a media scare. Schools are free to choose their books as they always have been. Some schools prefer NCERT books. Most of the publishers provide support materials with their books, which are right now not available with NCERT books.

  Q:What will be your strategy in the next three to five years? HG: We want to give good quality content and service to our customers and make sure we increase our market share in the school segment organically at the rate of 18–20 per cent per year.We are also looking at acquisitions; whenever we find a perfect fit, we might go in for another acquisition.

  himanshu gupta has been Managing Director of S. Chand Publishing since 2007. He has over 15 years of experience in the knowledge products and services industry. He was Vice President (South) of the Federation of Indian Publishers in 2012-13, and received the Young Publisher Award from the Federation of Educational

  Publishers in India for 2011. 50

  Classroom learnIng anD teaCher suPPort “need to develop PPP model-based solutions” Sivaramakrishnan V. (Siva)

  Q:What are the biggest challenges to school publishing today and what are the ways of dealing with it?

  Siva:We would like to call out three challenges that the present education system must address quickly. Foremost being the ability of schools/parents to sift through tons of education content and select only quality lea
rning material.This is also pertinent given the easy availability of uncurated content on the internet.The second challenge pertains to the integration of digital with print—this must be seamless and completely aligned to benefit the learner. It is not uncommon to see disparate content being delivered to the learner via different mediums, which does more harm than good.The third challenge is the need to offer continued professional development to teachers, who are the principle pivot in the teaching– learning process.The K-12 community must come together to respond to these challenges and at some stage also engage the government/regulators to develop public–private-partnership model-based solutions.

  Q:Who according to you are the key stakeholders in school publishing?

  Siva: The government, educational institutions, authors, teachers, students and parents, privation education players are all stakeholders in the school-publishing system.There are interdependencies, synergies and opportunities to collaborate with one other for the benefit of the learner. The contribution of each of them is crucial to the further development

  of the school-education ecosystem.

  246 classroom learning and teacher support Q:What does the Oxford University Press (OUP) brand stand for in school publishing in India and how has that changed over time? Siva: The OUP’s longstanding presence of over a century in India is testimony to the acceptance of its education products and solutions by generations of learners. Its school education publishing programme in India draws from its vast experience of working with schools, students, teachers, authors and others in the education ecosystem.The OUP brand today is synonymous with pedagogically superior content packaged to produce quality and trusted education products and solutions that impact the learner profoundly. It has remained innovative in its approach to product development in order to better respond to the needs of the new-age learners.

  Q:What is the focus of your publishing programme today? Siva:Our present-day school publishing programme is focused on producing classroom learning outcomes.This has entailed packaging content differently, often giving prominence to illustrations and design given that children nowadays are visual learners.There’s also a focus on summative assessments which are neatly integrated with our courses to enable teachers and students to have a ‘measure of learning’ in the course of instruction.

  One of OUP’s strong focuses in recent times has been the development of teacher support material, both print and electronic. This we believe empowers the teacher immensely in a classroom setting, especially if they are trained by experts to effectively deploy these resources in the course of teaching. Our direct engagement with several thousand teachers every year, through training workshops, brings us deep insights into the needs of the new-age learner, allowing us to continuously improve our products for the better.

  Q:Tell us about e-books uptake in schools. How do you respond to this?

  Siva: Digital uptake is fast catching on and its adoption is taking place in multiple ways, e-books being one of them.The regular use of e-readers

  and devices in classrooms is still a very metro-city phenomenon, and

  sivaramakrishnan v. 247 there also, limited to a small percentage of schools. Print books continue to be the primary medium of instruction in classrooms, of course supported by digitized content played out on LCDs or digitized boards. OUP has a vast and growing repository of e-books, as also capabilities to digitize content on demand for varied platforms.

  sivaramakrishnan v. is Managing Director of Oxford University Press India, with regional responsibilities including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. He has extensive experience in the education

  services, e-commerce, automobiles and FMCG domains. In his previous assignment, Siva was Executive President, Education Services at Manipal Global Education Services. He worked for nearly ten years with the Ford Motor Company and has held various consumer

  branding roles within Procter & Gamble. 51

  sCIenCe anD teChnology “Challenges and opportunities coexist” N.K. Mehra

  Q: Given the promising landscape for higher-education (HE) publishing in India, how do you approach the Indian market? What is the current and ongoing strategy for growth?

  NKM:A lot of higher education is linked with publishing. S&T publishing suffers from lack of quality authorship.We don’t have the kind of authors we would like to see.There is a lot of plagiarism existing which is a big problem. Indian-authored books are not being cited as frequently as we would like to see, though there is an increasing trend. Research work is not being published in books, though it is published in local journals, however these are too few and far between, compared to international publishers. So local research publishing is suffering to a great extent.

  On the other hand, overseas publishers pick up this research because they are used to publishing research, but then the Indian publishers suffer.Authors would like their books to be published by international publishers rather than Indian publishers, because they get higher grades for their promotion when they produce books under the imprints of foreign publishers.

  But there is a silver lining too. Many overseas-based Indian authors are keen to publish books in India, to reach Indian students and also wish to give something back to the country. But it’s not philanthropic; they do expect royalties. Even so it is a tendency which we need to encourage.

  E-books are constantly used in libraries which have a separate budget to buy e-books. Indian publishers don’t have so many such books,

  so most e-books are purchased from foreign publishers. Indian publishers

  n.k. mehra 249

  are working with aggregators to make their books more popular. But returns will take time. Indian books are not being co-published, primarily because Indian, American as well as British publishers publish in English, and they would choose their own authors unless the book is so good it strikes the eye of the editor. Besides, if you opt for French, Spanish publishers, it is not cost-effective. Even then, co-publishing goes on.At Narosa, we have books translated in Chinese, Russian, etc., and we have sold rights to American and Arabic publishers. Our mathematics books are being reviewed in international journals, which is good for both the publisher as well as author.These things are happening and if things are not bright, they are not bleak either.

  We have the Notebooks of Ramanujan (Srinivasa Ramanujan) in two volumes, which brought us into the mathematics world globally.The books were published in 1988 and are still in demand today.

  Q:What is your pricing strategy and how do you deal with the photocopier competition?

  NKM: We cannot keep reducing price, that’s not the solution. It’s not the pricing but the attitude of people that has to be changed. If attitudinal change is there, then the books are sold.When the books are sold and the quantity printed is higher, prices automatically come down.

  But students still do not buy books, although they get grants.They make packages from different publishers and that becomes their book. Q:What is your take on e-books?

  NKM: I was looking at a British Publishers Association report, which clearly states that e-book sales have reached a certain level and are not increasing any more in academic/scientific publishing. In fact, e-book sales are going down. Physical books are still considered important.

  Q:What are the priorities for your publishing house in the next few years?

  NKM: I think the next five years will be a difficult period for finding

  250 science and technology financing, authors, sales, etc. But it could be bright also, given the fact that we are not only publishing textbooks but reference books as well, with certain books which we sell more of abroad than in India. In that sense, we are in a good situation.When you look at the research work, the print runs are going down, almost one-fourth of what they used to be.

  n .k. mehra is Managing Director, Narosa Publishing House and President, Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP). He started his publishing career in 1959 and set up two companies, Narosa Book Distributors and Narosa Publishing Hou
se. Nandi, as he is popularly known, has been on FIP’s Executive Committee for over ten years, and has also served on the Executive Committee of the Federation of Publishers’ and Booksellers’Association in

  India where he was President for two terms. 52

  humanItIes anD soCIal sCIenCes “think of a topic and routledge will have a book on it” Pankaj Bhardwaj

  Q. Routledge is an old and strong HSS (humanities and social science) presence in India. Could you tell us how this is a strength in the current market? Can it also be a liability in a traditionally S&T (science and technology) market?

  Pankaj: In 2017, Routledge published 8,500 books covering 1,250 unique topics including unconventional ones such as disability sport, music theory, Egyptian archaeology, guerrilla filmmaking, dance movement therapy, ethnomusicology, trauma and dissociation, global slavery, rap and hip-hop, ship operations, quality of life, bullying and truancy, animals and ethics.

  As evident here, the width and breadth of the Routledge publishing programme is such that it not only covers current trends of academic disciplines, but also emerging academic areas.That’s what makes it a strong HSS brand in India and other world markets. Often, in conversations with academics, I say ‘You think of a topic and Routledge will have a book on it.’

  I don’t think that India is traditionally an S&T market. It has an equally strong HSS market which has grown stronger in recent years with the emergence of institutions like South Asian University,Azim Premji University, Indian National Defence University, Shiv Nadar University,Ashoka University, and O.P. Jindal Global University, where the primary academic focus is HSS. HSS publishing enjoys a unique edge over S&T, namely ‘the older the better’ and this characteristic makes HSS publishing commercially viable where the backlist can sometimes