The World Book and Copyright Day is being celebrated the world-over today. In India, books and publishing have seen a boom in the last decade. The ushering in of the knowledge-based economy in the new millennium has contributed to the surge in the demand for books. But although book publishing and book reading are gaining in numbers, awareness about copyright remains woefully lacking.

To commemorate the World Book and Copyright Day, we present a snapshot view of Copyright – the concept, the legal framework, the role of publishing industry and emerging discussions on the idea of copyright.

What is Copyright?
A discussion about the term ‘copyright’ often begins with someone saying “copyright is the ‘right to copy’.” Nearly always a nervous laugh accompanies the joke – evidence that the concept is vague, not just to authors but even to professionals in media and publishing industries.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property (along with patents, trademarks etc), which is the bedrock of creative and cultural industries. It protects the rights of the creators of literary, musical, dramatic and artistic works, cinematograph films and sound recordings. Copyright rules vary for these different classes of works.

Credits: Wikimedia Commons

In the case of ‘literary work’, the term refers to the ‘exclusive right’ to reproduce the work, issue copies of it to the public, or perform the work in public, or communicate the work to the public. It also includes subsidiary rights, such as to make a cinematograph film or sound recording of the work, or to make a translation and adaptation of the work. In effect, copyright is exploited as an economic right. Copyright sustains the production and dissemination of creative works through a legal framework, by rewarding their creators, while also preventing unauthorised use of literary works.

Copyright ownership rests with the person responsible for creating the work in the first instance. It is possible for another party to become the copyright owner when the work is commissioned on work-for-hire and a fee is paid upfront or when the creator of work relinquishes her copyright and grants it to someone else.

When someone plagiarises a literary work, or uses it fully or partially without the copyright owner’s permission (“pirates” it), they infringe copyright. It is wrong to assume that a copyrighted work can be used without permission by simply attributing it to the author. Some exceptions are made in public interest – explained further below.

What is Copyrightable?
All tangible forms of an abstract idea can be copyrighted, such as handwritten or typed manuscripts, lectures, letters, maps, drawings, plans, photographs and even computer software (which is considered a ‘literary work’, but is accorded special rights in regards to sale or hire under the law). The work must be ‘original’.

Ideas or concepts are not protected by copyright, neither are historical facts or titles of books, names of publications, generic short-word combinations or plots.

Although it can be registered formally, copyright is automatic and comes into existence as soon as the work is created. If one chooses to register their copyright in the Register of Copyrights maintained by the Copyrights Office in New Delhi, it serves as prima facie evidence in the court of law.

Every country has the right to make its own copyright laws. In India, literary works are protected by the Copyright Act of 1957. Over the years, amendments have been effected to align the Act with international treaties and conventions that India is signatory to: Berne Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) etc. The Copyright Amendment Bill of 2010 – that seeks to introduce new provisions for copyright protection in the digital environment, and defines the liability of internet service providers among other changes – is currently under consideration in the Parliament.

Copyright and the Publishing Contract
In the book-publishing industry, the terms under which a creative work is owned and exploited are enshrined in the publishing contract. “The bundle of rights under copyright includes the right to reproduce, translate, adapt and disseminate.” The author “assigns” the publisher the right to exploit this bundle of rights in return for royalty or license fees. Either all or some rights can be assigned and the assignment has to be in writing, i.e. as an agreement or contract. Oral contracts are not permissible under law. Yet, in many instances in India, copyrights have been given on the basis of trust through oral agreement, often leading to exploitation of authors or creating misunderstandings between authors and publishers.

The period of assignment is for five years by default unless an extension is mutually agreed upon. The time to publish, from when the manuscript is received by the publisher, if not mentioned, is one year by default. After which, rights revert back to the author. But it can be extended by mutual agreement.

Royalty rates are listed for each scenario (sale of published book, sale of translation rights etc) set as percentages of ‘net receipts’ of the publisher. The publisher is obligated to disclose the quantity of the first print run and to fix the scheme for reprints.

When the creator of the work assigns publishing rights through a contractual agreement with a publisher, the publisher becomes the custodian of the copyright. In all cases, authors or creators of the original work enjoy ‘moral rights’ – to be identified as the creator of the work (‘right to paternity’) and to object to any distortion or modification of the work (‘right to integrity’).

The work submitted should not be plagiarised and should not violate any existing copyright, and the author has to indemnify the publisher from these.

The work by an employee produced in the course of an employment automatically becomes the copyright of the employer as in the case of journalists working for a newspaper. Any exception to this is only possible if an agreement is made to the contrary.

The Publisher’s Role and ‘Related Rights’
Books are traded as a product, and the publishing business is an industrial and economic activity. The role of the publisher needs to be understood in this context. Publishers add value to the author’s work by employing editors, designers, typesetters, sales and marketing professionals and (in big companies) publicists. They make the work fit for public consumption and market it to the ‘trade’, and become the link to the rest of the value chain – printers, wholesalers and booksellers. Traditional publishing business model has been dependent on this long-established value-chain.

For their investments, publishers enjoy ‘related rights’: they have the right over the edition they publish. The soft copy of layouts, films, plates, stocks and publicity material are the publisher’s property. The author is not allowed to produce a competing work that could harm the sale of the book while it is in print.

Balancing Commerce with Public Interest
The Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Commercial aspects of publishing have brought the publishing industry in conflict with cultural imperatives, of knowledge sharing and information dissemination. The copyright law makes provisions for balancing the commercial and public interests in the production and dissemination of literary works.

Fair Deal
‘Fair dealing’ refers to conditions under which a fair use of copyrighted material is permitted – for research, study, criticism, review, news reporting or in library and schools and in the legislature – without specific permission of the owners. The law has specified the uses under which exemptions are made.

There are two underlying principles to consider: one should not derive economic gain from the copyrighted work of someone else, unless the right is voluntarily surrendered; it is the right of the copyright holder to decide whether her work should be used fully or partially in instances where ‘fair deal’ is not applicable.

It is a mistaken notion that one can use a copyrighted work by simply attributing it to the author or the source.

Compulsory Licensing
The idea of ‘compulsory licensing’ was introduced in the international norms of the Berne Convention to facilitate access to information for developing countries. In the 1983 amendment to the Indian Copyright Act, provisions for compulsory license of “orphaned” works were introduced. This meant that if the author could not be traced or was not alive, a compulsory license could be obtained to publish the work, under certain conditions. A compulsory license can also be obtained for publishing a translation of a work, granted after a period of seven years from the first publication of the work.

The Copyright Board in India is authorised to issue a ‘compulsory license’ to publish works that are within copyright, under certain conditions: i.) an ‘orphaned work’ which is of public interest, but whose author or heir is unknown, untraceable or dead; ii) a work of national/public interest deliberately withheld from public by the author or her heirs; iii.) for publishing a translation of an existing work. Due to the lack of awareness of the law, the provision of compulsory licensing has rarely been invoked.

In the proposed amendment of 2010, the scope of this provision was extended, to bring works into formats suited to people with disabilities.

Public Domain
Copyright does not remain indefinitely. In India, the ‘term of copyright’ subsists for life of the author plus 60 years after that, irrespective of copyright ownership. When a work comes into the public domain, it loses restrictions of the copyright law. Such works can be copied, reused, shared or published without restrictions. An author could also donate her work to the public and make it available freely.

However, under the Indian law the moral rights to ‘paternity’ and ‘integrity’ are not applicable when works go out of copyright. The new amendment of the Copyright Act seeks to preserve perpetual right to claim authorship and to prevent texts from being mutilated or distorted.

Works that were created before formal copyright legislations were in currency are also available in the public domain.

Digital technology and the Internet have given a boost to knowledge sharing in the public domain. The Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) founded in 1971 in the United States is one such successful example, which offers 38000 free ebooks online, and collaborates with a number of affiliates and partners to make them available.

Recently, activists around the world have called for disallowing copyrighting of traditional knowledge texts and works of cultural heritage.

Emergent Alternatives
The internet and other digital technologies have fostered changes in access, production and distribution of literary works and “content”. The restrictive nature of copyright law in giving access to information and knowledge has been hotly debated. The ‘copyleft’ principle, which emerged from the free and open-source software initiatives (FOSS), encourages authors to voluntarily allow any person to access, reproduce, adapt or distribute her work, based on an open licensing framework. Of the several copyleft licenses available today, the six Creative Commons (CC) licenses are most popular for literary works.

The Creative Commons licenses have been developed by a US-based not-for-profit organisation of the same name. The organisation aspires to create a “richer public domain”. Creative Commons licenses provide for both, non-commercial as well as commercial uses of the literary work, depending on the option selected by the copyright holder who wishes to make her content available openly (‘open content’).

These licenses consist of four major condition modules: Attribution (BY), requiring attribution to the original author; Share Alike (SA), allowing derivative works under the same or a similar license (later or jurisdiction version); Non-Commercial (NC), requiring the work is not used for commercial purposes; and No Derivative Works (ND), allowing only the original work, without derivatives. These modules combine to form six major licenses.

The licenses were first drafted in compliance with the US legislations, but since the year 2010 localised licenses have been developed for enforcing in various jurisdictions. The Creative Commons India affiliate housed at the IIT-Bombay has developed the CC license suite for India.

Open Publishing
Open publishing is the process of creating open content in transparent manner. Readers can view, contribute, as well as view the editorial decisions made by others. Wikipedia is an example of this. The content on wikipedia is accessible under the Creative Commons Attribution-Shared Alike license (CC BY-SA), which allows anyone to share and adapt the work under the condition that it is attributed and any resulting work is distributed in the same way.

Open Access Publishing
With public access to the world wide web becoming widespread in the new millennium, this form of distribution technology spawned the Open Access movement.

In particular, academic institutions and universities, which create and disseminate research have had to rethink their priorities when it comes to publishing. The Open Access debate has stemmed from the need to make publicly-funded research freely accessible through internet platforms. Unlike in open publishing, in open access publishing, peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles are kept intact retaining the authorship of one or a fixed group of authors. It is the barrier of access, in the form of subscription fees, site licenses and pay-per-view etc, which is removed. CC licenses are often used to specify usage rights. Some traditional scholarly journals allow their issues to become open access after a certain time period.

There is an ongoing debate over the economics and reliability of distribution models for Open Access, among universities, researchers, librarians, funding agencies and government officials and publishers.

The Way Forward
Copyright is an evolving concept and new developments, especially those in the technology domain, are compelling us to rethink it more than ever before. Traditional publishing models are facing several challenges in this context and the resulting complex landscape is making it difficult for authors and publishers to comprehend the gamut of options that lie before them. Since copyright is also a cultural idea, rooted in the country of its origin, it is equally important to view it from different facets. What is vital is that publishers and authors in India need to work together to understand copyright and locate it within the changing nature of the publishing industry.

Helpful Links:
Copyright Office of India: copyright.gov.in
Indian Copyright blog: copyright.lawmatters.in
Centre for Internet & Society: cis-india.org
Creative Commons: creativecommons.org
Copyright for Librarians: cyber.law.harvard.edu/copyrightforlibrarians/Main_Page

UNESCO page on World Book and Copyright Day: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/world-book-and-copyright-day-2012

Vinutha Mallya is Senior Editor at Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad.

Photo Courtesy: TaxCredits' Photostream at Flickr.com

As Indian publishers gradually take to eBooks, they will have to contend with the question of how these eBooks should be priced. In the mature markets of the West, there is still no consensus on this issue. Amazon prices its books starting at $1.99 and going up to $9.99 but how much they, or the publishers they represented, were making from the transaction is anyone’s guess. It is widely accepted that in many cases, Amazon was using its eBook catalogue as loss leaders, especially to enhance sales of its e-Reader, the Kindle.

For now, many publishers have priced their books on par with their printed editions. Given the perception that electronic versions of books do not invoke many of the overheads that printed copies do (like storage, transportation, even the cost of an additional copy), the pressure to review this practice and reduce the cost of an eBook when compared to its print edition will soon be large.

So what must an eBook cost? While we do not have the answers, there are certain factors that must be considered.

1. The price must cover costs:  Contrary to public perception, eBooks do cost money to make, especially if these eBooks are produced for back lists, which is often the case. It isn’t enough to produce an electronic version of the text, the quality of the presentation of that text is equally important and costs time and money. The “conversion” process from raw text to a format that e-Readers can understand is equally time-consuming and expensive. Similarly, there is a cost involved in the storage of these electronic files, the e-commerce infrastructure required to facilitate the sale of eBooks and their dissemination to the buyer’s reading device. If publishers decide to opt to “DRM their books”, that too costs money. The price of the book must therefore reflect all these costs.
2. The price must “make sense” to the buyer: Even while there are expenditures that must be recouped, the price of an eBook should satisfy the buyer’s sense of value for money. The current perception of many buyers, fueled by the almost intangibility of the eBook, is that eBooks should cost next to nothing. Pricing eBooks on par with their printed editions may therefore not cut it with buyers. Publishers could change that perception by offering more, but given that any extras also cost money, that might be a risky game to play.
3. The price must trigger a purchase: Ultimately, the price must entice a buyer to purchase the book, whether on impulse or otherwise. Currently there is indication that a low price will do that. In the West, there is general agreement that anything below a $5.00 threshold will increase the chances of an impulse purchase. Given that e-Commerce is only taking off here in India (and that too primarily on a cash-on-delivery model), one can only hazard a guess on what such a threshold might be in India.
4. The price must reflect the brand: Like some publishers price their printed books very high to convey a brand value, perhaps they could try to do the same thing with eBooks. Joe Wiekert, of Tools of Change, argues that the recent practice of agency pricing might do more harm than good and dilute the brand of a publishing house. Publishers should have the liberty to experiment with pricing and understand the mood of the market.
5. Pricing must be a part of a larger strategy: Ultimately the price of an eBook must reflect a larger strategy of the publisher. The price of the book might vary depending on whether the eBook is sold alone or is bundled with the print version, on whether the eBook is being used to hook the buyer to new reading habits or on whether the eBook is a part of a larger, penetration strategy where it is being used to reach to new readers and geographies. This the publisher alone can decide.

As the excitement over eBooks continues to build and more publishers develop their titles as eBooks the question of how to price them will be an important one. Moreover, it will set user expectations regarding what should the price of an eBook be. Many publishers will argue that the prices of printed books hasn’t changed much over the last few decades and there is much resistance from the market against adjusting the cover price of books to even adjust for inflation. One hopes that in the case of eBooks, the story is different.

Disclaimer: Our publishing house, CinnamonTeal Publishing, provides conversion services into EPUB and MOBI formats, especially for books in the Indian languages. Similarly we provide an e-commerce infrastructure that allows for the sale of these books. That said, we still do not know which side of the pricing debate we are on.

We had six people attending the first meeting and along with us made for a full house of 11. While we thought that the group should not be constrained with too many rules, we did put a framework in place:

a. Unlike most other book clubs, we decided not to insist on just one book being read for the meetings. Instead members could decide what they each wanted to read and come to the meeting prepared to discuss that book. We decided on this approach because it might not be feasible to find so many copies of the same book and because not everyone may feel inclined to read the same book.

b. However, based on one member’s suggestion, we thought we would all consider reading the same book twice a year i.e. once every six months, all members would discuss the same book at the meeting.

c. At the book club meeting, books alone would be discussed and every effort would be made to ensure that the discussions did not stray away from books

d. While discussing, members could speak about:

• The plot of the book (without giving too much away)
• The characters in the book
• A new author they had read or heard about
• Perhaps even discuss who would play the role of characters in the book if it were made into a movie.
• Other aspects that impacted the reader the most

We are excited about this book club and hope it will be a place where intellectually stimulating conversations take place. We are planning another book club for children. We will keep you posted on that one.

While almost ubiquitous in every conversation of consequence and even during inconsequential banter, there seemed to be still no clarity on various aspects of ebook creation and their distribution. Far from being a nice thing to have, publishers were told that they would perish if they did not invest in the development of eBooks. One could find any number of stalls, and an even greater army of salespeople strutting around, preaching the benefits of eBooks and their importance towards ensuring the survival of publishers.

Dig deeper and the answers were hard to find.

For instance, although there are enough statistics to prove that ebook sales have spiked, India-specific figures explaining digital consumption of data are hard to come by. Many publishers we spoke to pointed to the abnormally high growth in purchases of the iPad and other similar tablets as indication that the Indian customer is developing an appetite for these devices and will soon read their books off them. While that might be a logical argument to make, there are no figures that prove that ebook purchases are also on the rise, in step with the increase in sales of digital devices.

During a conversation we had, Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, a publishing consultant and columnist, mentioned that a renowned publisher of academic journals and books had seen sales of their print editions dramatically decrease while witnessing an equivalent upsurge of ebook purchases. If that is indeed the case, and many other publishers of STM books do vouch for this, bodies like NBT, FIP or FPBAI should investigate this phenomenon further and make sales data available for everyone so that other publishers can plan for the future accordingly. There is yet no sign that such a conversation might happen, where publishers can learn from the experiences of their colleagues.

It also remains to be seen whether the lessons learned in academic publishing can be applied to trade publishing and to what measure. While it is true that in the West the purchases of eBooks have zoomed up, some questions need to be answered. For example, what percentage of titles published are bought in digital form? What is the average price of an ebook that is purchased? What kinds of books are purchased and what kinds see almost no takers?

Most importantly, how closely do ebook purchases mirror current bestseller lists?

The last question is of importance because if consumers buy just those eBooks that they read about often, does it make sense for publishers to convert all their titles to digital formats? Given the fact that bestsellers almost always come from a small group of publishers (and often because of their marketing muscle), does it augur well for small publishers and independents to invest in the development of eBooks? eBooks are even more prone to remaining obscure than printed books, given the absence of a “shelf”, so has anyone bothered to investigate what sells an ebook and what might be the marketing budget required to make it sell? And what that might mean for independent publishers who have a tiny marketing budget to begin with.

It is important to answer these questions because many salespeople at the book fair were insisting that publishers convert their whole lists into the digital format. These publishers are almost pressured into joining the e-bandwagon, with the threat of obscurity and decimation being dangled before them. There is also the lure of cheap conversion rates, some even offering to convert entire lists for free. With a “few” caveats, of course.

But the whole process is rarely explained to these publishers. There is no conversation regarding digital rights, no mention about how this newly acquired asset will be protected. Publishers who are so fiercely protective about the intellectual property they have so painstakingly created are inexplicably naive when it comes to protecting their digital assets. Even more astounding is their reluctance to ask the tough questions. For example, many publishers do not know how to monetize their digital books. In the absence of a comprehensive e-commerce platform, whether their own or that of a third party, there is little clarity of how eBooks will be sold in a secure and user-friendly environment. The inability to recoup investments made during the conversion process might actually dissuade other publishers to convert even those titles that can be adequately monetized.

On this blog we hope to address some of these issues. We hope to get other experts to write on this topic so that clear and coherent answers are provided. We do hope that ultimately there will be transparency on these matters so that publishers can make informed choices.

Disclaimer: Our publishing house, CinnamonTeal Publishing, provides conversion services into EPUB and MOBI formats, especially for books in the Indian languages. Similarly we provide an e-commerce infrastructure that allows for the sale of these books.

I began writing at the age of six. It all started off like this.

When I had begun to read, at the age of four, I used to read small storybooks. When I could not pronounce a word in that book, I would completely lose interest in the book and keep it away. My mother saw this and then started rewriting all the fairy tales and Jataka Tales in simple language on the laptop with matching images on every page. I used to read them at first with my mother and then by myself. That’s how, today, I can read very well.

Soon, I started helping her in looking for suitable pictures for more fairy tales, on the Internet. I would also suggest sentences for the stories. I used to enjoy that a lot.

I shifted to Chennai from Mumbai when I was six years old. I started living in Madhuban Apartments. In the same apartments lived another boy – seven months older than myself. We made friends with each other and started making up plays. We enjoyed acting out our own plays and actually, it was quite a lot of fun. These plays were written down in a thick-bound diary by me in the form of prose and not drama.

My parents discovered my talent and encouraged me to type out my stories on the laptop. Since then, I have been writing many, many stories.

I’ve got a collection of hundred and more – but, there are some which have no ending, some which I have not even begun yet!! I am at the laptop for an hour everyday – even during exam-time!! I manage to type something everyday except if I have ‘writer’s block’.

I love to read and re-read books. My book-reading habit started off with Enid Blyton, went on to Charles Dickens, Ruskin Bond, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, RK Laxman and JK Rowling. My favourite personality is Anne Frank and I have read her diary (unabridged version).

I never knew I had a talent when I was six years old. Actually, I came to know of it only when I was in Class Three. And now, I’m quite proud of it. It’s quite special to me – it’s a completely different line.

I sometimes draw my inspiration from real life incidents and experiences. When I was traveling by air to Andaman and Nicobar Islands, I looked out of the window and saw the clouds and that inspired me to write a story on Fairyland. When I read about Libya and the protests against Gathafi (Gaddafi), I wrote a school story involving my toy-dog, Timmy.

My first book called ‘Straight from a Child’s Heart’ was published by CinnamonTeal Publishers, Margao Goa in April 2011 on my tenth birthday. My parents are planning the second book for this year, again with CinnamonTeal.

Before I dash off my signature below this article, I’d like to say something to all the young writers like me: Remember, writing stories is not a crime. You can always make it your career with something side-by-side, like being an English Literature Professor. Writing stories is a completely different line – so consider it special and never lose an opportunity to write!

Shruti Swaminathan

Her parents say…

She writes on a variety of topics – school stories, her father’s childhood memories, mystery stories, apartment stories and anything that kindles her imagination.

She continues to read voraciously. Her favourite books and authors include The Malgudi Days, Ruskin Bond, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Diary of Anne Frank, David Copperfield and The Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Sometimes, her writings display a combination of imagination and real-life incidents, experiences and news events, for example, the recent strife in Libya. This is, in great measure, due to her habit of poring over the newspaper before leaving for school and watching the news channel with us in the evening. Her interest in reading makes her literally pore over any printed matter. This has improved not only her vocabulary but also her levels of general awareness. Even her father’s office magazine is gone through thoroughly and scanned for interesting information.

We now find that her reading habits have helped her in her academic performance also. She doesn’t have to prepare for creative writing exercises in school (paragraphs, letters or articles) – her reading gives her sufficient material to write on any topic. Since her comfort levels with English are fairly high, it has helped her to move away from rote-learning, to understanding the subject and writing the answers in her own words.

Her writing skills have helped her to gain recognition in school and she is invited to contribute stories for the Annual Magazine and participate in story-writing contests.

The only area where we can take credit as parents is being always available as ready-for-reference dictionaries and encyclopedias for her. We have also actively encouraged her to read story books and not viewed it as a distraction. As a result, Shruti has had many teachers guiding her and helping hone her vocabulary and writing skills – at home, at school and authors such as Enid Blyton, Ruskin Bond, R.K. Narayan, to name a few.

A good command of the language has also had a positive impact on her levels of self-confidence and she is comfortable interacting with adults, both in the spoken and written form. Queenie Rodrigues, of CinnamonTeal, herself has been at the receiving end – Shruti sends e-mails to her very willingly even though she has never met her.

I, as a parent, have realised the immense potential of reading, having seen the tremendous progress that Shruti has made in six years. I believe that inculcating reading skills among children, an area neglected in most schools today, holds the key to an enriching education and would make our children a lot more successful than they are today.

How much have you shifted online? Do you pay your bills online? Has it got to do anything with eBooks? Probably yes and probably no.

In 2001, Marc Prensky proposed the terms “digital natives” and “digital immigrants.” Those born after the introduction of digital technology are digital natives and those born before, digital immigrants. Digital natives are likely to embrace digital technology as if it’s their second nature, whereas digital immigrants need an effort to do that. But to what extent you are digitalized depends on your work. If your work requires the use of digital technology (as simple as a Word document as opposed to a printed paper document), you tend to move to digital, not out of choice but out of compulsion. Only those who have got off their active work are not affected by this digital shift. Sheer convenience drives the change sometimes. It is far easier to pay a bill online, say even at midnight, than to queue up for hours. But the paper as a source of records is on the wane, quite irreversibly. The “Search” function’s incredible convenience of locating data accurately and quickly definitely shifts the fence-sitter towards digital.

At the Hay Festival at Cartagena, Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom (which President Obama requested an advance copy before publication), warned of impermanence in eBooks. The Guardian quotes Franzen as saying “maybe nobody will care about printed books 50 years from now, but I do. When I read a book, I’m handling a specific object in a specific time and place. The fact that when I take the book off the shelf it still says the same thing – that’s reassuring,’ said Franzen, according to the Telegraph,” adding, “Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.” Henry Potter recorded his argument that digital is making us smarter. He questions, “If the printed word were the guardian of all democratic values, how is it that the country where, in 1439, a goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press succumbed almost 500 years later to a totalitarian hell, in which books, and the knowledge in them, were suppressed with a relatively small number of bonfires? Ink on paper is no more a guarantor of good government than oil paint on canvas.” Arguing that oil paint on canvas has survived, he points out: “The point is that humanity goes on adding to the available means of self-expression and communication, and very few forms or techniques are eliminated in the process, which is one reason to celebrate the possibilities of this extraordinary moment in history.” Taking Potter’s argument further, our temples (churches or mosques) have survived centuries of change and no one razed a them to build a hypercity. Traditional forms of music and dance are still in practice and its later adaptations have not been able to wipe the older form altogether. The reason for their stickiness is “faith” and a puritan mindset. Often, it is argued that changing forms will not have the desired effect and so traditional music has undergone only mild innovations in form while the original is preserved to the maximum. Technology simplifies our mechanical effort and naturally we have found it helping us. It’s more of a fixed mindset rather than pros-and-cons thinking.

Will eBook take over print completely? There is no scarcity of debate on this issue. Those in favour of print talk about aesthetics of typefaces smell of paper, bedtime reading, and all that gives them a sense of enjoyment. Publisher income is still dominated by print. Those inclined towards eBooks point out the convenience of carrying hundreds of books on a single device, searchability, and bookmarking as benefits. Are these people digital natives and someone who stand contrary to Franzen and support Porter? Are print lovers digital immigrants and echo with Franzen’s point of view? May be and may be not.

Digital technology is shaking the very foundations of business models on which publishing has survived for centuries. The authenticate (editorial), publish (publisher) and distribute (bookstores) form of publishing is challenged by self-publishing and online bookstores. You don’t need all that you needed before to reach the reader. Interestingly, André Schiffrin (Business of Words, Navayana, 2011) does not discuss self-publishing, perhaps because self-publishing was not considered significant when he wrote Words & Money. Alan Rusbridger, in a lecture a couple of years ago, spoke of the breaking down of walls and the dilution of high position held by journalists in deciding what to say, thus challenging the monopolistic structure that has been in practice for decades, if not centuries. Social networks such as Twitter provide voice to the reader who was not heard before. Citizen journalism is a reality and all this is because of digital technologies. The growth of self-publishing could be attributed to authors eager to find their voice and name in a publication, going beyond the publisher and leveraging technology.

Publishers are in a momentous shift, and are increasingly finding ways to maximize profits. So Penguin USA has launched Book Country, a self-publishing imprint for new authors to publish without editorial intervention. It has gone ahead to acquire two titles from Book Country for its regular imprint. It is clear that publishers chase only profitable acquisitions and self-publishing was never on their radar till recently. But the success of Amanda Hocking has turned their attention to self-publishing as a viable source of their most important criterion – income on balance sheets.

Amidst reports of robust eBook sales quarter after quarter and the monopolistic attitudes of Amazon and Google in dictating market forces, the reader is caught in a time warp. A sensible reader always weighs the costs against the pleasure of reading. If the digital form will provide more pleasure at low cost, in their opinion, the readers will embrace it willingly. Certain mindsets that favour only print as authentic, like Franzen’s, and their bias towards the smell of print will make them take to print. Reader habits will be increasingly defined not by reader tastes but how disruptive technologies like Amazon’s self-publishing take prominence. Economics is important in this globalized world and anyone in publishing will pursue only those endeavours that give them maximum returns, with total disregard for reader preference and the reader will be forced to consume what is on offer. The publishers will try to influence the readers’ minds in favour of technologies that are cost-effective for them. Seeing that the reader has not outright rejected the digital forms, the publisher will push them more.

But all those apart, you will read either printed book or on an e-reader depending upon what you like and what is convenient to you. Jonathan Franzen’s concerns will be countered and forgotten, and digital natives will place the argument in their favour. As long as you read, why bother about these debates? Any way you, the reader, can hardly influence it, whether you are a digital native or a digital immigrant, agree with Franzen or disagree with him.

K. Venkatesh is founder of VirtualPaper, a freelance copyediting firm and writes on entrepreneurship and publishing. 

Goa has had a love-hate  affair with books. It has suffered the trauma of book burning during the Inquisition. But it is also the first place in India  to print the modern book way back in the 16th Century.

Nowadays though things are looking up for book publishing. Every year there are around 200-250 books being published in Goa mainly in Konkani (in both Romi and Devanagari scripts), Marathi and English.

The stream of publications in English over the last few years has been especially swift. Goa 1556, Broadway Book Centre, Rajhans Vitaran, CinnamonTeal and Third Millennium among others publish a stream of books to feed the hunger for Goa related books.

For instance, Goa 1556 Publishers have over the last 2 years have come out with an astonishing  33 books on Goa or by Goans, with a new one or two being published every month.

The books are on a variety of subjects and genres and are written by people of different backgrounds and interests. Remarkably a 14 year old boy from Sharada Mandir School, Vivek Nayak had his  science fiction novel Inhuman published by Broadway Book Centre recently.

Among the notable books that have come to the bookstores recently are The Last Prabhu by Bernardo Elvino de Souza and In Search of Tomorrow and The Tulsi by Edila Gaitonde.

The Last Prabhu: A Hunt for Roots: DNA, Ancient Documents and Migration in Goa is the outcome of Bernardo Elvino de Souza’s curiosity  about his ancestry. A gaunkar of Aldona he is a retired Chemistry scientist in Switzerland. Using Communidade records contained in the Tombo de Aldona that had been translated and published in Gajanan Ghantkar’s History of Goa in the Goykanadi Script  he found he was a descendant of a Saraswat brahmin family of Prabhus. These Prabhus became Souzas in the 16th century.

But how did those Saraswats come to Aldona? Souza followed the work of Chandrakant Keni in The Saraswats (V.M.Salgaocar Foundation, Goa, 2008) which suggests that they migrated here after the River Saraswati, on whose banks they lived, dried up.

And before that? To find the answer Souza uses the research of IBM & the National Geographic magazine’s ongoing genographic project which maps human DNA to trace the deep ancestry of people around the world.

What emerges is that Souza’s ancestors travelled from Africa where man first emerged and migrated over the period of several millennia towards an area called ‘the Fertile Crescent’, an area that is now occupied by present day Israel, Palestine,  Syria, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, South Eastern Turkey and West and Southwest Iran.

These findings seem to find support in the archaeological findings of A. R. S. Dhume in The Cultural History of Goa: 10,000 BC to 1352 AD (2nd Edition, Broadway Book Centre, 2009). This suggests that around 4000 years ago descendants of Sumerians settled in Goa and introduced such changes as land ownership by the village god or goddess, dedicated places of worship (temples), and the village commune system. Could his  Saraswat ancestors have been those Sumerians (who belong to the Fertile Crescent)?

On caste, Souza suggests that the caste divisions in Indian society could possibly have been just a matter of luck as different castes often share the same DNA. But he is also rather indignant that some Hindu Saraswats do not acknowledge the common caste ancestry they share with Catholic Brahmins!

Souza’s book raises as many questions as it answers. Who were Goa’s first settlers? Could they be modern day Mhars or Kharvis? What implications does it have for our perennial ‘insider-outsider’ controversies?  Perhaps further DNA research is needed, as the data that Souza uses is confined mainly to a few Saraswat Brahmin converts to Christianity who come from the Bardez and Tiswadi talukas in Goa.

Edila Gaitonde’s In Search of Tomorrow (Rajhauns Vitaran, 2009) is a reprint of a fascinating autobiography of the first Portuguese woman who married a Hindu, the late freedom fighter Dr. Pundalik Gaitonde.First published by Allied Publishers it quickly went out of print and has been freshly reissued by Rajhauns Vitaran, Goa.

The book tells of her eventful social and political life first in Portugal  and later in Goa. In Goa, her Hindu in-laws and the society around her were quite bewildered as to how to deal with a firanghee bride. The Catholics were equally scandalised.

The book recounts the arrest of Dr. Pundalik Gaitonde after he impetuously burst out,”I protest!” when he heard a Portuguese apple polisher rapturously describe Goa as,“Here too is Portugal!”  After being subsequently deported to Portugal, the Gaitondes moved on to England.

Now Edila has come out with a new book of stories, The Tulsi (Goa 1556, 2011) where she once more dwells upon her cross cultural experiences. The stories are very easy to read and they mock at the barriers of culture and religion. The  book has an Introduction by Selma Carvalho which succinctly introduces the reader to Edila and her times.

All the tales have an anecdotal feel. Dressed as fiction they sidestep the problems of hurting real life people or their relatives as an autobiography might.

The title story, The Tulsi, poignantly  shows how an American daughter-in-law who is eager to please her Hindu in-laws cleans up the overgrown weeds in her house’s courtyard. But in doing so, to the horror of her mother-in-law, she also chops off the sacred tulsi plant!

Author Ray Bradbury wrote,”You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” In spite of the onslaught of  new technologies it is a good thing that the book culture is alive and well in Goa.

This article was first published in the November 2011 issue of Goa Today and has been reproduced here with the author’s permission.

At CinnamonTeal we have advocated the absence of DRM and have partnered with channels like Smashwords that think likewise. Our belief is that DRM is a costly investment that will, in any case, be tampered with and rendered ineffective. If a hacker wishes to get a book pirated, he/she will find a way to do and the presence of DRM will be but a mere irritant. In the case of people who have genuinely bought an e-book and wish to read it on multiple devices, the presence of DRM might actually dissuade sales.

Therefore the space between a rock and a hard place is a very real one for exponents of digital books. On the one hand, digital book sales are expected to grow manifold judging by the sales of e-book readers last Christmas. e-Books also present new authors with a very real chance of reaching out to new readers at a fraction of the cost it might take in the case of printed books. However, the threat of piracy negating all such expectations is equally real and must be dealt with.

An author once told me how she thought that her friends would each buy a copy of her new book only to discover that they had bought just one copy and passed it on among themselves. One man’s sharing is another man’s piracy (which is how ebook publishers would describe it). Effective DRM means that a father reading on a iPad cannot share a book with his daughter reading on a Nook. Expecting users to agree to such controls is maybe expecting too much. There has to be some middle ground found.

This debate over e-book piracy has certainly questioned some age-old assumptions we have had. While it seemed okay to borrow printed versions of the book at the library until they were tattered and torn and forced the purchase of another copy, publishers have questioned the logic of extending this practice to e-books (whose condition does not deteriorate over time). HarperCollins recently announced that libraries could lend an e-book only 26 times before they had to purchase it again. How the publisher arrived at that number is anyone’s guess.

Borrowing and sharing aside, piracy has always been a thorn in the publisher’s side. Music industry veterans will remember an eerily similar situation that occurred when digital music, originally seen as an additional sales channel, proved to be a menace that allowed easy piracy.

There are no easy answers. As e-books proliferate, sometimes at the expense of printed versions of the book, publishers will try and err in their quest to find what works best for them. One only hopes that publishers take decisions that are in everyone’s interest, those of the publisher, the author and the reader.

There are two aspects to this, though both may not be altogether mutually exclusive. One is to develop a digital infrastructure, the other to engage directly with the customer. Indian publishers would especially do well to heed the latter. Most retail chains follow volumes and ignore niche markets. The books they stock also follow bestseller lists, which is in itself a self-feeding phenomenon. It becomes important, therefore, for publishers, especially those who publish non-fiction and forms of fiction that haven’t quite found their feet in India, like horror, to engage directly with its audience. There seem to be several ways to do it:

a. Experiment with retail: Be in places that your readership frequents. New Horizon Media has tried this approach and seems to have enjoyed success. Book stores are currently, for the most part, cluttered with many other products vying for the customer’s attention or too crowded to facilitate leisured browsing and purchasing. fivex5 is one such experiment that we intend to pursue in 2012.

b. Develop a good website: In these days where the natural inclination is to “go and google” for every sound we hear, having a website has become a non-negotiable imperative for every publisher. Publishers should consider it as an investment rather as an expense and be involved in its development rather than allowing website developers a carte blanche in its design an execution. Publishers must decide what they intend to achieve with the website: whether they intend to make their audience aware of its list or if they intend to extend the purpose of the website and also offer sales. They should also be aware that customers are an impatient lot so it is important to get the information to them in as few clicks as possible. Understanding and developing metadata is also important as it allows information to be accessible when the customer uses a search engine to find a book.

c. Work with schools: Unfortunately, perhaps because of the logistics involved, schools and children haven’t figured much in publishers’ plans to market their books. PTAs provide a conduit to reach out to parents for books that are not suitable to market to children. Books pitched to children might result in larger sales when done in schools as children might buy what their friends are buying. Besides, such activities will help achieve the longer term goal of attracting children to the joys of reading.

These are the obvious steps a publisher could take. I am sure the marketing whiz kids at the publishing behemoths have better ideas. It’s the independents who, short of resources, need to be creative about their marketing. And, for the most part, they have managed to do a good job there.

The call to develop a digital strategy must, however, be carefully examined. With all the buzz about e-books and the prophesies that publishers who don’t invest in them might soon sink, many such publishers feel compelled to develop a strategy for e-books. A hasty approach might be equally disastrous and publishers should therefore examine their markets before investing. E-books, by virtue of being easily accessible, do allow access to widespread markets but the readers in those markets have to be an advanced stage that allows them to properly “consume” these books. If they primarily prefer the print version, an investment in digital content development might be unnecessary. So also if e-books form a minuscule portion of the market and can be developed by outsourcing rather than developing in-house. Publishers should behave like business houses with a well-defined business plan that includes a comprehensive marketing strategy while deciding whether or not to develop digital content. In many parts of India, literacy itself is an issue that can best be tackled by the tactile experience of an e-book and publishers might do well to understand and address that need. While e-book channels do offer direct access to the reader, through fewer intermediaries than those for printed books do, the very nature of the end product does not, in our opinion, serve the larger purpose of inculcating and sustaining the reading habit among those for whom the book is a scarce resource.

Photo Credit : National Media Museum - Kodak Gallery Collection

The jury might still be out on that one. In the meantime, some innovative entrepreneurs have tried to address the demands of those more comfortable in a world where 140 characters are the norm. This is a space that Daily Lit quite made its own before others appeared on the scene. No novel was too big after Daily Lit made itsits presence felt. Everything could be digested – in amounts one was comfortable with. Daily Lit made it easy to access these “bits” too as they were delivered directly to one’s inbox.

Another such venture is Penguin Shorts. As claimed on their website, these books are “designed to fill a gap”. Perhaps of having something to read, on a device that is portable, during time that is too large to while away yet too small or inconvenient to engage in serious work. Like while waiting for a flight at an airport, perhaps. These books are available exclusively in digital form, which allows readers to download these books on their devices and read them that instant. An impulse purchase, if you will.

An earlier exponent of this idea was, of course, Amazon with Kindle Singles (seems like there is little creativity when it comes to naming these imprints!). It was positioned as a form that was “much shorter than a novel, but longer than a magazine article”. It attempted to appeal to those with little patience for the long form and that in turn spawned counter efforts such as longform.org and The Atavist.

In between them are services like Instapaper and Read It Later. These services allow you to mark content for future reading. Although this service is primarily available for mobile devices, hence subscribing to the idea that readers want their information to travel with them, it stems from the belief that readers prefer details.

In the end, one would take a risk making too general a statement. Books will still be bought based on one’s choice of reading matter and even by the service accorded to the reader at the bookstore. In this aspect, perhaps, online stores, especially those selling e-books, hold an edge. On such platforms it becomes easier to pitch the story to the buyer and prevent knowledge of the number of pages. Ultimately, content will remain king.