The Publisher’s Post: Vol I Ed. XXXVII
Dated: 18th May 2008
The Publisher’s Post is a weekly newsletter that contains information relating to the book publishing and book selling industry in India.
News This Week
Looking at a challenging future
Source: Hindustan Times
India’s English-speaking talent is bagging work from countries like the US, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand, “not really for cost reason but for value,” asserts Rajinder Singh, Senior Vice President and Head, Global Analytics Services, Genpact, who says the KPO label doesn’t define it fully and would rather call it value-creation services.
For example, a US publisher can offshore the publishing of a book to a content management solutions company here which supplements the hard copy with an e-book and a website on it as well. Adds Gurvinder Batra, Chief Technologist and President-Publishing, Aptara, New Delhi, “Getting this done in the US is difficult. It’s costlier.
The main gain for publishers is time to market. Those people don’t have (requisite) IT skills. The other reason is English language,” he elaborates. “This is the best time to be in this sphere because you get to learn so much, work with authors from all over the world.”
But rising wages and a high attrition rate is clouding the sunny horizon. Entry-level employees spend about 2.5 years in a job leading to an attrition rate of 20-30 per cent, says Aggarwal. “It hurts the company. It hurts the employee as well in the long run.”
It’s India Shining at bookstores
Source: The Hindi
The hype over India refuses to die. Across the fiction and non-fiction categories on the new arrivals shelves at bookstores, authors continue to grapple with the post-liberalisation ‘new’ India.
Shobha De’s ‘The Superstar India: From Incredible to Unstoppable’ has attracted the amount of limelight that a superstar writer can bring. The author has welcomed several changes while mourning the fragmentation of the family, reviewers say.
‘Think India: The Rise of the World’s Next Superpower and What It Means for Every American’ by Vinay Rai, co-authored by William L. Simon, explains the implications of rapid development to the current superpower.
‘The White Tiger’ by Aravind Adiga tracks a fictional Balram Halwai on his dark journey to fulfilling the consumerist dream.
Conversations about power and justice and the need to take a stand fill ‘The Shape of the Beast’ by Arundhati Roy.
On a more personal note, P.M. Nair recalls the years of the ‘people’s president’ in ‘The Kalam Effect: My Years with the President’. The political controversies of the period figure alongside reminiscences of Kalam’s personal quirks, which include being perpetually late.
Women join hands for a better media
Source: indiatogether.org
In an increasingly market-driven media climate, a network that nurtures value-driven journalism among women has proved to be a lifeline for professionals who believe that there’s more to the media than news brands. Charumathi Supraja reports.
Speaking of issues specific to women in the media, senior journalist and columnist, Kalpana Sharma says, “Problems … vary greatly depending on the media. For instance, in English print media, women have done well although there is still a glass ceiling at the very top. There are also issues of sexual harassment but on the whole, compared to a couple of decades ago, women face fewer problems. The situation in the Indian language press is different. Here, women have to fight for fair wages, for the right to cover different beats and face some of the same problems as women in the English press. Television journalists have greater opportunities but there have been sporadic reports about sexual harassment.”
Exhibition of Persian Manuscripts and Rare Books
An exhibition of Persian Manuscripts and Rare Books is being held in Dr. Zakir Husain Library, Jamia Millia Islamia as part of Indo-Iran Cultural Week organized by the University. The exhibition was inaugurated by H.E. Esfandyar Rahim Mashaei, Vice President of Islamic Republic of Iran on 1st May, 2008.
The Jamia Library has a good collection of about 1100 manuscripts pertaining to the period 1591-922 A.D. in Persian and Arabic on a wide range of subjects including Quranic Studies, Hadith, Jurisprudence, Mysticism, Philosophy, Logic, Unani Medicines, Astrology, Music, Astronomy, Poetry, Lexicon, History, Geography, etc. Some of them are unique in their calligraphic style and illustration.
The present exhibition displays some important manuscripts in Persian. There are also a number of Manuscripts on Hinduism in Persian Language such as Mahabharata compiled in 1873 A.D., the transition of Upanishad and Bhagvad Geeta, Majma-ul-Bahrain, by Darashikoh (1615-1659). Other notable works are the Kashful Mahjub of Abdul Hasan celebrates as the Dataganj-Baksh and the Awariful-Maa’rif by Syed Mohd. Banda Nawaz Gisudraz.
The exhibition will remain open till 23rd May, 2008.
Hindi children’s books losing out to glossy English
Old Hindi favourites like ‘Chandamama’ and ‘Nandan’ are no longer attracting children to bookshops, instead Harry Potter is! Hindi storybooks are fast losing out to the more colourful and well-packaged English ones.
‘The circulation of Hindi story books was 15 percent less in 2007 than in 2006,’ Manoj Sharma of Kitabghar Prakashan told IANS, portraying a bleak scenario.
The country’s children’s book market - both Hindi and English - is around Rs.700 million. ‘But if we talk about sales ratio, then it is 30:70 percent, for Hindi and English respectively,’ he said.
Apart from the colour and presentation of English books, which appeal to kids, parents are also keen that their children read English rather than Hindi, contributing to the decreasing sales.
‘English books are more colourful and have more pictures. Hence they attract kids and edge out Hindi children’s books,’ Ashok Gupta, director of Pustak Mahal Publishers, told IANS.
‘With Indian society turning more competitive, parents want their kids to have a greater command over English. The desire of parents is forcing kids to read English books,’ he added.
‘My mother asks me to read ‘Children’s World’ and the English version of ‘Champak’. She says it will improve my English,’ said eight-year-old Pratibha Singh of Ramjas School.
‘I find English books more interesting because they are colourful and have so many pictures,’ said six-year-old Jasmine.
And because of waning popularity, the number of Hindi storybooks published is also on the downswing.
According to publishers, children’s books in English hitting the stalls are five times more than Hindi.
‘There is a huge gap in the number of books published in Hindi and English. If 5,000 new children’s titles are published in English, only 1,000 Hindi titles hit the stands in a year,’ said Ajay Mago, publisher of Om Books International.
‘It is unfortunate that fewer books are published in our mother tongue. I think no other country is faring so badly in books in their local language in comparison to English,’ Mago said.
Another factor, said Gupta, is the advent of the Internet, video games and cartoon channels, which is leading to children losing interest in reading altogether.
Mago also blamed booksellers for not merchandising Hindi children’s fiction properly.
‘Walk into any book shop, you will find that owners are not keen on dedicating shelves to Hindi books. One can easily find 80 percent of the shelves given to English books,’ Mago claimed.
Girish Goel, sales manager of Hind Pocket Books, said that Hindi publishers needed to be more market friendly and produce quality material to regain customers.
‘If Hindi book publishers improve the quality of titles, add more pictures, colour and publish them in varied sizes, I am sure the demand would go up,’ Goel said.
‘Some publishers have started doing that, and it will help if others follow suit,’ he said, stressing that the ‘huge hard-core Hindi readership is still untapped’.
- By Shweta Thakur
Bringing back to life
CinnamonTeal Print & Publishing Services is launching an initiative to bring back into print forgotten masterpieces of Indian literature. Interested individuals and publishers are invited to contact them for details. Books in all Indian languages can be considered after ensuring that all copyright issues are addressed properly.
The idea is to ensure that no classics go out of print. The books will be printed and published using the print-on-demand technology in order to allow for print runs of between one and 20 books at a time, thus avoiding the financial risks associated with traditional publishing’s requirement for large-volume print runs. The titles will printed with automatically generated cover designs and will be available mostly through online channels unless bookstores express a preference for stocking them.
As a proof of concept, two English classics have been made available for production. At the mercy of Tiberius and Beulah, both by Augusta Evans Wilson, can now be ordered by contacting CinnamonTeal.
Revenues generated from this venture will be shared equally between the concerned individual, or publishing house, and CinnamonTeal after the costs of production are covered.
New Book Releases & Events
Book Launch of Benazir’s Biography on May 21
Roli Books invites you to the launch of
Goodbye Shahzadi
by Shyam Bhatia
Shri L.K. Advani will release the book followed by a Q&A with the author
Venue: Lecture Hall, IIC Annexe, New Delhi
Time: 7:00 PM onwards
Date: Wednesday, May 21
Goodbye Shahzadi is an exclusive and highly charged account of the life and times of one of the world’s most fascinating political leaders, Benazir Bhutto. Drawing on his personal notes and tape-recorded interviews, Shyam Bhatia presents the assassinated leader’s innermost thoughts as well as never-before-revealed secrets about Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programmes.
Shyam Bhatia, Editor of Asian Affairs magazine, has been a staff foreign correspondent for London’s Observer newspaper based in Cairo and Jerusalem, and US correspondent and Foreign Editor of the Deccan Herald. A frequent visitor in the past to Pakistan and an Arabic speaker, he has won the Foreign Reporter of the Year Award in the British media and is the author of India’s Nuclear Bomb, Nuclear Rivals in the Middle East, Brighter Than The Baghdad Sun and Contemporary Afghanistan.
In Black and White
You can’t be neutral about the media. Many are critical of it, some distrust it, and almost all are influenced by it.
But why do newspapers in Goa behave the way they do?
This book covers over four decades of post-colonial Goa’s newspaper scene, through the colourful — if highly personalised — stories of those who saw the media from the frontline.
Read about the first assembly elections of 1963, the role of dominant media voices, and attempts to build alternatives in the English-language and Konkani.
Special focus goes to the impact of the Herald (formerly O Heraldo). In 1983, it switched over from being the last Portuguese daily to be published in Asia, to an English-language newspaper.
Journalists themselves explain the travails of covering rural Goa. Newbies talk of their experiences. Newer media options opened up in the late Eighties and early Nineties. Outstation journos have their own take on the media scene here.
Two essays cover Konkani journalism (both Roman-script and Devanagari), making bold and contentious points. And did you know what goes into police-reporting, as we know it here?
Compiled and edited by
Frederick Noronha
Published by
Goa, 1556
Cover design by
Cecil Pinto
Official completion of the “Historical Atlas of South India” project
The “Historical Atlas of South India” project was officially completed through a seminar that was held at the IFP on April 4 to 6, 2008. Several Indian historians of international repute were among the 50 participants to this seminar.
Four South Indian universities (*) were associated to the IFP to lead this ambitious project, the objective of which is to make available on the Internet and on CD-ROM, an Atlas of the historical configurations of South India (chronology dating from prehistoric times to the 17th century). This project, which was launched in 2005 and led by the IFP, was entirely funded by the Ford Foundation.
A “beta” version of the CD-ROM was presented during this seminar. The Atlas will be incorporated in a digital database in 2 or 3 months. It will then be available for consultation on the website of the Institute.
(*) Associated universities: Tamil University (Thanjavur), Mahatma Gandhi University (Kottayam), Mangalore University (Mangalore), Hyderabad Central University (Hyderabad).
For more information:
On the seminar:
http://www.ifpindia.org
On the project:
http://www.ifpindia.org
Blogs and Articles
Once upon a time…
Source: The Hindu
Where are all the Tamil magazines and books for children, wonders W. Sreelalitha
Sadly, the current scenario has undergone a drastic change. For instance, take the case of 10-year-old T. Haritha. She has a few issues of the fortnightly Chutti Vikatan, from the Vikatan group of publications, and reads Siruvar Malar, a weekly supplement of the Tamil daily Dinamalar. These books come with plenty of stories, puzzles and quiz. But she hardly knows of any other Tamil magazines. The current crop has grown up amidst Enid Blytons and Roald Dahls, and a conscious search for children’s magazines in Tamil throws up few results.
The novel writing
Source: Deccan Herald
In this technology-driven age, even literature undergoes a face-lift. Mita Kapur says, while the sub-genres may remain the same, the ubiquitous novel will have to run with the world.
Although the future is electronic but for the novel, E-readers and e-books still have a long way to go. Sony has come up with some good products. So has Amazon (Kindle).
Reading complete books online hurts the eyes. A lot of writers are putting up their work for free online, some even under a creative commons license. Neil Gaiman’s publishers recently put his bestselling American Gods online for free for a few weeks. It actually increased his book sales.Vernor Vinge put up his award winning Rainbows End as a free download. But readers still need the feel of paper between their fingers. So the physical form of the book can survive along with its electronic form.
The ways in which we can read are going to increase. This hopefully will lead to more people reading and should be good for writers. With more demand for the written word more boundaries will be broken. The traditional form I think will survive this. Perhaps even grow stronger. E-novels might unlock a large reading population.
Unlikely bestseller who changed the future of the American novel
Source: The Guardian, UK
London-born Jhumpa Lahiri’s new collection of short stories went straight to number 1 in the American bestseller lists. Now her tales of immigrant life are being hailed as a new direction in US literature. Edward Helmore reports on a changing of the guard in American fiction
The author, whose parents are Bengali, was born in London before moving to Calcutta, then to the United States. She grew up in Rhode Island, where her father works as a librarian. For years after university, she avoided coming to New York, fearing that she’d be intimated by the literary scene and wouldn’t write. Her stories have been embraced in part because they reflect the immigrant experience without the kind of woozy we-are-the-world multi-ethnic liberalism. Her stories, centred on Bengalis who have settled in the Americas and the forces that buffet them, are precisely told.
Other Announcements
Organizations and Publishing Houses willing to advertise for various positions related to publishing are invited to do so in this section.
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This newsletter is developed by Queenie Fernandes and Leonard Fernandes with inputs from various individuals, publishing houses, websites and blogs.
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