The India Story
Many articles, including a few on this blog, have trumpeted the arrival of India on the global publishing scene. In his article on Blogcritics, Richard Marcus laments the lack of attention given to India by global publishers inspite of the potential it has.
India has probably one of the largest, educated English-speaking populations in the world right now. Its economy is booming, and more and more of her people have the money to spend on books and other forms of leisure. How hard would it be for an imprint to reach an agreement with an Indian press and start delivering titles for publication?
But with the exception of Penguin India, no one seems to be doing very much to take specific advantage of the market. Even Penguin treats India like another foreign country and gives preference to American publications. What this means is that while Penguin can dump as many American-published titles as it wants onto the Indian market, it only exports a few Indian-published titles to the States.