The Publishing Industry in India

This feature appeared in The Tribune


THE publishing industry in India is worth Rs 6,000 crore and is the third largest in the world. Business is also booming. But why aren’t writers being paid what they deserve and why aren’t the prices of books falling?

BOOKS continue to be big business, the world-at-the-touch-of-a-mere-mouse mesmerisation of multi-media notwithstanding. Black and white still sells and how! Whether it is textbooks or general interest publications, the English language publishing industry today seems to have a lot going for it. As literacy increases, the demand for textbooks and other academic volumes continues to rise. As for fiction, world over the Asian subcontinent is definitely ' in'— whether it's Vikram Seth's hefty advance for his autobiography or Bangladeshi born UK-based Booker nominated Monica Ali, writing in English has well nigh exploded today. Mega bookstores like the Oxford Book Shops in Calcutta and Mumbai, Crossword Mumbai, Landmark in Delhi and Bangalore, compete with the famous US-based Barnes and Noble book chain, providing the customer with not just a book but the 'whole reading experience.' There's light and space, softly piped music and the rich smell of freshly brewed coffee to go with the rows and rows of print and paper.




With international publishing houses beating expectations on the street, where do their Indian counterparts stand? "Look around yourself and you'll get the answer", says Ravi Dayal of Ravi Dayal Publishers, adding, "with the proliferation of books and publishing houses, it’s obvious they are surviving and making money." And indeed several large international publishers like Penguin, Harper Collins, Macmillan and Picador have set up shop in India in the last 10 to 15 years. Besides other traditional heavyweights that include Oxford University Press, Orient Longman and indigenous publishing houses like Rupa and Jaico, a number of smaller niche publishing houses have come up as well. The Indian publishing scene today is populated with small, independent publishers, each with a distinctive profile and a separate specialisation. Kali for Women, for instance, was founded by two women Ritu Menon and Urvashi Butalia 18 years ago. Beginning out of a garage, it is today a profitable publishing house. So also Katha, an extraordinary non-profit organisation, that has begun to salvage the lost classics of vernacular India, translating them into English with flair and publishing them in beautiful editions. These and others like Tulika (academic and children's books), Stree (women's books), Ravi Dayal, India Ink, Srishti, Minerva, English Edition, Permanent Black (trade and academic books) are all becoming well-known.

With a market size that's estimated at Rs 6,000 crore (including books, newspapers, magazines, periodicals and academic journals), India actually ranks third in the world in its number of English publications per year, after the USA and UK. Publishers agree that the potential in this industry is tremendous. As Urvashi Butalia, founder of Kali for Women, analyses," I think the Indian publishing industry is in an exciting phase right now. The earlier profile, which was that 80 per cent of the books published were textbooks and these were the bread and butter books, is changing somewhat, That is to say while textbooks still remain the profit earners, many publishers are also beginning to turn to producing books for the general reader. This is what explains the success of publishers like Penguin and Harper Collins, who produce books for general readers, or books that are known as trade books. J.S. Sethi, who began by book distribution and now runs the publishing firm of English Edition, concurs, "The potential for publishing is very good. English Edition brings out two to three titles a week. As far as publishing houses that publish textbooks go, they have a captive market and are minting money". S.C Sethi of Jaico Publications also echoes these bullish sentiments, "We are doing extremely well and we are one of the biggest distributors of British and American publications in India."

Despite all the good cheer, however, volumes are quite literally abysmally low. Given the almost 20-million-strong English-speaking and reading public, print runs of commercially successful books could be as low as 1000 copies. What are the reasons for this paradox? "Book buyers are few," says Sethi. "The electronic media doesn't bother about books."

"It’s because prices are way too high," says T.S. Shanbagh of Mumbai's Strand Book Store, that old world cramped but comfortable bookstore that's irresistible to every aficionado. Quoting Tagore's Gitanjali: Where knowledge is free/..Into that heaven of freedom, my father / Let my country awake, Shanbagh puts the blame for low volumes and high prices on high margins and inefficient distribution, "The cost of a book may be as much as 10 times the cost of production, the reader often pays for the overheads of five administrations." Publishers in India today, he feels, also do not bother developing local talent, they often reprint international books, and in essence lack that "some little idealism, which is so necessary to this trade." It is this lack of commitment, of concrete investment in the product, the book and its author, that seems overwhelmingly to explain the problem of low volumes. Promotional budgets are low, and marketing professionals almost non-existent. "Whereas bestsellers’ authors abroad have a publisher’s dedicated marketing team to promote a book and make sure the backlist stays in print, a publisher here may have one person who has sold biscuits or toothpaste for the last so many years and is now told to sell books", points out bestselling novelist Shobhaa De. Agrees adman Alyque Padamsee, whose autobiography A Double Life was published by Penguin, "Marketing of books in India is zero and what the book industry needs desperately is professional marketing of books."

P. Sainath, journalist and author of Everybody Loves a Good Drought, explains that publishing houses need to step out of the "cocktail circuit book launch at India International Centre, Delhi, with 40 people in attendance" and reach out in other ways. Bhawna Somaaya, film journalist and author of books like Amitabh Bacchan The Legend published by Macmillan India, Salaam Bollywood by Spantach and Lancer, UK, elaborates in the same vein, describing her efforts to market her books in the absence of any from her publishers. "For a creative person to be involved in the process of publishing is a huge responsibility and liability."

Other problems include those of piracy, as evidenced by the plethora of cheap photocopied bestsellers available at the traffic lights, that cause the publishing industry an annual loss of Rs 350-400 crore. The problem that was sporadic about 10 years back has acquired epidemic proportions now. "It is not just fiction but educational books like NCERT textbooks of the Central Board of Secondary Education and Andhra Pradesh Textbook Corporation's books for school kids, that have begun to have their pirated editions," said N. Subrahmanyam, Managing-Director of Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd in a recent interview. The amending of the Indian Copyright Act in 1986 , has helped and police raids and prosecutions have been carried out on unauthorised translations and photocopying operations. Piracy has also affected export markets, as S.C. Sethi of Jaico adds, " Indian textbooks are pirated in Bangladesh and Pakistan as well."

In the ultimate analysis, problems of piracy and production costs aside, Indian publishing continues to remain a poor cousin of the West, despite being placed in the most-populous marketplace. Book promotions may cost money but, as has been illustrated so successfully internationally, they make even more money. Here is where stepping out of the traditional promotional model of exhibiting at book fairs, small-scale book launches and making calls to editors to review books can make a difference.

Witness the marketing miracles of Oprah's Book Cub where talk show host Oprah Winfrey discusses her recommended books as well the carefully orchestrated, perfectly executed Harry Potter campaign and it’s obvious that good marketing can truly sell volumes and volumes.