As one of Delhi's oldest and loved bookstores, Fact and Fiction, shuts shop owing to high rent, ANANYA BORGOHAIN explores the world of book publishing in India, and tries to find out to what extent the old world charms of a book and bookstore can hold themselves in the face of emerging digital media and e-commerce
A conversation over brunch among some fellow-readers evoked the question if there is any place in Delhi where one can find a first edition book, and how to identify its authenticity. This eventually led to a debate and discussion on the culture of reading in the city, and India in general, which in turn revealed a few interesting facts and observations.
The Indian publishing industry is said to be the third largest publishing industry after the US and UK. And this, even in the face of the challenges posed by digital media. This can also be attributed to an increase in the number of literary festivals across the country that keeps the culture of reading texts alive, as well as to the fact that there are also the lucrative pricing of books online. Moreover, with several marketing and promotional strategies like book reading and book signing sessions with the authors, there are now plenty of ways to keep the readers hooked.
There has also been a rise in the number of book cafes and book clubs, a trend earning a lot of popularity among the younger lot. Times have changed, but India continues to be one of the most well-read countries. Implicitly again, another important factor that contributes is that the Indian reader’s conservative mindset prefers reading the physical copy to the digital version.
No wonder then that every year at the World Book Fair at Pragati Maidan, a record number of visitors swarm into the stalls. In fact, this year’s Delhi edition, which has been organised by the National Book Trust (NBT) for over 40 years now, is the largest book fair in the Afro-Asian region.
Anurima Roy, Senior Manager, Marketing and Publicity, Bloomsbury India, says: “Bloomsbury India is less than three years old but we already have 250 plus books in our kitty across three publishing imprints — Trade, Academic and Professional, and Special Projects. Being a global publisher with the One Bloomsbury policy, most of our books are acquired globally and have marketing plans added in for all the countries. Vikas Khanna, Shiv Khera, Kalyan Ray, Maria Choudhury etc are some of the authors that are acquired here and are sold globally. We also have a strong list of academic and professional books that are published and distributed in India along with our custom publishing imprint called Discover.”
Caroline Newbury, VP Marketing and Corporate Communications, Random House India, adds: “locally, we publish around 270 books per year, but if you include the books we distribute from our global Penguin Random House companies and also agencies, then the number is many thousands.”
Sudhir Malhotra, President of the Federation of Indian Publishers, had once told the IANS that India has at least 60,000 big and small publishers who print approximately 100,000 titles in English and in 28 regional languages every year. Although regional languages struggle to make their presence felt in the industry, the industry is nonetheless meeting international standards through the English language books (although Malayalam also had one of the early author cooperatives, Sahitya Pravartak Cooperative Society, which paid out 25 per cent royalties to its authors).
Roy says, “Shiv Khera’s books for example, are selling in 16 languages across the country and doing really well for years. You Can Win has sold more than 3.2 million copies and is still selling at a steady pace every year. We have just released Aakhri Mughal, the Hindi edition of The last Mughal by William Dalrymple and the print runs show the ambition as well as the market for books like these. Ek Yogi Ek Yoddha by Swami Ramdev was released on August 4 (Patanjali Divas) across India in Hindi and the English edition along with Tamil, Kannada, Nepali and other languages will be available in the market later this year.”
Interestingly, she also adds that contrary to popular opinion that only commercial metro-reads sell well, it’s actually the serious non-fiction that has a bigger demand. “India has predominantly been a big non-fiction market with books on History, Politics, Biographies, etc always doing well. The trend had shifted towards a majority or the people reading commercial fiction, easy-to-read books that you can go through during a flight and throw it! literary fiction in my opinion is still the hardest to sell and that’s where the true test is. There is a rise in sales of children’s books for a while now with more and more schools trying to focus on issuing library books to children, and parents slowly buying books as birthday presents but it is still a very tiny population,” she says.
However, one may wonder that along with this massive influx of books, publishing houses, and marketing strategies, if the art of writing suffers. Gautam Chintamani, who wrote Rajesh Khanna’s biography last year, says, “While the editorial inputs often focus on inspiring writers to come up with some newness in the writing or even packaging, the marketing aspect of publishing in India is still relying on the tried and tested tools. So, if there is something readily ‘marketable’ such as a controversy or something newsworthy then it’s a different ball game. Many a times marketing teams also try to come up with a potentially saleable hook for books, but in my case there was no such pressure from any side. Rajesh Khanna’s life has many controversial aspects but neither marketing nor editorial ever pressurised me to come up with something controversial which would bolster sales.”
Talking of any possible friction between the editorial and marketing departments regarding the presentation of a book, Newbury says, “Penguin Random House is committed to ensuring that our authors are able to produce their best work and then helping them find the widest possible readership for it. Publishing is a collaborative process and all members of our team, from editorial to sales and marketing, production to design and operations work together to help realise this.”
Nevertheless, a problem that the publishing industry may still face is the rise of digital media. While e-books are seen as a threat trying to phase out printed books, extensive piracy and discounts on books by e-commerce players affect the industry too. Amidst online piracy, a fierce ideological debate revolves around the photocopy shops on college campuses that reproduce the texts as study material for the students. The hike in the cost of paper creates further intimidation for publishers.
Roy says, “Piracy cannot be curbed in India easily unless people stop buying such books. I was once told by a journalist that she had bought a copy of a huge bestselling book at Rs75 from the red light — that’s the worst thing to happen to the book, the author and the publisher! The academic space is sacred but because books are not looked as assets since we are children, photocopy is the way for most students. They ‘save money’ so that they can do other important things like partying. Unfortunately, the practice starts from the school level where teachers sort of advocate the use of photocopies of texts. It is difficult to curb and it has to come from the top — teachers and homes.”
As an author, Chintamani, however, clarifies: “I don’t have a huge issue with works being photocopied at academic spaces. Of course, I would be happy if the authors were making some money every time someone photocopied their work. Ideally such a thing happens when students need a particular part of the text but often they end up photocopying the entire book. One can imagine a novel and even unconventional approaches on the part of the publishers to tie up with leading education institutions and offer specific portions of a book for a nominal amount, but I don’t see that happening.”
He further suggests, “Some unorthodox way that might make paying for something cheaper, say just one chapter instead of the entire book (something that music industry now does in terms of buying one song instead of the whole album), or even half the price for one-time read after which the book will cease to exist on your device (like in the case of movies on demand) might curb piracy a bit.”
In a previous interview with us, Zubaan founder Urvashi Butalia had said, “E-books are the new way to go. They might not be selling well right now and the market will take some time to bloom but it’s refreshing. As for photocopying books in universities, I feel that there has to be a balanced system of doing so. Abroad, the Copyright Clearing Agencies are attached to universities and when a student photocopies a book, a certain percentage of the earning would go to the author. In India, it’s the photocopy shop that enjoys total monopoly and the publishers receive the flak. We believe that books should be low-priced and not every publisher is earning money hand over fist.”
The Indian publishing industry, at the same time, reportedly also does not enjoy an official industry status. But Roy clarifies, “The publishing industry in India is counted among the top seven publishing nations in the world. With an estimated market of Rs10,000 crore, India ranks third after the US and UK in English language publishing. The Government allows 100 per cent FDI to publishing houses across the country to make India a publishing hub, by utilising the vast English-speaking technical manpower. Of course, the global research agency Nielsen now runs its famous Bookscan service in India too, collecting data from bookshops to identify both the number of books sold along with the value they generate every week; and the top 500 books in terms of numbers sold. The fuzziness is set to change now with the biggest ever national book and publishing survey to be undertaken in India by Nielsen.”
But even if the publishing giants manage to save themselves, there is another arena which suffers in their hands: The old independent bookstores. Only last week, Fact and Fiction, one of the oldest bookstores in Delhi declared that they are shutting shop as there have been lesser customers and paying high rent for the shop was getting tougher. The changing market dynamics and the rise of e-commerce players such as Flipkart, Amazon etc with their discounted offers are taking a toll on them. Many have expanded themselves into small publishing companies. Some are even shutting shop. Very few retail stores now have a book section too.
Newbury says, “The nature of retail in India is shifting and, along with many other products, books can now be purchased in both a store as well as the online space. Some stores may have changed their retail mix to move with changing consumer behaviours but there is still a vibrant bookselling presence on the high street. There are many, many excellent independent stores across the country with booksellers selling books with passion and expertise. Within Crossword, the chain is consistently expanding their store base, refurbishing their flagship stores and looking for new ways to support writing and reading.”
Roy adds, “Big retail chains that have huge operational costs look at books as just another commodity, which of course, don’t sell as much as perfumes or ‘gift items’. For the longest time, big chain stores that called themselves ‘bookstores’ and still do, have the ‘books’ section at the farthest corner of the stores beyond the gifts and the toys and things. With most big bookstore chains closing shop, it is no surprise that the books section is the first one to shrink. On the other hand, individual bookstores who understand their business are all doing well since their passion for books shows through and the capability to recommend really is a huge plus. Which is why we don’t see too many single-owner bookstores doing badly; they know and understand their customers, which actually that makes all the difference. In fact, Walden bookstore in Hyderabad has just celebrated its silver jubilee!”
The trend of book cafes does seem to be evolving. The Oxford Bookstore in Connaught Place is paradise for the book lover and is popular not only for its delightful café Cha Bar, but also because it regularly hosts seminars and workshops with authors and other artistes. Some of the other popular book cafes in the city are the left-leaning May Day and the popular Ivy and Bean at Shahpur Jat. Srijeeta, a frequent visitor of book cafes, says, “It’s difficult to find a place of solitude in Delhi to simply read a book. Book cafes that way help a lot because they are designed in ways to facilitate your private reading as well as can offer a quick snack if you need in between. Most of them are economically priced cafes, which effective pulls in readers and other visitors”.
Besides, with the kindle market growing and people using their tabs to read, the e-book format too is maximising sales. E-book sales are going up each year now. There has been a significant shift from the traditional modes of publishing of late. In fact, cyberspace seems to be blooming with opportunities for budding writers to get themselves published, particularly in the e-book format.
Success stories of self-published writers are driving people more to upload their works online and be self-published authors. In India, although the e-book format is not yet mainstream, options like the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) have been a sigh of relief for many aspiring writers. In a previous interview with us, Jon P Fine, Director of Author & Publishing Relations, Amazon.com, had said, “It is still a very nascent but growing market in India and we are very excited by the response we are seeing from authors based in India. Just to give perspective, in 2013, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) books accounted for about a third of the top 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com each week, on an average and in India, Amazon.in had over 20 KDP titles in top 100 Kindle in 2013.”
On the other hand, there is Augmented reality, known as AR, which is “a type of virtual reality that overlays objects and scenes in the real world with digital information”. In 2012, Penguin Books had launched with Zappar App, four novels from the English library. In this process, users download the Zappar App for their iPhone or Android phone, locate the Penguin content in the menu and then point the smartphone at the book’s cover. Upon doing that, the cover displays and digital content and online destinations.
Then there is also ‘Books in Print’ in some countries which is updated every year to compute the number of books published. That helps in tracing the growth of the publishing industry and study its effects and what affected it. In India, however, there is only ISBN (International Standard Book Numbers). At the same time, multiple books are published without ISBNs and it becomes impossible to compute an accurate number, let alone explore the reach of the industry. It is also speculated that attaining an ISBN number is so easy at the same time that it can no longer vouch for the quality of the book.
Post-independence, the Indian Government had laid down a rule that not more than 49 per cent of foreign companies could operate in the country. This enabled the indigenous authors and publishers to evolve, and Indian books surfaced in the market. As Urvashi Butalia had mentioned in an interview with Forbes, two other major shifts in Indian publishing came once in the late 60s when the NCERT was set up to create model textbooks but it ended up becoming a Governmental publisher and another when in the late 80s, early 90s, when young professionals entered the industry as well as the setting up of new publishing houses such as Kali for women, Tara, Penguin etc, who, unlike NCERT began to publish for the general reader. Butalia also mentioned how things changed after the “The re-entry of multinationals, with FDI making 100 per cent ownership possible, and with the paying out of huge advances to writers”.
Some publishing houses too have now started to release e-books along with the print books. Newbury says, “Penguin Random House is committed to ensuring that all our books find the widest possible readership. We want to ensure our titles are accessible in as many forms as possible and to as many different people. Releasing our titles in both print and e-format simultaneously allows us to offer them to the broadest range of readers”.
Amidst this, let’s not forget the regular reader, oblivious to the hyperactive and ever changing dynamics of the publishing world. The industry, readership, writing and producing books, are increasing with unparalleled dynamism. But what should hopefully be also seen is the culture of understanding the gravity of their content, books should lead to more knowledge, articulation, constructive discourses and re-learning.
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