Source: The Literary Saloon
In Aspiring writers from India in The Guardian Anita Desai contrasts the situation there in the 1950s and 60s (”when it was an act of solitary confinement and the actual existence of writers was no more than a rumour spread by their books”) with the post-Midnight’s Children boom.
But there’s still a sense [...]
Source: Indian Express
Nandan Nilekani’s Imagining India in Hindi and Mohsin Hamid’s Reluctant Fundamentalist in Marathi — mainstream English publishers are trying hard to create ripples in regional-language market
“In a country where the primary spoken language is not English, it is lopsided not to publish in Indian languages,” says Minakshi Thakur, editor of Harper Hindi that [...]
In his blog, Mayank Author Soofi celebrates the charm of the second-hand bookstores of Paharganj (in Delhi) .
Read the whole blog here
In an article in The Telegraph, Ravi Vyas discusses niche markets for books in India
All markets are fragmented. Just as there is place for multiple television channels, newspapers and magazines, there should also be room for up-market niche books of various kinds. Yet with returns running at higher levels than ever before, what are the [...]
Source: Business Standard
A snapshot of the Indian publishing industry
The popularity of Indian writing in English has been affirmed by various studies including one by Tapan Basu (Contemporary Indian Writing in English: Is there a market in India for this text?). The National Readership survey 2005 revealed that the time that people in India spend on [...]
Source: thebookseller.com
A month ago I became aware of disquiet among some Indian publishers that foreign publishers are actively encouraged to move to India by the Indian government. Demands to scrap the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) have fallen on deaf ears. Indian publishers complain they have no support from their own government and foreigners are able [...]
Source: thebookseller.com
Of course, the effect Indian writers have on the UK is not the main reason for India being fêted at LBF. The subcontinent is one of the fastest growing publishing markets in the world, particularly for English-language books. For British publishers in 2007, the country was the 18th most important export market. The amount [...]
Source: Outlook
Railway bookstalls across the country have had a makeover, thanks to new marketing tactics by publishers and those in the book distribution trade, driven by what they perceive as the changing profile and reading habits of the railway traveller. A quick browse at the bookstall at the New Delhi station reveals Amartya Sen’s Argumentative [...]
Source: The Telegraph (Calcutta)
Ravi Vyas examines the practice of “returns” so prevalent in the book industry in India and elsewhere
First, the fundamentals of the publisher-trade relationship in India. Four factors define the terms of trade: prices, discounts, credit terms and ‘returns’. The first three apply to the retail trade for any commodity; the last is [...]
