Happenings
On what’s been happening. If there’s news you have heard of and think it would make for interesting reading, please share it with us.

Comic Con India 2011
Contributor: Andrew Dodd (Campfire Books)
It has never happened before, but it’s sure to happen again. Last weekend, fifteen thousand comic book fans gathered together in Delhi for India’s first ever comic con.

The two-day convention was a phenomenal success, far exceeding the expectations of both the organisers (Twenty Onwards Media) and the participants. In its inaugural year, this annual comic con provided a much-needed platform for publishers, retailers, writers and illustrators to meet with each other, and with their fans, in a relaxed environment. Most of the 35 companies present boasted sales much above what they had anticipated. Campfire graphic novels, for example, raked in more revenue during the first day of the comic con than in 10 days at the Delhi Book Fair, whilst Level 10 Comics and Vimanika sold out of all their stock by half way through the second day.

Sales, although important, were of course only one aspect of the event. A programme of workshops, activities and book launches literally took centre stage in a dedicated area at the hub of the venue. This allowed the publishers to showcase their work to the public in a fun and interactive way.

The location itself acted as the perfect backdrop for this kind of event. Dilli Haat is a venue which has been created to replicate the feel of a traditional Indian marketplace. It offers handicrafts, food and cultural activities from every part of India. Therefore, the infrastructure necessary for a comic con was already in place, with catering, parking and the stall setup being taken care of. Holding the convention in such a place allowed the comic book industry to increase its exposure to the general public. With thousands visiting Dilli Haat on a daily basis, it was great to see people previously unaware of the comic book medium being drawn in by what they saw. There was a perfect blend of lifelong enthusiasts and curious newcomers, and it was awesome to see them mingling.

Some of the enthusiasts made a particular effort to stand out from the crowd – and did so brilliantly. Inspired by the chance to win one of various prizes, many attendees turned up in full costume, as a comic book character of their choice. From American superheroes such as Superman, Wolverine and Harley Quinn to local Indian heroes like Chacha Chaudhary, all those who dressed up appeared to be having a great time.

In addition to the costume contest prizes, and of much greater importance, was a Lifetime Achievement Award, presented to Anant Pai. Anant Pai is the founder of Amar Chitra Katha, the most successful comic book publisher in the history of Indian comics, and his work in converting Indian epics, mythology, history, folklore and fables into the comic book format is unprecedented. The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to him by another legend of Indian comics – Pran Kumar, the creator and illustrator of Chacha Chaudhary. With both the old guard and the new innovators of Indian comics all present in one place for the first time, this festival and celebration of comic books had a true feeling of completeness.

With India’s comic book and graphic novel market still in a fairly nascent stage, this was the perfect time for the subcontinent to have its first event of this nature. The air of optimism regarding the current state of Indian comics was tangible to anyone in attendance. There was a buzz about the place, and a real feeling that this is the kind of platform that will catapult the comic book format into India’s public consciousness.

That said, most Indians are not totally unfamiliar with comics. Since the late 1960s, publishers such as Amar Chitra Katha and Diamond Comics have been hugely popular with a large portion of the Indian market. However, the popularity of the medium plummeted in the 90s, with the advent of satellite television and, more specifically, animated series on Cartoon Network and Pogo. This, along with the prevalence of games consoles and the Internet, has meant stiff competition for all varieties of publishers – not least those focusing on the comic book medium.

And that is why the recent steady growth in the popularity of this medium, culminating in the industry’s ability to stage such a successful comic con, feels like the start of a renaissance period for comics in this part of the world.

All the signs from this spectacular weekend are positive. From the attendance figures and the sales revenues to the press coverage and the general excitement of the public, comic con has certainly proved that there is a place for comics and graphic novels in the hearts and bookshelves of people in India, and that big things lie ahead for all those involved.

Here’s to next year, and an even bigger and better Comic Con India in 2012.

10-day spring literary carnival in Delhi from March 4
Source: newKerala.com
Literature and spring will blend to form a creative cocktail at the 10-day Spring Fever, an annual literary festival, from March 4-13 at the India Habitat Centre.The festival, presented by Penguin India, will feature writers like Vishal Bharadwaj, Ruskin Bond, Javed Akhtar, William Dalrymple, Shobhaa De and Gurcharan Das who will read out from their books and discuss the emerging trends in literary arts.

Organizers say that the festival, inaugurated in 2010, promotes quality literature among the youth and helps readers buy books from an open air library that stocks all Penguin imprints ranging from the early classics to the new children’s series. Read more »

24 litterateurs gets ‘Sahitya Akademi Award 2010′
Source: newKerala.com
Litterateurs in 24 Indian languages, including Bani Basu in Bengali, Esther David in English, Uday Prakash in English and Sheen Kaaf Nizam in Urdu, were honoured with ‘Sahitya Akademi Awards 2010′ here at the ‘Festival of Letters.’

The other winners include poets Aurobindi Uzir (Bodo), Arun Sakhardande (Konkani), Gopi Narayan Pradhan (Nepali), Vanita (Punjabi), Mangat Badal (Rajasthani), Mithila Prasad Tripathi (Sanskrit) and Laxman Dubey (Sindhi).

Manoj (Dogri) and Nanjil Nadan (Tamil) were given the honour for their collection of short stories.

Besides, Keshada Mahanta (Assamese), Rahmath Tarikere (Kannada), Basher Bashir (Kashmiri) and Ashok R Kelkar (Marathi) received the award for their books in the criticism genre. Read more »

Amar Chitra Katha creator no more
Source: livemint.com
In 1967, Anant Pai and his wife, who were visiting New Delhi, were at a bookstore in the city. The TV at the store was playing a quiz featuring some students from St Stephen’s College and Pai was disappointed when the participants couldn’t name the mother of Hindu god Ram. His disappointment only increased when one of them answered a toughie about a Greek god. And that was the moment Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) was born.

This February, Pai, 81, “Uncle Pai” to many, died in Mumbai after a heart attack, less than a week after receiving a lifetime achievement award from the organizers of India’s first comic book convention, Comic Con India. For the past three years he had been working on a book called Glimpses of Glory, which dealt with 40 “defining moments” from India’s history. Read more »

Impact of Budget 2011 on Indian Publishing
Source: printweek.com
The Union Budget will indirectly impact the Indian publishing industry due to various duties on paper. Excise duty on writing and printing and industrial paper increased. from 4% to 5%. Customs duty on waste paper reduced from 5% to 2.5%, 1% excise duty introduced on wood pulp. Enhanced allocation for education is expected to give an impetus to demand for writing and printing paper.
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Polishing Diamonds: Leading an Editorial Team into the 21st Century
Source: peopleandmanagement.com
Rows of books by academic publishers may adorn your shelf, but do you know what it takes to produce these? Payal Kumar (Vice President, Editorial & Production, SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd.) turns the pages to provide a candid account of the challenges of hiring and retaining top-level talent in an increasingly technology-driven industry.

Over the years the profile of an editor has certainly undergone a metamorphosis of sorts. Whereas youngsters, about a decade ago, used to enter this industry more out of default, we as employers are now on the lookout for candidates with specialized backgrounds, including MBAs, in order to manage the book list for professionals which covers vast subject areas including HR, finance and marketing.

As more specialized teams are groomed, ranging from copy editing, to quality control to rewriting teams, there is a requirement for editors who are also managers; for candidates who see publishing as a career with a definite growth path, rather than simply as a job. Like most professions today, an editor cannot be an ‘armchair’ worker; rather he or she has to keep providing value-addition in order to climb the ladder of success.

Candidates high on interpersonal skills and multitasking abilities and who are adaptable in their approach are definitely prized. Market needs keep changing and our teams need to be robust enough to produce a book in lightning speed if necessary (we recently produced Malini Chib’s book One Little Fingerr in a record-breaking one month); or adapt to changing departmental processes for example, the beginning of our working relationship with Chinese authors is likely to merit greater language interventions than what we are accustomed to.

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Growing Pains Among India’s Elite
Source: New York Times

In recent weeks, the writers William Dalrymple and Patrick French, among others, have come before a fusillade of criticism in India, much of it questioning not their facts, not their interpretations, but their foreignness.

“Who gets to write about India?” The Wall Street Journal asked in its own report on this Indian literary feuding.

It is a complicated question, not least because to decide who gets to write about India, you would need to decide who gets to decide who gets to write about India.

Rather than conjecturing some Committee for the Deciding of the Deciding of Who Gets to Write About India, it might be easier to let writers write what they please and readers read what they wish.

The accusations pouring forth from a section of the Indian commentariat are varied. Some criticism is of a genuine literary nature, fair game, customary, expected. But lately a good amount of the reproaching has been about identity.

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New horizons, new challenges
Source: The Hindu
Publishing in India, whether it is in English, the regional languages or translations, is on a growth curve like never before. The multinationals are here in force but the independent publishers are thriving too. A look at the prospects ahead…

English isn’t the only marker of success. Publishing in the Indian languages is well set to grow. Languages such as Malayalam, Tamil, Bengali, Hindi, Marathi already have much larger markets than English – at the annual Chennai book fair there are over 400 publishers who participate regularly, and many others fill the columns of the waiting list. The story is the same in Bengal, and in many other parts of the country. Indeed, if the National Readership Survey is to be believed, the growing market for newspapers and magazines in India is not in English but in the Indian languages. There is no reason why this should not be the same for books – signs of this are already evident in the growing number of translations between Indian languages.

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Notes to the self and the world
Source: Indian Express

Locked in a climate-controlled vault at the Newberry Library in Chicago, a volume titled The Pen and the Book can be studied only under the watch of security cameras. The book, about making a profit in publishing, scarcely qualifies as a literary masterpiece. It is highly valuable, instead, because a reader has scribbled in the margins of its pages. The scribbler was Mark Twain, who had pencilled, among other observations, a one-way argument with the author, Walter Besant, that “nothing could be stupider” than using advertising to sell books as if they were “essential goods” like “salt” or “tobacco.” On another page, Twain made some snide remarks about the big sums being paid to another author of his era. Like many readers, Twain was engaging in marginalia, writing comments alongside passages and sometimes giving an author a piece of his mind. It is a rich literary pastime, sometimes regarded as a tool of literary archaeology, but it has an uncertain fate in a digitalised world.

Marginalia was more common in the 1800s. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a prolific margin writer, as were William Blake and Charles Darwin. In the 20th century it mostly came to be regarded like graffiti: something polite and respectful people did not do. But marginalia never vanished. When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa in 1977, a copy of Shakespeare was circulated among the inmates. Mandela wrote his name next to the passage from Julius Caesar that reads, “Cowards die many times before their deaths.” Studs Terkel, the oral historian, was known to admonish friends who would read his books but leave them free of markings. He told them that reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation.

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The global crime syndicate
Source: Times of India

Crime fiction continues to enthrall readers. And more writers than ever before are taking to it, especially Indian regional writers. Interestingly, Tamil and Bangla crime writers are particularly popular. Even so, the mainstay of the genre – and that includes sub-genres like whodunits, spy thrillers and detective stories – remains foreign writers. Odd though it may sound, the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and page-turners by Agatha Christie remain hugely popular. Even so, the genre has broadened somewhat for Indian readers. They now revel characters as diverse as the diabetic Swedish detective Kurt Wallander, the African-American psychologist Alex Cross and the hard-boiled Scottish inspector Rebus.

Kolkata, home to iconic fictional detectives such as Satyajit Ray’s Feluda and Saradindu Bandopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi, would agree. Bookseller Saugata Chatterjee says his shop in the city’s centrally located College Street gets many crime fiction aficionados. “Crime fiction”, says the bookseller, “is an evergreen genre. Popular foreign authors that are always in demand include Steig Larsson, creator of the Millennium Trilogy, Joe Nesbo of the Harry Hole series, Jim Butcher of The Dresden Files and Ian Rankin – creator of Inspector Rebus.”

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Write Moves
Source: Hindustan Times

Are we, perhaps, turning into a nation of writers? “I don’t think so,” says Urvashi Butalia, publisher, Zubaan, and whose initiative, Kali for Women, started with Ritu Menon, was one of the first independent publishing ventures in India. “Nor are we turning into a nation of readers…our per capita book consumption is one of the lowest in the world.”

If that is so, who is reading and who is writing? And why does everyone want to write? An uncritical approval of authors as people whose success is both the moral of the story and the ‘goal’ of publishing, has sent out mixed signals to readers, so much so that it is the latter who now knocks at the publisher’s door for entry. This is a Reader who doesn’t want to Read any more. He wants to Write. And the market has added to his confusion.

How? The Reader has seen that the pop and ‘high’ literature hierarchy can be reversed. A Meenakshi Madhavan book has equal billing with an Amitava Ghosh book. (Unsurprisingly, the random and personal banalities, views on relationships, life, pets, of 25-year-old ‘Arshi’ in books such as Reddy’s You Are Here is now being seen as literature – Stephen Dedalus and Joseph K go take a walk – as the ‘universal experience’ of an ‘individual’). The production values of both are the same. Advances for first-time writers of commercial and literary fiction are on a par.

Read more »

E-books fail to lure Indian book lovers
Source: Times of India
The sales of digital books in India is expected to pick up in coming months but that will not impact the aficionados love for hardcover books as has been the case in the West, say major publishers here.

India may see good rise in sales of digital books as downloading them on mobiles becomes a possibility but their growth trajectory may not be same as in the West, they say.

Managing Director of Rupa & Co, Kapish Mehra does not see iPads or Kindle book readers replacing the hard copy. “New technology creates a new reader. Digital books will have their share of techno enthusiasts who will read them. But, that will not impact print versions of books,” says Mehra. Read more »

New Book Releases and Events
New book and journal releases, new imprints and other similar events.

Anwesha plans publication of ‘knowledge books’
Source: The Assam Tribune
Voluntary organisation Anwesha, which has now emerged as a pioneer organisation in the State’s reading movement with some remarkable publications and the efforts to promote reading habit among the young people, has embarked upon an ambitious Rs 5 crore project for preparation and publication of ‘knowledge books’ for the Assamese medium students.

It has already formed the planning and advisory board of the mission with Prof Mohammed Taher as the chairman and moved the State Chief Minister and some public sector units (PSUs) seeking support.

Till date, Assamese publications are dominated by fiction. Ninety per cent of the Assamese translation works are also fiction, while the Assamese books for children are mainly folktales and fairy tales. Read more »

Bombay Gazetteer in huge demand, third edition released
Source: Indian Express
Intense competition and demand for the old city gazettes published by the British have compelled the Maharashtra State Gazetteers Department to come out with a fresh stock of these documents — one of the most authentic accounts of the city’s history.

The third edition was released last week after private players started publishing them, claiming the copyright law does not extend to government gazettes which are over a century old.

First published in 1909, the gazettes were reprinted in 1977-1978, but soon ran out of stock. For more than three decades, the department did not publish them. The three volumes, also sold in the e-book format, have information on every aspect of the city from the macro-elements like history, geography to micro elements like the communities, to even the taxes levied by various people who ruled the city. It also has some rare photos of the city dating back to the early 19th century. Read more »

Tamil dictionary for blind
Source: Deccan Chronicle
A Madurai-based NGO, in collaboration with a publishing firm, has produced and released a Tamil dictionary for the blind.

R. Balaganesan, a visually-challeged person who was involved in the production of the dictionary, said a team of 33 members including 23 visually challenged persons took part in the process.The dictionary comprises 53 volumes and runs to 6,250 pages. It had been distributed to 40 institutions, the NGO officials said.

While Indian Association for Blind, the NGO, worked on the project, publishing firm Cre-A provided editable electronic version of the dictionary, the NGO officials said. Read more »

Art Books, Pocket Priced
Source: Indian Express
Publishers reach out to laypersons with art books priced at the cost of pizza

While money exchanged hands and red dots went up on artwork at the India Art Summit in Delhi, Harsha Bhatkal, Chairman of Popular Prakashan Publishing House, busied himself in a corner educating new buyers about art and artists. It was a soft launch of his latest art books, “The Dialogue Series”. He followed it with a formal launch last fortnight in Delhi and Mumbai. Five out of a series of 14 paperbacks, priced at Rs. 175 each, are now in the market. “Art is not a privy of the few, so why should books on art be unaffordable?” asks Bhatkal.

Like works of art, publications about art and artists come with a hefty price tag. But, in recent months, several publishers have made a concerted effort to reach out to lay readers through affordable books.

Read more »

Re-Reading Karnataka
Source: Indian Express
Has Kannada become a language that only receives knowledge? How does one end this lament?

Narayana puts his questions in a historical context. He says in the past 50-odd years (since the integration of Karnataka) in the process of building the Kannada nation, we have conducted a massive exercise of offering knowledge through Kannada. We undertook enormous translation projects of social science and humanities texts to transfer the medium of knowledge from English to Kannada. Even as we did this, we did not integrate the various texts to understand the world around us. The volumes simply created an illusion that we were creating knowledge in our language. Students not only used Kannada to come to terms with the knowledge they were being imparted, but also used the language to reproduce what they had picked up. There is no doubt there have been some mature contributions over the decades, but after a long journey we feel nothing belongs to us. Despite all the knowledge we still seem to be wondering about the inadequacy that surrounds us. Why is this so?

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Elsewhere…
News from around the world…

What Children’s Publishers Are Doing in the Apps Space
Source: Publisher’s Weekly
Houses are testing, experimenting

While adult and children’s divisions face many of the same questions about apps – costs, sales potential, and whether they should drive profits or market books-children’s content is generally more suited to this space. Still, like their adult counterparts, children’s publishers are developing apps slowly.

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