The Publisher’s Post is a monthy newsletter that contains information relating to the book publishing and book selling industry in India.

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Happenings
On what’s happened in the industry this last week. If there’s news you have heard of and think it would make for interesting reading, please share it with us.

Penguin India in Digital Mode

Penguin is getting ready to launch digital content business in India.

With 500 digital titles and counting, John Makinson, CEO of Penguin, is convinced that the publishing house will have a good run delivering books over mobile phones and e-readers.

“India remains a tough market to do business as book prices are low. Besides, pirated editions are already selling at traffic signals before we place our copies at the book stores,” Makinson says.

Lack of physical distribution in Tier 2 and 3 cities has also hit business – reasons that are strong enough for Makinson to turn books into applications with “online communities” for fans, live chat between readers and other multimedia effects. Read More

Sangam House Writer’s Residency Program

Every winter the Sangam House Writer’s Residency Program invites approximately twenty writers to live and work on the Adishakti property outside Pondicherry, on the east coast of southern India. Lodging (single rooms) and food will be provided free of charge. Each writer is responsible for travel costs to and from Pondicherry. However, travel funds and bursaries are available through various cultural organizations.

The next session will run for approximately three months from mid-November 2010 to mid-February 2011.  Residents are selected through an application process. Know more.

Amar Chitra Katha publisher buys IBH

The new entity will be one of the largest integrated publishing and distribution firms in India.

ACK Media, which owns brands such as Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle and Karadi Tales, has acquired a 100% stake in India Book House Pvt. Ltd (IBH), one of the largest and oldest distribution networks for books and other published material.

The new entity, IBH Books and Magazines Distributors Pvt. Ltd, will be one of the largest integrated publishing and distribution companies in India.

ACK Media, registered as Amar Chitra Katha Pvt. Ltd, is also looking to raise nearly Rs100 crore in the next 18 months to expand its portfolio of products and promote itself in India and abroad.

Read More

The Murty Classical Library

That N R Narayana Murthy, chief mentor and founder of Infosys, and his family, have established the Murty Classical Library to translate Indian classics into English is now well known. What is less known is that the project is close to the heart and mind of Narayana Murthy’s son Rohan Murty.

It was in mid-April this year that the Murtys announced the establishing of the library. To be set up with an endowment from the family’s donation of 5.2 million dollars, the project will translate classical works from Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Punjabi and other Indian languages into English for a global audience. Harvard University Press (HUP) has been assigned the work of publishing the translated works.

Rohan Murty explained that the Murty Classical Library will translate Indian literature, and some texts could be as old as 1,500 years from various Indian languages. The library will include fiction, non-fiction and philosophy. Read More

Cyber forum for Indo-Anglian writers

Indo-Anglian writers now have an interactive cyber forum to exchange creative ideas and share their passion for the language. A group of English lovers across the country has taken the initiative to launch an exclusive online journal www.indianruminations.com.

Indianruminations features a collection of poems, essays, interviews, reviews, short fiction, literary criticism and art. “English has come to occupy an important position in the era of globalisation. But much of the writings in the language project Western culture. Most writers themselves are based abroad with only a feeble link to India,” said Ms. Sandhya, an employee with the Kerala Sustainable Urban Development Project (KSUDP). Read More

How to Train Your Dragon

The first lit festival in Bhutan introduced the Bhutanese to their own readership.

Mountain Echoes, the first India-Bhutan literature festival, was unpretentious, informal and made sure that the Indian contingent got a summer vacation out of it in pleasant Thimphu. Read More

New Book Releases and Events
This section reports on new book and journal releases, new imprints and other similar events.

MT’s works in English released

A collection of M.T. Vasudevan Nair’s fiction translated into English and published by Orient Black Swan was released by Kannada writer and critic U.R. Ananthamurthy.

The hardback edition titled ‘The Writings of M.T. Vasudevan Nair’ comprises ‘Mist’ and ‘The Soul of Darkness,’ ‘Kalam,’ and ‘Kuttiedathi and Other Stories.’ ‘Mist’ and ‘The Soul of Darkness’ are translations of Mr. Vasudevan Nair’s highly-acclaimed novels, ‘Manhu’ and ‘Irutinde Atmavu.’

Gita Krishnankutty and V.Abdulla are the translators of the works included in the collection. The volume also features an introduction to MT’s works by P.P. Raveendran, eminent academic and scholar of Malayalam literature. Read More

When Someone’s Wife Did It For the First Time

When Buddhadeva Bose’s Raat Bhorey Brishti (It Rained All Night) was published in 1967, it raked up a controversy in Calcutta (Kolkata). The book was deemed pornographic by a Sessions Judge and the poor author was made to stand in a cage during the course of the court hearings, in retrospect, by a somewhat deranged judge. The Calcutta High Court quashed the charges of pornography brought against Buddhadeva Bose and the novella went on to become a critical as well as commercial success.

Clinton B Seely, scholar of the Bengali language and Emerituus Professor of Bengali at the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilisations, University of Chicago, has done a fine translation of an important Bengali fiction written at a critical juncture in its history.

It Rained All Night reads like an intimate diary written by two people, namely Maloti, a pretty middle class Bengali and her academic husband, Nayonangshu. Each presents a point of view about Maloti’s affair with Jayanto, a journalist and a man of action, who happens to be a friend of the family. The writing is strong and confessional. Read the whole review here

Bi-Monthly Journal Dedicated to Book Publishing

All About Book Publishing (AABP), a bi-monthly trade journal exclusively dedicated to book publishing industry in India, was launched during the World Book Fair that concluded in New Delhi earlier this year. According to its publishers, All About Book Publishing aims to informatically serve the industry associates and enable them to perform effectively. It will be a reliable information source for the book publishing industry.

Blogs and Articles
Comments and posts on trends and events in the book industry.

Spend Less To Stay In Business

A spectre is haunting the Indian book trade — that of rising costs and declining profits. Increased overhead and book-production costs have led to higher prices and reduced volume sales that have cut into the already slender margins of a book. As the shadow lengthens, how does the future shape up and what are the prospects for authors of new books? Read the whole article here

“Own-It-Yourself” Bookstore

fivex5 is a unique retail concept introduced in India, one that encourages individuals to spare a small place in their homes, offices or establishments and sell books from there.

The concept, rolled out in February 2010, affords publishers to reach out to readers in far-off places where distribution of books using the conventional route is still a challenge. Know more….

Delhi’s Indie Book Stop

While still on the subject of unique bookstores…

Located in the belly button of Hauz Khas village, towards the bottom end of its labyrinthine roads, Yodakin offers 400 sq. ft of alternative, independent and interesting titles in music, books and movies. Whether you are looking for eco-friendly activity books for tweens, CDs of alternative rock bands or esoteric art magazines, this is the place to go.

The store is founder Arpita Das’ solution to the problem of alternative books getting lost in large bookstores. Das runs Yoda Press, an independent publishing house that focuses on urban studies, sexuality and gender, among other subjects. Read more…

iPads, Kindles, and the Close of a Chapter in Book Publishing

Few days ago, the first buyers of Apple’s iPad began putting it through its paces, playing games, navigating the Internet, and downloading electronic books.

That groan you heard was from dozens of book publishers across the United States, reeling from yet another onslaught against their bread and butter: the paper book. First it was Books on Tape, followed by books on phones, and then the king of business model killers, Amazon.com’s Kindle.

Read the entire post here

A Step in the Dark

John Makinson has been with publishing firm Penguin Group for around 15 years and has been its chief executive since 2002. An expert in digital publishing who is spearheading Penguin’s e-book initiatives, he was in India to launch Shobhaa De Books, Penguin India’s new imprint for books related to lifestyle, the celebrity world, fashion, film and culture.

Makinson spoke about the challenges of being an e-book publisher and the Indian book market. Edited excerpts….

A New Voice

Translation of Bengali novels into English is nothing new. Translated works of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray have been steady sellers in most bookshops around the country but it’s only of late that the focus has shifted to other greats of Bengali literature like Sankar, Parashuram and of course Sunil Gangopadhyay. “These books are contemporary and manage to strike a chord with those who aren’t comfortable with Bengali,” says Bishwarup of The Oxford Bookstore.

Read the full article here

Novel adventures

Less than three years ago, [HT Sunday Magazine] Brunch had done a cover story titled Desperately Seeking Writers, about how publishers were looking for writers to do books in all sorts of genres. “How things have changed since then,” says VK Karthika, chief editor of HarperCollins India, who was quoted in that story. “Now there are books by Indian writers in most genres – though I still don’t think you can say there’s enough.” Still, no one who’s walked into a big bookshop recently can have failed to notice that the section called ‘Indian Writing’ has become quite big. Every month, bookshops display more and more novels by Indian writers. English fiction writing in India, it seems, is booming. Read the entire post here

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This newsletter is developed by Dogears Print Media Pvt Ltd. with inputs from various individuals, publishing houses, websites and blogs.

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