The Publishing Horizon

Countering a negative book review

GalleyCat points to an instance of a publisher (HarperCollins) countering a negative book review (for Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games) with an ad (touting an endorsement from the staff of a bookstore) in the very same paper that carried the review.

Tamil translation of President Musharraf's In the Line of Fire

கிழக்கு பதிப்பகம் (Kizhakku Pathippagam) has published the Tamil translation of Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf's autobiography "In the Line of Fire." The title of the Tamil translation is உடல் மண்ணுக்கு (Udal Mannukku).

The book will be available at the 30th Chennai Book Fair beginning on January 10th, as well as in leading bookshops across the state of Tamil Nadu. It can also be ordered online. The book (ISBN - 81-8368-252-9) is priced at Rs. 250.

Apart from English, the much talked about and controversial book has also been published in Urdu and Hindi.

கிழக்கு பதிப்பகம் (Kizhakku Pathippagam), a Tamil language imprint of New Horizon Media, publishes a wide spectrum of general books in Tamil covering biographies, politics, self-improvement, business, humour, literature, history, travelogues and more.

American book distributor files for bankruptcy

GalleyCat reports on a bankruptcy filing by an American book distributor,

Advanced Marketing Services, a leading provider of customized merchandising, wholesaling, distribution and publishing services for the book industry, announced in a statement today that it will file voluntarily for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Chapter 11 proceeding does not include the Company's international subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Mexico and Australia, and their operations will not be affected. The Company also announced that, in conjunction with the filing, it has entered into a loan agreement for $75 million in Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) financing from Wells Fargo. "This move will permit AMS, with its investment banker, to continue to pursue strategic alternatives," said Gary M. Rautenstrauch, President and Chief Executive Officer. "Additionally, Chapter 11 protection will enable the Company to continue to conduct business in the normal course, make payments to vendors going forward and continue delivering quality service and products to customers."

GalleyCat also points to the full text of the bankruptcy filing and the list of top creditors and the amounts due to them is eye-popping.

$43.3 million - Random House
$26.5 million - Simon & Schuster
$24.6 million - Penguin Putnam
$22.6 million - Hachette
$18.0 million - HarperCollins

The big five are together owed $135 million!

The New York Times adds

A publishing executive said that while authors and readers were unlikely to be affected by the bankruptcy filing, many publishers might not recover much of what they were owed.

“This is a huge disruption in this business,” said the executive, who declined to be further identified because he was not authorized to speak for his company. “The publishers are going to end up taking a big loss.”

Simon & Schuster immediately suspended shipments to Advanced Marketing Services, a Simon & Schuster spokesman, Adam Roth- berg, said.

Publishers would not give details on their business relationships with Advanced Marketing Services, but the company accounts for as much as 10 percent of some publishers’ sales.

“We’re exploring ways to keep working with them,” a spokeswoman for HarperCollins, Erin Crum, said. A spokesman for Random House declined to comment.

Advanced Marketing Services, founded in 1982, has headquarters in San Diego. It acts as a middleman between publishers and booksellers, obtaining books directly from the publishers and distributing them to retailers like Sam’s Club, Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club.

An interview with a Vietnamese publisher

A Vietnamese publisher, Mr. Vu Hoang Giang, the vice director of Nha Nam Culture and Communication Company, talks about international and domestic literature as well as the publishing business in Vietnamese in an interview.

For perspective, Vietnam's population is about 80 million with a literacy rate of over 90%.

Some excerpts from the interview.

What is Nha Nam’s strategy for 2007?

In 2007, we’ll continue to focus on international literature. At present, we are holding the copyrights of 100 books and preparing for translation. We also bought the copyrights for three novels by Orhan Pamuk: My Name is Red, The White Castle, and Snow. But we haven’t found any translators for them. It is not buying a copyright but finding a translator that is the most difficult step. Old translators often work slowly. Young ones are few. Besides, translators have their own expertise and are often good at particular styles or genres, but not so good at others.

Why are you paying so much attention to foreign writers and books? Isn’t there anything worth publishing in Vietnamese literature?

To tell you the truth, we don’t publish a lot of Vietnamese literature, not because we ignore it, but because there aren’t many good works of literature in Vietnam. To publishers, as to every businessperson, one of the most important things is the source of outputs. International literature is an endless field, with hundreds, or even thousands of great works and writers which have never been introduced in Vietnam. On the contrary, there isn’t much in our own literature. Sometimes we still do the fool’s work of screening the sand for the gold dust of Vietnamese literature simply because of our hope for it. Very few Vietnamese writers can write upon orders from publishers. When they write, these writers often create whatever they want without caring about public demands, and send their drafts to us. What tires us most is to reject those drafts!

Does Nha Nam expect anything from Vietnam’s membership in the WTO?

We don’t expect any great change in the publishing business. Whether Vietnam joins the WTO or not, private companies like us have to put the high quality of our products as the first priority. We have to create a brand name for ourselves. Brand names are a must for survival, especially in the globalised environment. Brand names are like antibiotics.

30th Chennai Book Fair 2007

The 30th Chennai Book Fair, organised by the Booksellers' and Publishers' Association of South India (BAPASI) will be held from January 10-21 at the St Georges School Ground, on Poonamalle High Road opposite Pachaiappa's College in Chennai. The venue has been shifted from the Quaid-e-Milleth Arts College for Women where it has been held for over two decades now. The shift has been necessitated by the need for much larger space both for the exhibitors as well as for parking for all visitors to the Fair. For a bird's eye view of the exact location, take a look at Wikimapia.

Our company, New Horizon Media, is putting up two stalls at the Chennai Book Fair 2006. One stall (stall no. 5) will showcase our titles published in Tamil under the கிழக்கு பதிப்பகம் (Kizhakku Pathippagam) imprint for general titles, the வரம் வெளியீடு (Varam Veliyeedu) imprint for devotional titles, and the நலம் வெளியீடு (Nalam Veliyeedu) imprint for medical/health-related titles.

The other stall (stall no. 205-206) will showcase children's titles in English and Tamil under the Prodigy Books imprint.

Do come by and visit us at the Fair if you will be in Chennai.

Simon & Schuster announces entry into India.

The Book Standard reports that Simon & Schuster have announced plans to enter India.

[Simon & Schuster] will launch an Indian publishing program in early 2007, following up on the opening of an office in New Delhi in 2006.

A number of titles from Simon & Schuster’s U.S. and U.K. operations will be chosen to be published in English-language, Indian editions, which will be printed locally and priced, packaged and marketed for the Indian marketplace.

The first book in the program will be Mira Kamdar’s Planet India, set to be published in February from Scribner. Rahul Srivastava, Simon & Schuster’s regional sales manager for India, will oversee the program.

“India is one of the fastest growing English-language markets and a world-class economic dynamo with a highly literate populace,” said Jack Romanos, president and CEO of S&S. “An expanding presence there with dedicated sales, marketing and publishing capabilities will be vital to Simon & Schuster’s international publishing efforts in the years ahead.”

The article also adds an interesting piece of information on the growth of publishing in India.

“We’re the only group with no presence there—we sell in but we've got no one on the ground," Hachette UK Deputy CEO Peter Roche told The Bookseller in October. "India is the fastest-growing English-language market in the world.”

Thomas Abraham, president of Penguin India, told The Bookseller that Penguin India had seen 27 percent growth over the past year. “Sales are going through the roof,” he said. “We've sold 20,000 of Vikram Chandra in hardback in a month and a half.”

If 20,000 copies were sold in 45 days, that's pretty good going for a 912 page book priced at Rs. 650 in India.

A German view of English fiction from India

Claudia Kramatschek, a german literary critic, writing for a German audience about the English language fiction segment of the Indian book industry, says

These are thrilling times for all things literary, and the excitement is tangible to anyone spending time in India these days and speaking with writers, publishers and literary critics about recent developments and tendencies in book publishing. For India's breakneck transformation of recent years has made itself felt in the world of publishing as well, if only indirectly.

...

Here in Germany, "Indian literature" is still perceived through a distorting lens. Today, just as earlier, German reception is conditioned by the works of English-language authors, many of whom live abroad. On the Indian book market, all of these writers enjoy advantages about which their colleagues writing in regional languages can only dream. This is all the more absurd once we realize that popular authors writing in Hindi or Bengali have for their part attained sales figures and readerships that seem almost inconceivably large to their English-language colleagues. In terms of reader numbers, English-language Indian literature plays an extremely limited role on the Indian book market.

...

But a younger generation of authors now appears to have emerged in the English-language literary sector whose common development manifests a kind of caesura. All are between 25 and 35 years of age – a fact while in and of itself represents a minor revolution in a country where the aura of the senior writer has always shaped the literary canon. All came of age in an India where access to the wider world was available via mouseclick, and all feel at home within the most divergent cultures – and they play with this intercultural network in their literary work as well. At the same time, nonetheless, they are rooted in India to an astonishing degree, and they write about this sense of connection in new and innovative – and at times surprising - ways. A marked turn toward localism is observable, meaning toward the microcosmos of one's own lived world, to the history of the individual towns where these authors lead their lives. In literary terms, this return is associated with an opening toward genre literature and toward what might be referred to as the small form.

Some of the writers mentioned include

Altaf Tyrewala, whose debut novel "No God in Sight" has also recently appeared in German. Just 170 pages in length, the slender novel is a slap in the face to the tradition of the "Great Indian Novel", the favoured form of Anglo-Indian literature.

...

With "Corridor", Sarnath Banerjee, who was born in Calcutta in 1972 and lives in Delhi, for example, has not only published India's first graphic novel. In it, he combines the motif of city life with a loving search for traces among the local aromas and social milieus which he perceives as doomed to perish in the wake of India's globalisation and homogenisation.

...

Chetan Bhagat, born in Delhi in 1974, has captured the voice of an entire generation in his "one night @ the call center". His novel which sold 100,000 copies in a single month, and this in a country where the best-seller threshold is 5,000 - is set in the world of the call centre, where ever growing legions of well-educated urban Indians waste their talent and knowledge.

In stylistic terms, Bhagat’s novel is conspicuous for its use of colloquial English, the true lingua franca of the urban middle classes, and for its renunciation of the type of elaborate diction associated with the works of many Anglo-Indian authors.

It may well be that novels such as "one night @ the call center" are less concerned with literariness as such and far more with the possibilities of identification.

...

Samit Basu, (his blog) born in 1979 and currently a resident of Delhi, has certainly performed a service by providing Indian literature with its first fantasy novel, "The Simoqin Prophecies". Here, we find an arresting and innovative melange of myths new and old, Indian fables and Western pop culture, the Mahabharata and James Bond.

...

This spirit of freedom, which allows the local to mingle with the global, is exuded in particular by Rana Dasgupta's (website) first novel "Tokyo Cancelled", which quickly made it to the top 10 list of Indian bestsellers. All traces of an Indian setting have been virtually eliminated - although the now 35-year-old author emphasizes the importance for his writing of Delhi, his home since 2001. Nonetheless, his novel mirrors in an exemplary fashion a contemporary world in which life - whether in London, Paris or Lagos - is subjugated to the conditions of the global marketplace.

Kramatschek concludes by saying

When it comes to English-language literature from India, the approaching years are indeed likely to show evidence of a fresh wind.

...

Literary online magazines and blogs are flourishing – and in regional languages as well, incidentally.

Literature, with its numerous and at times contradictory facets, finally, mirrors the situation of the country as a whole, which seems to be developing in a perpetual contradiction to itself. Given this situation, we can only wait expectantly to see which new and unexpected pathways will be opening up within the landscape of Indian literature.

Prentice Hall India in legal spat with Pearson

IBNlive reports on a legal spat between Pearson which bought Prentice Hall Inc in 1998 and Prentice Hall India, on the use of the Prentice Hall name in India.

The Delhi High Court had earlier ordered Prentice Hall of India Pvt Ltd (PHI) to drop Prentice Hall from its name. However, PHI filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking to quash the High Court order.

The Supreme Court has acted on the petition and has issued a notice to US-based Pearson Education Inc.

The High Court had ordered that the Chairman of PHI, Ashoke K Ghosh to either drop the words Prentice Hall from its name and let Pearson transfer its shareholding without any consideration or sell its shares to the US firm for Rs 20 crore.

According to a report in PTI, the High Court had also held Ghosh guilty of oppression and mismanagement under Section 397-398 of the Companies Act.

PHI had entered into an agreement with US-based Prentice Hall Inc in 1963 for publishing books. However, Prentice Hall Inc was taken over by Pearson in 1998 and the company tried to restrain PHI from using the name Prentice Hall any further.

PHI counsels K K Venugopal and Atul Sharma told PTI that the name 'Prentice Hall' had acquired tremendous goodwill in India and had become PHI's property by virtue of its use for the last 43 years and this must be protected by the court.

Moreover, Pearson was neither a shareholder as per its register of members nor it had applied for transfer of shares in its name, the counsels argued.

In its petition, PHI said the company would suffer severe loss if it was directed to drop the established name.

The Indian publisher also said Pearson was not entitled to file petitions as it had not shown any interests in the affairs of PHI for several years. Besides, the US company had alleged oppression and mismanagement only after PHI protested starting of a competing business by Pearson, it added.

Asoke Ghosh, the Managing Director of Prentice Hall India, was originally an employee of Prentice Hall India and later bought out the erstwhile Indian owner and over time increased his stake to a majority shareholding. More details on the nature of the spat are provided in a September 2005 judgement of the Delhi High Court.

First International Literature Festival of India

Indian Express reports that the first International Literature Festival of India is to be held in Mumbai from February 20-25, 2007.

“The idea here is to give a boost to the literature of different Indian languages, by getting writers in direct contact with publishers from all over the world. Translation of various Indian works can be done into many languages of the world,’’ explains Rajvinder Singh, Poet Laurete of Germany, talking about the first International Literature Festival of India. To be held in Mumbai, between February 20 and 25, the festival will see about 100 chosen writers from all over the world, including Indian writers from various Indian languages, come together on a common platform. “Through the festival, the idea is to have a dialogue between various cultures and countries and what’s more, publishers will be able to find new writings and writers will have a chance to meet important publishing people,” says Singh, explaining the various aims of the festival and fair.

... the festival will be dynamic and will travel to different places each year.

I haven't able to find any other mention online of this event.

India's growing clout in English language publishing

Just about 7% of India's population can read English according to the 1991 Census (2001 census language data is yet to be released). But even that 7% works out to a substantial 65 million potential English readers. For perspective, compare that to the number of English speakers in USA (about 215 million), number of English speakers in Canada (about 20 million) the entire populations of Britain (about 60 million) and Australia (about 20 million).

India's clout is only likely to grow further in the coming decades in the global market for English language publishing.

David Davidar, former publisher of Penguin India and currently publisher of Penguin Canada, is quoted as saying,

“Canada is a mature market that is growing slowly, whereas India is an emerging market that is the fastest growing English language market in the world today. It is estimated that the Indian market could be bigger than Canada and Australia in the next 10-15 years.”

Richard Marcus writing in the online magazine, Blogcritics wonders why American and even British publishers haven't shown much interest yet in India as sizeable English language market.

What amazes me is how [British and American publishers] seem to have forgotten, or even worse not noticed, the potential audience beyond the confines of our continent and the British Isles. American companies could perhaps be excused on grounds of ignorance, but for the Brits to forget about India and the rest of the Commonwealth nations (the countries that were formerly colonies of England) is just silly. They were the ones who forced the English language down their throats in the first place.

India has probably one of the largest, educated English-speaking populations in the world right now. Its economy is booming, and more and more of her people have the money to spend on books and other forms of leisure. How hard would it be for an imprint to reach an agreement with an Indian press and start delivering titles for publication?

But with the exception of Penguin India, no one seems to be doing very much to take specific advantage of the market. Even Penguin treats India like another foreign country and gives preference to American publications. What this means is that while Penguin can dump as many American-published titles as it wants onto the Indian market, it only exports a few Indian-published titles to the States.

While this does provide a market for whatever is being published in the States, it does nothing to properly develop the Indian market. Penguin needs to remind itself that if it wants the world to know more than the names of one or two authors from India it needs to start treating India with the respect it deserves.

That means that her authors should be given the same treatment as their American counterparts and not be limited in the number of titles they are allowed to export to the American market. The best way to develop a solid audience base is to ensure that the authors of the home country are able to thrive. Keeping their names in the public eye as much as possible is a reminder that Indian writers are just as important as American or British.

If American publishers would open their eyes to the fact that English is spoken in more then a few countries around the world ,they might find their sales figures rising. Sign on a couple of Indian authors and publish them simultaneously in India and the United States. It might take awhile for sales to develop in the United States, but that will be compensated by sales in India.

At the encouragement of a friend of mine in India I sent my manuscript to Penguin India for consideration; I haven't heard anything from them yet, but that doesn't bother me. When they publish the book I expect that it will be available in Canada because that's where I'm from, as well as sold as India, but I doubt it will be for sale in the United States.

It used to be that without the American market your book couldn't really sell enough to make you much money. But times have changed, and America is not the only large English speaking market anymore. American publishers need to remember that - if they want their business to continue to grow. Otherwise they could find themselves being left behind and no longer as important as they think they are.