Prayatna

Reliance's plans for book retailing in India

A report in The Economic Times (Oct 03, 2006) throws some light on Reliance's plans for book retailing in india.

Reliance has tied up with Delhi-based publication house Roli Books and is in talks with Prabhat Prakashan, which publishes books in both English and Hindi.

Book sections in Reliance’s proposed retail outfits would also sell home videos and multimedia music formats, along with related gift articles.

“We have been witnessing a serious lack of shelf space for displaying books. The entry of Reliance would provide us more space for display as well as supermarket and hypermarket formats would bring in better sales for the publishers,” says Kapil Kapoor, marketing head of Roli Books.

Increasing dominance of organised retailers would also systemise operations like timely payments in the publishing industry. Mr Kapoor confirmed that Roli Books has already signed an agreement with Reliance.

Piyush Kumar, director of Prabhat Group’s Prabhat Prakashan, said the company is evaluating Reliance’s proposal. An industry source told ET that Reliance is not offering very attractive margin to the books publishers. Instead, it is promising high volumes.

The NDA covers terms like margins and clauses related to inventory. Chintan Sheth of Ahmedabad’s oldest publisher, Gujarati Publisher, too has struck an agreement with Reliance.

“We have inked an agreement with Reliance and a lot of interest is being shown by organised retailers. We are expecting to get better canvas for vernacular titles with the help of organised retailers,” said Mr Sheth. According to him, the number of copies to be sourced by Reliance would be finalised shortly.

In typical Reliance style, they are trying to force suppliers to settle for low margins, with a promise of high volumes. I'm not sure if Reliance is planning to sell at the cover price or offer readers prices lower than the cover price, or keep the added margins for themselves.

Whether Reliance's promise of high volumes at low margins (how low is low?) will work out remains to be seen, especially in the case of Indian language books. The cover price for most English titles is set fairly high after taking into account the high discounts demanded by distributors/retailers (ranging from 45% to 65% of the cover price). One rarely finds English titles with a cover price lower than Rs. 150 per copy.

Our experience with Tamil publishing has shown that Tamil readers are far more price sensitive. We price our titles very aggressively - a paperback title (of about 160-200 pages) is priced in the region of Rs. 60-70 per copy and a hardbound title (of about 850 pages) at Rs. 350 per copy. This leaves little room for high margins after offering discounts of 25-30% to distributors/retailers, for a high quality production comparable to the best of English titles. Given our aggressive pricing model, it would be well nigh impossible to offer discounts of 50% or more if that is what Reliance has in mind.

Book reading habits in north Tamil Nadu

The Hindu reports on a survey of book reading habits in north Tamil Nadu, conducted in mid 2006.

More than three-fourths of the 329 people surveyed by a group of journalism students from Softview Visual Communication were between the ages of 15 and 40. They rated education as the principal reason for buying books.

The survey had several parameters, including reasons, material chosen, preferred time and preferred language for reading. It was conducted with the reading public in Chennai, Thiruvallur, Kanchipuram, Villupuram and Cuddalore as the target group.

A little more than half of those surveyed said they preferred to read English books though around 80 per cent marked their mother tongue as Tamil.

While English was associated with better employment opportunities, the upwardly mobile young adult group still seems almost evenly split between reading English and Tamil books.

More than a fourth of them said that books for leisure reading were important, while around a fifth of all respondents said they preferred reading personality development books.

More than 40 per cent said that they prefer to buy books from book fairs, though about the same proportion still frequent bookshops. Online book shopping seems to be picking up slowly with around 2 per cent choosing that mode of shopping.

Most readers also said that they prefer to read at home in the evenings or night. Around half the number surveyed said they had a personal collection of books at home.

The principal factors affecting the choice of books were reviews in magazines, the reputation a particular book gained by word of mouth, or the author's popularity.

Does the Indian publishing industry need literary agents?

There are mixed reactions from Indian publishers.

Says Pramod Kapoor of Roli Books, “Literary agents look after the authors’ interests better as they help establish communication as well as understanding between a publisher and an author.” Adds Kapish G Mehra of Rupa & Co., “On any given day, we receive a minimum of six manuscripts. Agents help get only copies that deserve publication.” However, there are also those who don’t feel we need of such agents. Says writer and editor of Manohar Publishers & Distributors, Siddharth Chowdhary, “Too much of dependence on literary agents is bad as they might misguide new authors.” Ravi Singh of Penguin Group (India) evinces, “We don’t need agents in India as publishers are doing pretty well without them.”

Alka Raghuvanshi, author, art curator and a former agent, elucidates, “Agents are like a gynaecologist directing a pregnant woman.” She feels that literary agents extend not only necessary guidance but also emotional support in a “lonely” job.

Anuj Bahri of Bahri Sons, who has recently donned the cap of literary agent himself, thinks that most publishers here don’t understand their job. “The publishers are hostile as they don’t acknowledge the role of the agents who are here not just to sell a few copies of an author’s work but the author himself to the world,” he says.

Says Tushar Raheja, writer of Anything For You Ma’am, “The book shall be left to the writer to write. The agent should focus on spotting the right publisher.” DN Chaudhuri, writer of Delhi, adds, “Unfortunately, we’ve very few literary agents who are also quite unorganised; the profession has not taken up well.”

However, despite evincing a need for literary agents, most publishers add at the same time that they don’t have too bright a future here in India as there’s not much money in the profession. Writing on the wall, is it?

From my perspective (of an Indian language publisher currently publishing in Tamil), literary agents for indian language writers would be welcome. Literary agents can add value enormously to the writers they represent as well as to the publishers they pitch the writers to, but there seem to be very few of their ilk even in English, let alone in the Indian languages. Vijay Nagaswami, an author, claims

I have been able to locate only one literary agent in India [Ms Jayapriya Vasudevan, Jacaranda Press, Bangalore] who consistently responds to authors. There may be more, but I've not yet come across them. Writers Net lists 27 India-based literary agents; you could check them out and see if any work out. If any do, please let me know, I'd be delighted to add to my list.

Are there gender differences in what we read, and what we think?

"Both publishers and pollsters can tell you that readers of fiction are more likely to be female." according to an article in the Toronto Globe and Mail

“Women read more, they read more novels, they read earlier and they read later. Sixty-five to 70 per cent of the [Canadian] book market is women,” observes Brad Martin, president of Random House of Canada, adding that the American and European markets are probably similar. “How many men do you know who are in a book group?”

No surprise, then, that when the federal Department of Canadian Heritage surveyed Canadian reading habits last year, it found a distinct gender gap. Women accounted for 60 per cent of the daily readers and 70 per cent of the heavy readers who had read 50 or more books in the last 12 months. Women also outnumbered men two to one as regular readers of both classic and contemporary novels.

The divide is not new: The department's previous survey, in 1991, had found similar results, while academics can trace the characterization of novel reading as a genteel — or frivolous — female pursuit as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the gender gap is both particularly pronounced and much debated these days, partly because publishers have exploited it so successfully with their marketing strategies, and partly because teachers and parents are so concerned that boys lag behind girls in their literacy skills.

Vancouver writer and literary critic George Fetherling complains that men only read those novels in which they can directly identify with the protagonist, while women will read about people different from themselves. That's the most common explanation of the phenomenon: Reading fiction involves empathizing with the characters, and thus draws on women's traditional emotional strengths. Men, on the other hand, turn to non-fiction to learn about the world around them.

“While men read and many men read voraciously, they tend to read non-fiction, history, finance and sports,” observes Doug Pepper, president and publisher of McClelland & Stewart. “I wish it were more evenly split but it does make it easier for us because we can identify our market.”
...

Both Smith and Kanya-Forstner argue that men are drawn to books about ideas, and both think publishers have failed to recognize that in their marketing schemes for fiction. “Guys look for ideas,” says Smith. “Very intelligent men I talk to, none of them read fiction. It's girl stuff: hundreds and hundreds of pages of feelings. To think that no one perceives fiction as being about ideas is depressing.”

While these are the views of those in the Canadian book trade, based on results of surveys, The Economist takes a detailed look at the current scientific understanding of gender differences and says "Men and women think differently. But not that differently."

When boys and girls are born, they are already different, and they favour different toys from the beginning. That boys and girls—and men and women—are programmed by evolution to behave differently from one another is now widely accepted. But which of the differences between the sexes are “biological”, in the sense that they have been honed by evolution, and which are “cultural” or “environmental” and might more easily be altered by changed circumstances, is still fiercely debated. ...

The theory put forward to explain what happened—and the similar innate preferences of human children—is that the toys preferred by young females are objects that offer opportunities for expressing nurturing behaviour, something that will be useful to them later in life. Young males, whether simian or human, prefer toys that can be used actively or propelled in space, and which afford greater opportunities for rough play.

... although it is commonly held that there are reliable differences between the verbal abilities of males and females, Dr Hines suggests this is not exactly correct. She says that the results of hundreds of tests of vocabulary and reading comprehension show there is almost no gap between the sexes. Though teenage girls are better at spelling than teenage boys, the only aspect of verbal ability that is known to show a sex difference in adults is verbal fluency (the ability to produce words rapidly). For example, when asked to list as many words as possible that start with a particular letter, women usually come up with more than men. Furthermore, even when there are differences in ability between the sexes, research suggests that the scale of these differences is often smaller than people generally believe.

Seth Godin's advice for authors

Seth Godin has some radical (especially in the Indian context), but very useful, advice for authors. Of the 19 points he lists, here are a select few

2. The best time to start promoting your book is three years before it comes out. Three years to build a reputation, build a permission asset, build a blog, build a following, build credibility and build the connections you'll need later.

11. Blurbs are overrated, imho.
12. Blog mentions, on the other hand, matter a lot.

All authors, both aspiring and published, would do well to read Seth Godin's entire list.

Cambridge University Press buys 51% stake in Indian publisher, Foundation Books, for US$ 6.5 million

In July, Cambridge University Press (CUP) bought a 51% stake (for about US$ 6.5 million) in Indian publisher, Foundation Books, with $4.5 million going to Manas Saikia, owner of Foundation Books, and $2 million to be invested by CUP in the Indian business going ahead.

Various news reports throw light on the reasons for the deal and CUP's plans in India.

• Cambridge University Press has entered India through the acquisition of 51 per cent stake in Foundation Books Pvt Ltd together with its divisions Foundation Media and Foundation e-Learning for about $6 million. The new entity will be called Cambridge University Press India Pvt Ltd. "India will become a base for publishing quality educational materials for us for many of our Asian and other markets. We plan to take the number of offices to 12 from the existing six in about five years. We also plan to increase the headcount to 200 from the current 80 in about the same time," said Mr Stephen Bourne, President, CUP. It publishes around 2,500 new titles and 200 journals every year. "A lot of the 2,500 titles will come from India," said Mr Manas Saikia, Managing Director, Cambridge University Press India Pvt Ltd. (Business Line)

• At $6.5 million, the Cambridge University Press thought it was a steal. On Tuesday, the world's oldest publisher bought over a young (only 14-years-old), little-known textbook publishing house in Delhi, Foundation Books, for possibly the highest price ever paid to an Indian publisher, big or small. Foundation's Manas Saikia gets a whopping $4.5 million for his list of 100 titles (plus 290 in the pipeline), six offices and his school and college connections. CUP is planning to invest the rest of the $2 million in business expansion. And this, says CUP chief Stephen Bourne, is only the start of its buying spree. They're looking out for other houses with "similar interests".

  CUP is not the only Western publisher eyeing the thousands of small publishers in English scattered across India. There are several reasons why the West is looking for mergers in India, the world's second largest market for English books, says Bourne. One is affordability—a similar buyover in UK would cost four times what CUP paid. The other is their experience and penetration into the lucrative market for textbooks. But does this mean book prices will soar? Very likely, say insiders, because while the number of English books we produce is only next to the US, in value terms we're way behind even Japan and Korea. (Outlook)

• ''India publishes 20,000 new titles every year which indicates that the publishing industry is really flourishing in this country and with Cambridge tying up with Foundation Books, the former which saw a sales of Rs 25 crore last fiscal is likely to see a profit of Rs 40 crore,'' said Cambridge University Press Managing Director Manas Saikia. Foundation Books at present publishes the Journal of India Foreign Affairs and with the tie-up in place CUPI plans to launch more journals from India. CUP said that it had already acquired the Journal of Asian Studies and several journals of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau. Foundation Books which has been the strategic partner of Cambridge University Press looks after CUP's interests in South Asia including handling the markets of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives and Bhutan. (Webindia)

  
  

• "We would work with authors based here and publish books and journals on subjects such as IT and agriculture, which have a direct bearing on the Indian readers," Mr Chris Boughton, MD, Asia Pacific said, adding that books published in India would also cater to markets in the Arab nations and Africa, where the company is looking to increase its presence.

  Cambridge also sees a great scope for its English language teaching (ELT) books in the domestic market, given the emphasis laid here on good communication skills. "We have also come out with a book on English for call centres and foresee great demand for it in India," Mr Boughton said. (Biznews)

• Bourne identified opportunity in the Indian market as the biggest factor for Cambridge University Press to make a foray into the country. While in the UK, there’s hardly any scope to grow any further, he said. “Growth is in such places as India,” he added. China also offers opportunity, but the regulations of that country are restrictive, according to company executives. In China, foreign publishers cannot operate directly.

  Admitting that Oxford University Press is the biggest competition around, the Asia-Pacific managing director of Cambridge Univesrity Press Chris Boughton said that the company’s India venture would aim at becoming the top player in this market. He, however, did not offer any timeframe for meeting the target. The market size of Oxford is estimated at six times that of CUP’s India partner, Foundation Books, in India, according to industry estimates. (DNA)

• [CUP] will focus on customising a special type of English for call centres and BPOs as there are growing employment opportunities for those wishing to join this booming industry, CUP chief executive Stephen RR Bourne told said. "It's mainly going to be about vocabulary and the structure of sentences. The idea is also to familiarise them with geography of different places in the world so that it doesn't matter which part of the world they are catering to," he maintained.

  English language courses contribute a third of the nearly Rs 12 billion annual revenue of the 425-year-old publishing house that has published books by iconic figures like Isaac Newton, John Milton and, more recently, Amartya Sen. (Yahoo India)

• "Till yesterday, CUP worldwide had only two bookshops, one at Cambridge and the other at Sao Paulo in Brazil. But from today we have eight bookstores worldwide," states the Englishman (Stephen R.R. Bourne, President of CUP). Six Indian cities - New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata - get a bookstore each. "Ninety per cent of the books in these stores will be Cambridge books but it shall have books by other publishers too," he says.

  Bourne says, "Indians are lucky to have so many bookstores." The prevailing international trend is Internet-shopping of books. "Quite a hefty percentage of our books is sold through Internet worldwide. A website like Amazon.com gives us a lot of business. But the trend will take some time to grow in India," he feels. A time would come, he says, "when there shall be no bookstores in the world. Say, in another 10 to 20 years, no one will visit a bookstore for books. It will finally see the end of stand-alone colony bookstores."

  Sharing as to why his company is showing greater interest in the Indian market now, Bourne says time has come now for Cambridge books to expand its prospect. "English language books have been our plus points. English education is indeed big in India and our academic books are already quite popular here. But we need to expand and to do that you need to pump in money which we will do now after the new equation," he explains. India is the third largest market for English language books after the U.K. and the U.S. but in a span of few years, India is slated to beat even Britain in the race. No wonder, foreign publishers are increasingly setting shop in the country.

  "Easy English language books for early learners are not widely available here. We have started our language books section for early learners in New Zealand called Hippo Books. We might think of bringing the range here," he says.

  Though CUP is the oldest publisher of Bible, (the first one was published in the 15th Century) this looks like the last of his priorities here. "My first priority here is to sell English grammar and maths books to Indian school-goers," he sums up. (The Hindu - July 27, 2006)

• It's not the huge number of English-speaking population alone that has attracted the Press, which presently outsources typesetting of whole of its books and 90 per cent of journals to companies in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Pondhicherry. India's edge in software technology and low cost of publishing makes perfect business sense for the Press.

  The Press, whose annual revenue is about $250 million, currently brings out 2,500 titles a year, which would now become available in India with the Cambridge University Press India Private Ltd coming into existence. (Rediff)

• Frontline (Feb 2006) carried an interview with Manas Saikia, formerly owner of Foundation Books and now Managing Director of CUP India. Saikia laments the lack of a global vision amongst Indian publishers.

  There is only one true Indian multinational, Roli Books. They have a true international approach and market. Believe it or not their biggest market is the French one. Most Indian publishers who have made good, such as S. Chand, Navneet or MBD, invest their profits in property or hotels such as Hotel Tourist in Delhi, Atlantic in Chennai, MBD Radisson in Noida and MBD Airport Hotel in Kolkata. Hence these people, who have the money to go global, do not do so. That is a pity. However, please note that India has become a global leader in digital origination. There are companies such as Tech Books in Delhi, DBS in Pune, e-Macmillan in Bangalore, Intergra in Chennai and so on who employ thousands of people for typesetting and uploading. Homegrown Indian publishers complain about the import of books and loss of foreign exchange. The truth is that international publishers are buying much more out of India than the books that are being imported. At the London Book Fair, there is a "Production" section. If you go there you will find most exhibitors are Indian printers for digital service providers.

Why write for the public?

I listened to a very interesting interview with Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati on Radio Economics (via Atanu). One remark by Prof. Bhagwati on writing for the public remains stuck in mind - something I think all of us must internalise and aspire to emulate.

Prof. Bhagwati said

I write for the public. I think you have to carry the public with you - that's part of the way in which you have to operate in the real world. If you don't operate on the public, you can't blame the politicians for responding to the public, which is uninformed. So you have to work at it.

An informed citizenry is the keystone to a working democracy, else the politicians will continue to pull the wool over eyes time and again. The only way to force the politicians to raise the level of debate and hold them to what they say and do is to make the public more informed. There are no quick fixes for this - we have to keep at it. The advent of blogs is a very positive development since every one of us can now start writing for the public without the constraint of finding someone to publish it. Blogs have also become a good hunting ground for talent for the mainstream media.

This remark apart, Prof. Bhagwati provides a lot of insights in his interview. Do listen to it (mp3 - 23MB).

Questions covered include: Why did you become an economist and what type of economist would you call yourself? Do you consider yourself more of a free trade economist or a free market economist? How and why did you become so influential in international policy making over the past decades? Do we have a global warming problem? Does the United States have an immigration problem? Where do you see the world economy in twenty years? What economies will dominate and what will be the problems and challenges that will face us?

Dave Winer on Amateur vs Professional Journalism

Amy Graham writing in E-Media Tidbits quotes Dave Winer from an interview

"Amateur is not below professional. It's just another way of doing [media]. The root of the word amateur is love, and someone who does something for love is an amateur. Someone who does something to pay the bills is a professional. The amateurs have [more integrity than] the professionals. If you're an amateur you have less conflict of interest and less reason not to tell your truth than if you have to pay the bills and please somebody else."

Winer makes a very important point about amateurs not being any less than professionals. But the key phrase in his quote is "tell your truth." Both amateurs (who may be passionate about a particular point of view) and professionals (who may claim to be objective) may be more likely to tell "their truth" even if its against "the truth" (if such a thing exists) or "someone else's truth" which may be more believable.

Amy Graham adds,

...Anyway, don't think Winer is down on journalism. He did mention in this interview, "It would be nice if journalism 101 was a requirement for every college freshman." I'd take that even further. Personally, I'd make journalism skills (along with critical thinking and media literacy) a fundamental part of K-12 education.

I completely agree with both Dave Winer and Amy Graham on this. We should make journalism an integral part of the curriculum in our schools and colleges.

Vincent D'Souza, Editor of Mylapore Times - a local neighbourhood newspaper in Chennai, has been doing a commendable job on this front by running a basic course in journalism for school students in Chennai every summer. I hope more children turn amateur journalists.

Women writers in India

Urvashi Butalia, author and publisher of Zubaan, writing in The Financial Express (March 05, 2006) on the increasing number of women writers in India says "Things have changed (over the past twenty years), but also they haven’t."

But there’s hope as well. It’s well known by now that one of the things worldwide that has helped women’s writing to grow, has been the existence of a hospitable environment, created in most instances by women’s movements, in which their writings can be received. This is certainly the case in India which boasts one of the most dynamic and vibrant women’s movements the world over, and there’s little doubt that this is what will continue to create a space for women’s writing.

Apart from books, women can today write online too both in English and all the other Indian languages, and build a reader base for themselves. That will bring publishers knocking on their doors sooner or later.

Infosys and Penguin tie up in a publishing alliance

A publishing alliance between Infosys and Penguin was announced during Penguin CEO John Makinson's recent visit to Chennai. Penguin and Pearson Education and the Financial Times businesses are part of the Pearson Group. Various news reports on John Makinson's visit provide an interesting perspective on Pearson Group's Indian operations.

• Infosys and UK based Penguin group, a Pearson company, have tied up for publishing the books authored by Infosys. In an interview to Deccan Chronicle, John Makinson, chairman and chief executive of the Penguin Group said that both the companies signed an MoU a couple of months ago and the first book with the Infosys imprint would be released by June, this year. "Infosys will write books on computers and management and we will print the books," Makinson said. (Deccan Chronicle) Pearson Education has similar imprint alliances with other organisations like Cisco Press, and Macromedia Press and Adobe Press (both part of Pearson's Peachpit imprint), to publish technology titles targeting professionals and students, and Wharton School Publishing to publish business-related titles.
• Pearson Education set up its Chennai Publishing Programme in December 2004 with a full-fledged editorial team and has brought out 38 titles for the Tamil Nadu curriculum in the first year. Chennai was chosen as the site for the project due to its academic and editorial talent and it's position as a technology centre, said Mr Makinson. (The Hindu)
• Makinson said the company is outsourcing the digitisation of its content to India. Pearson's investment in this initiative amounts to $35 million, he said. Half goes into technology support and development for Pearson in general while the rest is used to develop the Pearson Education business, particularly for the US. The total investment in India is a bit difficult to aggregate as the company considers it business by business, he added. (Sify)
• Makinson said "We will work aggressively in the educational publication sector by making available original text material. Adaptations of the existing content as well as new content both for schools and the higher education segment will be our focus." (NewKerala.com)
• Penguin India has launched a business books imprint called Portfolio. "There's an enormous appetite in India for books about business," said John Makinson, Chairman and Chief Executive, Penguin Group. The imprint was launched in the US 2-3 years ago, and "seems to be relevant to the market in India," he said, speaking to Business Line. Penguin will publish books sourced from other Penguin territories but the main focus will be on Indian books for the Indian market. There are about 30-35 titles lined up, on business management, successes and failures. (Sify)
• Penguin India would start publishing in Malayalam this year in addition to their 8 Hindi titles and 2 Marathi titles published last year. They plan to publish 180 English language titles and 70 regional language titles over the coming year. The books will be a combination of old, new and translations. (Sify)
• At Rs 50 crore (£6.25 million), Penguin India's contribution to the publisher's worldwide revenue of £1 billion is small (partly because book prices in the country are very low) but then, "Pearson is also making money in India," Makinson said. (Sify)
  David Davidar had indicated back in 2003 that Penguin India's annual revenues were in the region of Rs. 100 crores - they seem to only about half as much now.
• "We will strengthen our ties with Business Standard and increase out interest in it to 25 percent," Makinson said. (NewKerala.com)
  Pearson currently has a 13.85% stake in Business Standard. Kotak Mahindra Group and Great Eastern Shipping are the other major investors in Business Standard.