Publishing, Pundits, and the India of all things

This was my first time at Delhi’s World Book Fair, until I was quickly bombarded with memories in hall number 12, from when I was six or seven years old, of being pushed into the Scholastic book stall, coaxed into sampling the many educational toys and multimedia that would test my applied mental maths, science and grammar skills, complementing my good Indian education, preparing my kid-brain for standardised (and computerised) test-taking in the (far) future.

Today, a different excitement preceded me. When I heard about colleges giving free iPads to Indian students, my heart skipped ten beats – was this my India? People throbbed between stalls and aisles where screen space and page space became interchangeable; BPOs had also become book happy. Good commerce was the high point for many Indian publishers today, the unicorn of world publishing, having forever thrived on their volume and velocity of books in numerous languages from over 5000 years of documented and undocumented wealth from skinny pamphlets to doorstopper tomes. Books as cheap as Rs. 15 were displayed on exhibitor shelves and promoted alongside live authors holding out glass ashtrays (and fishbowls) for donations. Self-publishing brokers enticed you to ‘become a (published) poet in 25 days,’ and booklove was competing for shelf space with bookbiz. With a sizeable cross-section of people of different ages and sections of society, the footfalls were the roughest survey of what indicated a clearly buoyant industry. Local language publishers (and we have about 22 formal and over 400 spoken languages in India) were all obtaining niche markets in retailers and libraries abroad, setting up new imprints, breaking new inroads. Digital was just another dimension of Indian publishing and beckoned no print apocalypse, even as publishers the world over racked all their brains, whipped up new technologies to struggle to co-exist in a tablet eat tabloid world. 

The running theme ‘Indigenous voices’ offered a sound platform for the showcase of local and legacy  art including Bihar’s historic Madhubani paintings depicting gods and goddesses sketched by artists who mixed their colours from plants, bark, and cow dung. The artists said their art could not be muted by a stink, even if “sab devi-devta gobar hain” (all the gods are dung). Our economic choices are our social choices too.

But the special debut this year was the ‘author’s corner’: cool hotspots in every hall were dedicated to author interviews and interaction. The organizer proudly told me it came from NBT’s generosity and commitment to authors so that they do not have to be crammed in publishers’ quarters, stalling instead of aiding commerce. The idea was great, equally inspired by other world book fairs and intended to accommodate healthy, telegenic audiences.

My first event at the author’s corner would be for the critically acclaimed book Our Moon Has Blood Clots and its author Rahul Pandita. No sooner had I arrived at the venue than I was greeted with the sight of a gentleman in white robes and flowy hair, bloodshot vermilion with rice grains shooting out of his forehead, as he reclined into the studio sofa. “Ladies and gentleman forks” he began, “I am Hindu Pandit, you can ask me anything you want to know about Hinduism, Hindu ethics and Hindu morality.” A trickle of followers wormed their way into his audience hold, and began asking him questions about how to be a good Hindu. 

His advice went on unabated for ten minutes until I caught the attention of an NBT guest in-charge who hurried over when I signalled to her that this was not the author! Her jaw dropped; she had asked the wrong man if he was Rahul Pandita and he had replied, yes, seizing the stage too promptly. For proof, when I reproduced the author’s photo from the insides of his first book, the girl paled, but shot quick orders for cameras to stop rolling. The speaking man onstage caught wind, and with the force of an ablution dropped the curtain, “Thank you forks.” A trickle of audience members almost as easily dispersed with him, leaving one with doubts about their ‘genuineness’ too… were they his followers pretending to be an ‘audience’!

In between speedy intercoms the boss organiser who had visited the publisher stalls meanwhile, returned to us with no news, declaring the event cancelled. “Bah! These English language authors are all like that…”, he cackled. “Big foreign publishers are also like that…” he continued, “Gulzar ji, Akhtar sahib, and even I would never do such a thing!”

On that fated Saturday, when other anticipated authors made their absence felt too, Mr. Akash Bannerjee, author of India Shining and Sinking and former TV TODAY broadcast journalist took on the vacant slots, capturing the minds of an army of media students and budding journalists as he waxed on about the day’s news from Afzal Guru’s hanging that morning, to the highs and lows of Indian journalism today, provoking intense debate about idealism and commercial sense in newsmaking. Book? Author? Who?

Even the absence of few heavyweight authors on a Saturday did not quite dent the spirits of the masses who had come to this Kumbh mela in books with hopes in hell to sever from their loved ones and siblings, even as a handful of men roamed the grounds claiming to be speakers, jockeying for minutes of fame on the NBT film archives. The National Book Trust staff utilized twenty minutes of cancelled event time that day, capturing my own video bytes for their film documentary, sending me home in a woolly sheep's clothing.

An Ebook Wing for every Independent Bookshop/ Posterise the Ebook

This article in The Globe and Mail, made me nod in agreement and familiarity, and so I present an excerpt:

"The reimagined independent bookshop is not really a money-making outfit. While these shops might break even, in some cases turn a small profit, it is only because their customers override their instinct to act like consumers and act like good citizens instead, paying full price when they could get a discount by crossing the street or just clicking a mouse. "

I have been this 'good citizen' for far too long, this new year's resolution for me was to stop buying physical books; I want to normalise ebook culture.

For such bookstores as in the article, digital is the only way forward. Ebooks can only become the profit making wing of such independent bookstores, and something that these bookstores should ambitiously capitalise on. There should be book hubs, where all kinds of ereaders are sold along with ebooks. Gadgets should complement the e/books. In house customer service would create employment in  these ehubs within bookstores at the very least. Where do you find such pools of technically skilled workers? Everywhere, in mobile shops, SIM card booths, internet cafes, telephone service providers/kiosks, everywhere. Even technology could never rob a bookstore of its pristine charm, if that's our cultural memory/fear of it. The idea is to commodify/'make live' the ebook as much as its print counterpart has been all these years. Seperate the ebook from the internet; the ebook is as physical as it gets and not just a virtual entity in clouds. What better place to clarify this than at a bookstore, the shopfront? Whatever happened to the good old USB stick stocked with all the latest bestsellers?  

Every retailer is going to sell this differently. But if publishers are beginning to have their own 'digital agenda', I don't see why bookstores should lag behind on this front. This begs collaboration of course. 

Questions that bother me:

How many people are buying ebooks from retailers websites? (Landmark, Crosswords, etc.) Worldwide?

How many are buying ebooks from Amazon in certain countries? Worldwide? 

How are local online retailers doing with ebook sales? (What about publishers' online sales? minimal, I know, but still)

Isn't there a better marketing strategy (or market) for PDF format (non-ereader specific) ebooks?

And this one is not a question really, but how many independent bookshops are there in the country? (There are a ton of online retailers, but what about physical bookshops). 

Post script: An amazing analysis of the ebooks industry in India can be found here

A Digital Publishing Internship

I’m doing an editorial and production internship at Blasted Heath, and just finished copy editing two volumes of crime fiction by Gerard Brennan and Ray Banks, some fine crime noir of short, gripping tales that were an utter relief to soak into. Crime novelist, literary agent and more recently digital publisher Allan Guthrie, discussed the changes with me, in what was a very enlightening and engaging session. Some very quick highlights and lessons I gained as a copyeditor (for fiction) follow:

Be consistent, if correct. (Be correct)

Do not un-hyphenate compound adjectives. If they follow a noun, then you may.

Blood-covered dust but Dust, blood covered.     or of course, BLOODY DUST!

If you are not sure, comment, but do not change.

The Author comes first,  knows better.

Do not mess with dialogue.

Do not change the writing unless the author is technically wrong.

If even one dictionary spells like the author, go with the spelling.

Americans love the Oxford comma, more than the British. 

Do not suggest editorial changes, as a copy editor. Okay to think ahead, but think straight. 

More later!

Yay, it's A PIG WORLD!!

Book Cultures and Book Events 2012

The book is 4D. Live events support the book. Books point us to authors, and authors are becoming transcultural to keep up with better books and new media; different branches of industry are connecting to make publishing work, whether as a oneman job or an everyman's job throughout the contagion of business models. Academics congregated to discuss the state of the industry and book culture, and some expressed that professionals (particularly publishers) should take the time out to think like academics even as they go on about their business.  

Few things struck me as memorable from the two days: 

Informal chatter from formal personnas in the p'ig (publishing)world.

Live events being great marketing opportunities, but also revolving around the book, book theater, not thankfully being simply booksy ( I'm not at all convinced by the link-article in how it judges book aesthetics) were other aspects of the two day cultural theory program.

All kinds of speakers enriched the occasion. From Slovenia's Miha Kovic to scholars from the University of Paris, Peggy Hughes, Crime Novelist and Bloody Scotland's Lin Anderson, and several well known scholars from universities and publishing houses in England and abroad, there were diverse observations on the book, facts  opinion and practices, predating the sixteenth century up into the present with predictions for the future, including Martian musings on what publishing might look like in 2025. On the other hand, ambiance and the opportunity for souvenirs were cited important factors while thinking about the future of the bookshop as a cultural venue. 

Student? Writer? Reader? Publisher? App admirer? Mixed generation

Peggy Hughes from the UNESCO City of Literature, Edinburgh, with Lumphanan press' Duncan Lockerbie

An academic pondering the future of bookshops and striking a benevolent pose  

Despite the rise of social networks, and power shift from editorial to consumer-editorial, good editors should be informed by data and consumer behaviour, rather than be driven by it. Amazon is not a bookseller, but a market grabber, a giant retailer of all things, and is certainly not a brand with a mission for books and better reading. What was especially heartening was that social media marketing took only the backdrop, as an accessory, a tool to the actual discussions on the book that took place.  In fact, budget and marketing strategy will always only wrap itself around vibrant editorial concepts. Alastair Horne discussed some extremely interesting facts about ebooks, apps and digital pricing models.

But the secret to a successful book festival is a book festival with a heart added, Lin Anderson. Authors should float about like in a bar, not glued to a high chair.

Puzzling question of the day: what is the point of a website for Damian Horner?! 

There are more cities I would like to see in the UNESCO Creative Cities list. If small countries can save the festival, independent publishers can save the industry. Bookshops  could strive to become destinations for the wealthy, offering boutique experiences for local folk. But I mean, if saving the bookshop was about saving a Crosswords or a Waterstones (how unambitious!), I don't think i really care to visit one, ever. I'd rather shop for clothes in the mall and continue buying new books on Amazon and borrowing older stock from the library.  

The utterly lucid event was held on its second day in the lovely Iris Murdoch center with stunning views of the city from this home of Dementia Studies. Of course, being bilingual is a whole other cure. 

Book Publishing in Small Markets

Mija Kovac came to class wearing two hats. One as digital strategist and publisher at the Mladinska knjiga Group, the other as the chairman of the Department of Information Science at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He gave us a well rounded insight into book publishing in small markets like his native Slovenia, where 16% of all books sold are in the English language. Slovenia he said, is the perfect example of an average nation in the EU reflective of average patterns in everything but reading habits (higher than average). 

By Dr. Miha Kovac

Problems in the Slovenian book market include the universal ones of competitive retailers and rise of ebooks, the decay of brick and mortar, apps over illustrated books, and the uncertain future of the library. More local problems that he pointed to included the fast growth of reading in English and competition from USA and UK retailers and small markets having not enough resources for R and D and investments in digital infrastructure. 

However, people are buying 3 times more electronically, and the threat is not so much to protect copyright as it must to protect the buyer, he suggested. The MKG owns over 57 bookstores with about 454 employees, ploughing back a turnover of over 25.5 million Euros each year, closer to a third of the Slovenian market. The company (conglomerate) enjoys strong warehousing and distribution services, and publishes on a principle of low print runs with a high number of reprints, a functional successful mechanism in a small market like Slovenia where good content is sought, regardless of the price (despite the absence of a Net Book Agreement). Though there is a high penetration of English language ebooks in Slovenia, there is no data to support the increased circulation in the years. In fact, it is his dream to create metadata crawlers that effectively tag information about books and publishers, as a book's metadata influences best what we buy as it algorithmically makes some appear more often than others.


 'Ebooks are changing the landscape even in those countries which pretend they don't have an ebook market.' 

Problems faced in the Slovenian book market include competition from ebooks and etailers, breakdown of brick and mortar, apps as competitors to illustrated books, and the uncertain future of libraries. 'Ebooks are changing the landscape even in those countries which pretend they don't have an ebook market,' he opined. Will libraries exist in a climate where books are being sold for about 1-2 Euros? And if libraries and brick and mortar bookstores disappear, the entire book will disappear from the urban landscape altogether, even as book organisations increasingly latch on to technology companies. Ebooks and apps should be treated as a spin off enterprise, and when combined with more European Union and local funding, could make better headway. Whether Apps and ereading are a distraction or an accelerator to the educational experience, remains a much debated topic. For the future, as information continues to digitise, he offers that publishers should have more links with technology companies and universities, and learn from other branches in the industry.    

He talked about the importance of the appearance and semantic web of the author in times where certain authors may sell well only within a certain cultural context, and remain unnoticed in others. And, Amazon is evil not just because it is killing the book market, but because it lacks a genuine interest in dealing books, 'all it wants is more customers', he reflected, embodying the emotion of a true blue publisher. 

Dr. Kovac's ongoing two day talk is a power-prelude to the weekend's much anticipated Book History and Book Cultures Conferences at University of Stirling. 

Watch this space for more. 

Technology is electricity, and writers are not entrepreneurs

Technology always existed, in the way, opinions always did. Talking of digital conventions replacing the old, is like saying there is more electricity in the house. Technology cannot work in isolation of Media, and good (profitable) publishing is becoming increasingly data driven, than we care to know. 

As ebooks compete for recognition and visibility, worldwide, they have gained traction with users in huge numbers. I am very ready to give up the physical book completely (I remember trudging long distances as a schoolgirl in sweltering summers burdened by at least five kilograms of weight of my bookbag everyday) , as long as the culture and values of books continue. The convenience and ease of the internet, and its hardly social nature, is what tempts me as a reader. The omniscience of the book, in a digital world is here to stay. No more recycling paper, but washing eyeballs. Hail oculist. 

Writers are not risk takers, but helpless creatures born out of desperation. An urgency, that has clearly nothing to do with risk but survival. Writers write, regularly, with nothing at stake but their own poor selves. They could hardly be called entrepreneurial for breathing. Significant people have tried putting this across to me at varying junctures with varying degrees of politeness/kindness and sympathy. 

The most exciting news this Valentines Day was of Bloomsbury's entry into India, following Simon & Schuster, Lonely Planet, agent Aitken Alexander and the Hay festival. Bloomsbury India will first be looking at taking on marketing and sales people and editors will follow in due course. The new MD for Bloomsbury will be Rajiv Bedi, who is also ex MD of Pan Macmillan India. In such a climate, it would indeed be worth exploring what UK publishers are doing to maximize their profits by entering global markets. It could be the topic for my Masters dissertation, at least. 

When Books Don't Cost a Thing

We get told every day, BOOKS are Dying. WRITERS will die. Booksellers will die. Publishers are dead!

Man's love of  apocalypse might be older than the Mayan Calendar, but some superstition, is better than none, I say. Books will and shall continue to exist, even if we are 'addressing a demographic' that's strictly USA, the UK and certain parts of the EU, even if we're talking about 15 years from now.

Edinburgh based Electric Bookshop runs a quarterly event on book technology and literary culture at Inspaces, on Crichron Street. This time, part time literary agent and dedicated ebook publisher of crime fiction, Allan Guthrie, talked at length about his mid life professional start up Blasted Heath. Ebooks are the end of all woes for the artiste according to him, in a time where societal anxieties about culture dissipating in the claws of the internet are rampant. His basic pitch was that digital publications undercut the bureaucracy of print, long winded processes of going through middlemen and unimaginative systems that do not understand niches, and the lines between author and consumer have blurred in a way that makes e-reading, e-writing, and e-books if not profitable, at least a whole lot sustainable. Was writing ever a top paying job? No! Everyone knows that only 10% of UK's writers make enough money to do without a day job! Then why the sudden panic with the advent of ebooks, he questioned?

Allan Guthrie in Conversation
image courtsey: www.allanguthrie.co.uk

Guthrie said the USP of his publishing was pulse pricing of e-books, and that price could serve as a perfect marketing strategy for products like his! That is, you take popular books, price them lower than usual, and float them at that discount for a limited period, in order to hook overwhelming sales.  Barely over a fortnight old, Blasted Heath ran its first ebook launch week offering a free ebook for download, each day! For those who missed the opportunity, 99p is the promotional price on his first line up of ebooks until the end of November. With tactics like these his group will soon make it to the Big Seven, he jokes in earnest.  The average price of an ebook should be 2 pounds less than its Hardback; the average price of the ebook online is at 9.99 pounds. 

Short stories go undervalued in print editions, and people (and publishers) judge the value of a book by the number of chapters it consists! Such value consciousness disappears in the ebook format, as customers reel with the plethora of choice in widely (and uniformly cheaply) available short stories in numerous electronic formats. 40K Books is another Italian epublishing company that has talked about the short story being the Hero of the Digital Age.

More and more conventional conglomerates and independent publishers are making eforays and acquiring e-lists and imprints to meet the increasingly fast appetites of e-consumers (and readers!). Random House's Story Cuts and  Quercus' Head of Zeus imprints are quick recent examples of the revival of short fiction in e-formats.

The points Allan covered were: 

• Short stories (in ebooks) will sell like cupcakes on Christmas
• Marketing of Ebooks should focus on price pulsing
• Ebooks are author-friendly, undercuts the bureaucracy of print publishing
• E-artistes live in hope of reaching the consumer directly, no middlemen attached
• Will "free culture" really stimulate "paid for" culture and facilitate more paid-for content? 
• Piracy will coexist and perhaps even boost higher sales especially in parts of the world where affordability and access affect literacy; but the internet is a sweat shop
• No DRM on Blasted Heath books will offer easy access and readability

Allan Guthrie's own crime fiction novel "Slammer" (Polygon) is priced at 1.99GBP in The Works, and offered for 5 pounds as part of a set of three books of one's choice! I couldn't help but wonder if  there was such a thing as value for money in books? I would never buy 3 books for 5 pounds because I always know, the store is tricking me into buying more than I need. Chances are, there is always only one book you really want; and the discerning reader knows that. 

Ewan Morrison takes on the rise of Free Culture and the End of the Book
image courtsey: www.ewanmorrison.com

The drama hiked up a notch when Ewan Morrison (pictured above) novelist and columnist famous for his predictions on the end of the book in Edinburgh's book festival earlier this year,  tackled Generation Y head on. The attending demographic was a fair mixture of males and females 95%  falling between the ages 17-35 years.

The more book events became related with technology, (like guests being welcomed on an ipad at the reception of this particular function!) the more men will gather at book related events traditionally dominated by the female demographic. Men are seen with gadgets, women are seen with books. With the advent of all things digital, something in the reading experience might be neutered. We are living in our heads, inside the prison that is the internet. Andrew Keine's documentary, says we are policing our own lives, living in mutual consent.

Morrison set up the uncanny equation of Amazon versus the highstreet as equalling 5 books produced by million people versus 1 million books created by 5 people! 80,000 books alone were sold in the past month by Amazon alone. If all books began etailing at 99p, the Big Four will have to clamp down on prices, compromise, warned Morrison. Unless you are a service provider, you will not make money! Famous for his postmarxist perspective on why free culture is killing the livelihoods of artistes, breeding an "economy of resentment," Morrisson sparked off criticisms and debate on the ills of Y culture, the irresponsible consumer, and increasingly caged netizen desperate to be somebody, if only successful. 

'The Shelf life of a book had fallen somewhere between that of milk and yoghurt'                                    Jason Epstein on the Amazon effect

At the event most guests had downloaded out of copyright videos on YouTube (78% of its content is pirated) in the past year. Was this going to stop? No. Was this going to push artistes out of business, by undervaluing Culture? yes. Was Generation Y guilty of killing off the gatekeepers of culture and gluttons of Free Art? Heated debate ensued. 

I am a strong believer that readers will continue to buy books; they may watch less television but they won't read less on the internet. More people surf the internet than watch television in the UK. While the Web may displace television, there is little relation between watching television and reading books, confirms Jason Epstein.

Fueled by optimism and peppered with a healthy cynicism of what has essentially become a culture less appreciated, and worse monetized, the event pulped much insight on new media and its exploding limits. 

Allan Guthrie and Ewan Morrison will continue their debate at an SYP event on 29 November 2011.