Attack of the 'coffee table' books from India

by Vipin Agnihotri Freelance Writer

Although India's literacy rate has moved only slightly in the last decade, the country's publishing industry is becoming such a global powerhouse that even the UK is being affected.

Indian publishing today is an industry worth around Rs 75 billion, of which exports comprise Rs 4.6 billion. In 1991 exports stood at a paltry Rs 330 million.

And that's not all, leading global publishers such as Pearson, Macmillan, Penguin, John Wiley, Aelsevier, Springer and Thomson are all contributing to this growing industry.

More surprisingly, it is the developed countries that are buying these books from India than other developing countries.

"Out of the Rs 460 crore (Rs 4.6 billion) worth of exports, 51 per cent goes to developed countries including the US, the UK and some European nations," says Sukumar Das, former president of the Federation of Publishers' and Booksellers' buttociation of India.

What used to be a crude backyard industry generally pbutted on as a family business has become a sophisticated sector. India has become a hub for considerable outsourcing in the pre-press and finished products activities.

And what kind of books end up in these countries? Das says it is mostly new age, coffee table, religious, those related to ayurveda and naturopathy and so on, which are being lapped up in Western countries.

However, Macmillan India plans to supply more science and educational books out of India because it thinks the country has improved in this area. "Good breastles and educational books, especially IT-related, written by Indian authors are becoming popular in overseas markets," says Ravi Beri, managing director of Macmillan India.

Macmillan thinks there is plenty of other potential too: "It is not for back office work or affordable printing and typesetting rates that we are looking at India. Rather, it is for brain power that India has become a priority base for Macmillan worldwide," says Richard Charkin, chief executive of Macmillan and chairman of Macmillan India.

Out of the total 7,000 employees that Macmillan has globally, 2,000 are in India. The company considers the country superior in many ways to its other hubs because of the back-end IT support.

Another area where India clearly tends to score over its neighbouring rivals on language. 45% of breastles published in India are in English, making it the third largest producer in English after the US and UK.

But this trend may soon change as foreign publishers see the potential in Indian rural areas. An increasing number of big breastles and educational books are being translated into Hindi and leading regional languages such as Marathi, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam.

"For us it is a part of the global policy of moving towards localisation. For instance, in South Africa, we have translated Nelson Mandela's Long Walk To Freedom in 12 South African dialects and we want to do something similar in India," says Charkin of Macmillan. With literacy levels in states like Kerala touching 100 per cent, he has a point.

Penguin also has a similar policy. The company claims that getting into local language publishing brings a touch of completeness to Penguin's India operations. It has decided to start publishing in Hindi and Marathi, and will later get into Malayalam and Tamil.

Similarly, Orient Longman, which is mostly doing academic books, is aggressively looking into publishing in Hindi, Bengali and Marathi, which includes its popular English dictionary. Whatever the policy, the fallout is more activity and hence more choice.

Compebreastion and globalisation has increased choice and made the industry much more dynamic in surprising ways. And even while the internet catches up, traditional industries such as printing and publishing are not losing ground.

---------------------------- The writer is based in India.