Frankfurt’s Honoree Gets Into the Fast Lane
Technology. Textbooks. Jhumpa Lahiri. Western book publishers have learned what to expect from their Indian counterparts. The industry has delivered, literally and figuratively, on much of what the Frankfurt Book Fair promised when they named it Guest of Honor in 1986. Presumably bestowed on a culture that could use a helping hand joining the international industry, the honor goes to India again this year, making it the only culture to be showcased for a second time and raising questions as to why exactly India needs another push.
After all, what India does well, it continues to do well, earning its reputation as the go-to place for inexpensive outsourcing of digital technology and more recently, academic scholarship. SparkNotes and McGraw-Hill, among others, contract digital services as well as printing to Repro India, Ltd., a ten-year-old design and data conversion company led by Sonia Mehta, herself a champion of the Friedman-ian flat world that has brought foreign money to the country. Andrew White, president of UK STM publisher Anshan, successfully mines the largely untapped reserve of Indian scholarship and distributes the titles, which he co-publishes with Indian publishers, to the global market.
Repro, however, seems to be an anomaly in terms of quality printing and timely delivery according to many other publishers who have tried it and rue the unpredictable norms. Mapin, an Indian art book publisher focusing on the country’s art, culture, and literature, outsources its printing to Singapore, reports publisher Bipin Shah. Similarly, White says “books are ‘put through the system’ from receipt of manuscript to publication in just a few months — consequently there are often spelling mistakes, faulty binding, blurred images, poor paper — all things unacceptable to us,” though he also remarks on how quickly the print quality is improving.
The synergy between the two industries has been advancing in fits and starts with the US/UK tapping into some rich veins and not others. Appropriately enough, one critique of the lopsided exchange comes in the form of a bestselling novel, One Night @ the Call Centre (Rupa & Co.), written by Chetan Bhagat, a graduate of the country’s best technology school. The satirical look at the wasted potential of six young workers fielding phone calls from stupid Americans revolves around a late-night call from God. In the first month of publication, it sold 100,000 copies in a country where one of the biggest blockbusters (the latest Harry Potter, of course) has sold 160,000 to date.
With India’s population of over one billion, ninety-five million people who speak 24 official languages and 800 dialects, it makes sense that India has more to offer US/UK publishers than just skilled labor. The West is fascinated by Anglo- and American-Indian writers such as Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie, but relatively few know any of the hundreds of authors who write in the vernacular. At the PEN World Voices panel on Translation in South Asia, Ritu Menon, co-founder in 1984 of the respected independent feminist press Kali for Women, commented on the dearth of international interest in regional Indian literature, citing foreign publishers’ fear that novels from Indian authors who don’t write about the easily transferable values and lifestyles of middle-class city dwellers won’t sell. Menon said the cost and time-intensive process of translating a “high risk” regional-language title also plays a role.
Hoping to alleviate at least the financial obstacle on vernacular writing’s rocky path to international publication, the National Book Trust India established a translation fund this year in conjunction with the Guest of Honor Presentation (GHP). The Trust, a state-sponsored publisher of regional language books established in 1957, has chosen 151 Indian titles across various categories whose translation into German, Spanish, and French will be subsidized at Rs 2 per word (approximately four cents) and participating foreign publishers can translate in their own country or India. To kick off Frankfurt’s Indian awareness campaign, twelve prominent vernacular writers represented their country at the Leipzig Book Fair in March before embarking on a two-week reading tour throughout Germany. So far, only a handful of titles have been picked up by foreign publishers.
Now that the promotion of regional language titles abroad is underway, it seems the industry in India could use a promotional campaign for its own publishers. The outrageous pricing discrepancy between English and regional language titles plays a fundamental role in determining what gets published and according to Harkin Chatlani, Chairman and Managing Director of India Book Distributors, imported English titles of all categories have higher price points there, sometimes five to six times as much as regional ones, causing many publishers and distributors to focus only on English. Incidentally, Mapin hopes to challenge the status quo with its children’s publishing program to be launched this fall. R. Sriram, CEO of the major Indian bookstore chain Crossword, puts the average price of an imported English title at Rs 250 (approximately $5.40) and Indian language and locally published English titles both at Rs 125 (about $2.70).
English books make up roughly 29% of the 70,000 new titles published annually in India. Bipin Shah estimates India’s book-buying middle class to be at least 300 million people, for whom English is an official language, but most of whom speak a regional language as well, and all of whom, he surmises, would buy lots of books in their mother tongues if they were more readily available.
But not all major publishers are avoiding the vernacular. Last year Penguin India launched an unprecedented publishing program in Hindi, Marathi, and Malayalam. Of the 180 annual new titles, around 62 are in these languages. By the end of the year, there will be 35-40 Hindi, 18 Malayalam, and four Marathi titles across various categories. “In lots of ways what we’re doing is very similar to 1987 when we began English publishing. So right now the numbers are small; but they’re bigger than our English mid-list numbers,” says Thomas Abraham, CEO. “Our top seller is just 3,000 copies.”
In another typically ironic instance of globalization, the disaffected readers of Bhagat’s call center exposé are buying his work at Landmark and Crossword, the thoroughly American Barnes & Noble-esque super bookstore chains that have flourished in the past ten years and cater to the country’s English speakers. Founded in 1992, Crossword is a far cry from the 1500 to 2000 average square foot Indian bookstore of twenty years ago. Today, readers can attend a reading, drink tea, and browse through roughly 8,000 to 15,000 square feet of retail space at a typical Crossword (28 stores) or Landmark (five stores). According to R. Sriram, this brand of bookstore experience has taken hold: “In the last three years, growth at Crossword has been 50% to 60% per year due to addition of new stores, and 12% to 15% on a like to like store basis.” Both chains sell online.
Anshan’s White, sums up the Indian publishing industry thus: “It is still pretty chaotic to our eyes, but everyone knows their place and role, and despite our incredulity the publishing and bookselling industry in India continues to thrive.”
