INDIAN BOOK PUBLISHING

By Osama  Manzar
Someone said “publish and be damned”, but Indian publishers seem to believe in publishing to rake in the millions. Publishers feel that business is booming. So much so that, many of the dealers and distributors of yesteryears, have diversified into publishing. To name a few: Rupa & Co., recently, with the collaboration of Harper & Collins has entered into publishing; Students Book store at Kashmiri Gate has also started publishing books. Big names like, Oxford University Press too have diversified into publishing paper-backs. Publishing houses like Tata Mac Graw and Macmillan have also considerably expanded their educational books publishing programmers.
Says Rajiv Bery, publishing director of Macmillan,” the reason for the rise in the number of publishers is a s
Significantly, higher growth of good quality production including editorial contents have come up. Observes Sridhar Balan of Oxford University Press: “The quality and standard of production in India have improved a lot. Our high technology printing in colour has really improved. However, binding — still by and large -are done manually, unlike western countries where it is done automatically”. Meanwhile, S K Ghai, managing director, Sterling publications, optimises: “The future of Indian publishing industry is bright. India is a big market in terms of population and because of the education being spread to all.” Unfortunately, these are only a few silver linings in the overall bleak scenario in the Indian publishing industry.
Profits in the book business have thinned and the number of titles have declined. Cable and satellite TV’ fare have further lulled the business. Moreover, reading habit is fast on the wane. It is perhaps the testing time for the industry, which had already hit badly by the devaluation and partial covertibility of the rupee. The two decisions taken by the Narasimha Rao government caused a 55 per cent increase in the price of imported books and also pushed up printing costs.
The cumulative effect of the spiraling price of paper and other inputs and lack of any protection, leave aside incentives, has brought the Indian publishing industry to a pass where revival seems remote. Eventually, the industry is in pain, the entrepreneurs penniless and the labour panicky. Says Bery: “Today, the price of paper in the open market is four times higher than that of controlled stocks. And for industry in which paper cost works out to be the major component — it is nearly 60 per cent of the total costs — it can be the factor which would decide fate. There-fore, publishers are finding it very difficult to price the books according to the market requirements. Since quality conscious publishers cannot afford to decrease their product-quality, they are lowering the profit requirement instead.”
Asserts S. K. Ghai, explaining the effect of the rise in the price of the paper: “As the hike in petroleum products change the whole price index, similarly, the soaring paper price changes the whole price index of publishing.”
Though the market for Indo-Anglian best-sellers is booming, probably because they suit the wallet of the Indian buyers better, desperate publishers are pinning their hopes on the five crore Indians conversant with English. Ranked seventh in book production a decade ago, India has slipped to the 17th position and the number of titles put out annually has come down from 24,569 in 1976 to 12,000 now.
As the price of books have skyrocketed, reading habit is fast on the wane. Foreign publications are beyond the reach of most buyers. The price spurt of 20 to 30 per cent in domestic publications caused by the rise in the cost of inputs has resulted in a 15 to 40 per cent drop in the sale of books. Meanwhile, though foreign publishers are supplying books at discounted prices for the Indian market, the rupee-dollar and rupee-pound sterling gap is so great that the cost of books remain far too expensive for the average reader.
For instance, Penguine’s P G Wodehouse, is priced at £3.99 for the British market, whereas it is priced £1.95 for the Indian market. But despite the discount, the book still costs Rs 110, which is expensive for most book-lovers.
Says Sridhar Balan: “Though price of all commodities have gone up, yet it is always the books that are major source of complaint. This is because the individual has a very intimate and personal relationship with books. Books are part and parcel of their lai1y life”.
With electronic entertainment coming of age, the reading habit is going out of fashion and the print runs are decreasing day by day. Says S. K. Ghai of Sterling: “The invasion of cable TV has ruined the market. When a person gets an entertainment package of house, why should he go out and buy books?” This was what the president of the International Pub-ushers Association (IPA), Andrew Neilly, had said early this year in the 24th Congress of the IPA: “According to a survey in United States, people who watched a lot of television also read a lot”. Surprisingly, technology has cut both ways, making not only the transmission and printing of books easier, but the lives of pirates much simpler. Just how serious the problem is can be guaged by the fact that there is not a single major title that hasn’t been nibbled away by pirates. Some of the running p editors are Ray Chondhury’s Advanced History of India, Romila  Thapar’s History of India, all the English and American literature classics by D H Lawrence, Virginia Wolf, Ear-nest Hemingway and William Faulkner.
An estimated 500 titles of Indian and foreign originals are pirated in India every year, slicing the government’s revenue by Rs 10,000 for each title, besides herding authors and publishers to the poorhouse by eating out their royalties. No wonder, reveals Balan: “Western publishers are now trying to callaborate with Indian publishers on enforcing strict adherence to copyright laws and checking of piracy.”
Lately, the Book Export Council (BEC), a newly formed unit of the FIP has been formed, to promote Indian books in the international market in conjunction with other government and non-government organisations. As a matter of fact India now export books, journals and periodicals to over 80 countries. Beginning with the modest figure of Rs 6 million in 1965-66, the scale has gone upto Rs 400 million in 1991-92.
In  addition, reveals Balan: “There are large number of typesetting centers in India, which are functioning as export houses. They get manuscripts from foreign publishers, to do the typesetting and finally export the camera ready copy (CRC).
From the foreign publishers point of view India has always been looked as an extensive market for their books. Despite. India is lagging far behind her counterparts in the West. The reason, however, as explained by Balan is simple: “There is this lack of professionalism in the Indian publishing industry. We really do not have professionally trained publishing personnel in the Industry as we do not have any first rate course on various aspects of publishing at the post-graduate level. One particular course that we have at the College of Vocational Studies treats publishing more as a vocation or a trade than as a profession.”
“The whole orientation of treating publishing as a trade trains a student to become either a book-seller or a small time publisher or a printer. It does not equip a student to get established in publishing,” he further explained.