'Indian publishing has opportunities'

At a time when the world seems to be focusing solely on the financial crisis, there are regions where the talk is about using that very fact as an opportunity!

This also rather succinctly sums up the Publishers’ Round Table “Global:Local” held February 27, organised by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the German Book Office New Delhi. With the presence of arguably the local industry’s most significant publishers and other players, as well as international participation from Argentina, the UK, Germany, Switzerland, China and the Arab World, the one-day round table represented a hitherto seldom experienced platform on the Indian subcontinent.

“Global vs. local” was the theme that set the ball rolling by questioning the whole notion of publishing for a local market and the need to be thinking globally. Moderated by publisher Karthika VK of Harper Collins India, this particular session had speakers like Ajay Shukla talking about the success of STM publishing. He illustrated the global reach of a nation like India, where content is now being developed not only to cater to the indigenous market but also to global markets. Insights were also offered on local experiences in different parts of the world like China, Morocco and South America.

The second session focussed on publishing services. The key word for globalisation in the last decade has been outsourcing. With its huge knowledge base and skilled manpower, India has been tapping into this opportunity rather well. Similar trends in China and South America were observed, as well. Naresh Khanna, publisher of Indian Printer and Publisher, moderated the discussion and also presented his research on the huge and unexplored potential of the Indian market. The session was then steered into a rather animated discussion about the competence of outsourcing companies and service providers. Richard Charkin of Bloomsbury cited his own experience of printing in India, which was not such a profitable activity for his own publishing house.

The session after lunch dealt with the role of independent publishers in a global scenario. Urvashi Butalia moderated the discussion and pointed out the challenges and advantages of being an independent publisher, as opposed to a multinational publisher which is governed more by market forces, minimising risk and slow decision making processes. This view was immediately countered by Mike Bryan of Penguin who said that the reverse is true for them. Their passion and risk taking is sometimes much greater than that of the independents. Interestingly, it was later discussed that both these publishing houses have also found a harmonious way of co-publishing which is a good marriage of the global and local!

The last, highly anticipated session was about the global financial crisis and its impact on publishing. With input coming from every part of the world, the picture looks rather fuzzy. Richard Charkin established that the UK is witnessing a very bad slump, primarily due to the breakdown of retail. Ana Maria Cabanellas from Argentina pointed out that publishers in South America are already coping with the crisis by coming up with innovative models. Haissam Fadel remarked that the Arab World, when it comes to trade publishing, is rather new in the field and, hence, still hasn’t seen good days to be able to talk about bad ones. Stella Chou from China was very optimistic and considered this to be a very temporary phase. The opinion from India was on the one hand similar to the UK with a huge slump in retail but in the words of the major educational publisher Dhanesh Jain of Ratna Sagar, this is also clearly a time for opportunities: “If mobile telephony can reach 400 million people, then books or content of any sort has a huge potential.”

Positively associated with the Frankfurt Book Fair, the platform was well received by Indian publishers as an activity for bringing people together and creating an exchange. Prepared by the German Book Office New Delhi, the event, in the words of Richard Charkin, “is the very essence of publishing having a global consensus”.

The Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest book fair in the world – with more than 7,000 exhibitors from over 100 countries. It also organises the participation of German publishers at more than 25 international book fairs and is associated with the Cape Town Book Fair in South Africa and the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair. It maintains the most visited website worldwide for the publishing industry at http://www.book-fair.com/. The Frankfurt Book Fair is a subsidiary of the German Publishers & Booksellers Association.