Hachette India climbs to second place”

Hachette India is beating its own financial expectations, after a strong year of sales has seen it soar into place as the second-largest trade publisher in the country by value terms.

Managing director Thomas Abraham said 2009’s turnover - roughly R270m (£3.6m) - was now the second biggest in India, having surpassed both HarperCollins and Random House. Penguin remains the biggest publisher, having generated a turnover of more than double Hachette's.

“We didn’t expect to be number two after our first full year... We thought we would have a good year, but we expected that to be three years away," said Abraham.“It will take a long time for anyone else to catch up [with Penguin], but we will get there,” he added.

Full report here Bookseller

Publishers' meet in Delhi

A day-long round table by organised by the German Book Office (GBO) in Delhi saw a number of participants - including most of India's leading publishers and printers, engaged in rather spirited discussion over the future of publishing in India.
The usual divide between the multinational subsidiaries and independent publishers was a part of the story. The meet looked at whether publishing was local or global - and there was this realisation that while publishing had to be essentially local, the main tasks for publishers was to find the next big author who could transcend boundaries and languages.

Among the participants were Juergen Boos, President, Frankfurt Book Fair, who has been visiting India fairly frequently in recent times. Another interesting participant was an old India hand, Richard Charkin, executive director, Bloomsbury, in the past with Macmillan in India.

Among the Indian publishers present were Mike Bryan (Penguin), SK Ghai (Sterling), VK Karthika (Harper), Urvashi Butalia (Zubaan), Thomas Abraham (Hachette), Renuka Chatterjee from Westland, Pramod kapoor (Roli), PM Sukumar (Harper).