Chetan Bhagat's Revolution 2020 becomes the fastest selling book online

Revolution 2020 is one of the most awaited books in recent times. Announced a couple of days ago, it has created ripples and is raring to go. Readers are eagerly awaiting the launch and online portals are gearing up with pre-order and freebies.

The launch date for Revolution 2020 by bestselling author Chetan Bhagat is finally out. Yes, the much awaited book will be launched in October. Sprucing up for a Diwali launch, it is much anticipated in the readers' circles. Revolution 2020 is set in small-town India and revolves around three friends. Gopal and Raghav are in pursuit of success but with different goals. They are in love with the same girl. Will Varanasi prove lucky for them? Ever since the new book was announced, Indian readers have shown an overwhelming response, proven by the way they have taken to online pre-order options.

Similar response was last seen for Amish Tripathi's The Secret of The Nagas. Online portals were abreast with contests, freebies and author signed memorabilia. Some even had ongoing contests where participants could get lucky and meet the author himself. Amish Tripathi, Rashmi Bansal and Chetan Bhagat are amongst the new age writers. They have changed the way an Indian reader looks at a bookshelf dedicated to Indian authors. New age readership has truly arrived and India is lapping up the literary boom like never before.

Adding to the euphoria surrounding the October launch is the pre-order option. Online marts like Infibeam and Flipkarthave started taking pre-orders with much gusto. According to sources, Infibeam offered a whopping discount in the first 24h and recorded over 3000 pre-orders, so much so that, it has become the fastest selling book on Infibeam and others. The sales figures are likely to touch over tens of thousands across portals.

Full report here SBWire

Penguin India launches mobile application

Leading book publisher, Penguin Books India has launched a mobile application that offers information of all books by the penguin Books India.

The new mobile app supports iPhone and Nokia Symbian devices. With the new application, users can read reviews, browse author's name, latest books, download books available at Penguin Book India.

The new mobile application can connect the user with other book lovers in the "Stay Connected' section which redirects to the Penguin India, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter pages.

In the "Stay Connect" section, users can suggest, recommend, watch video, discuss books in the Penguin India on Facebook, You Tube and Twitter pages.

Full report here Art & Design

Page after page

You don't need to visit these libraries or spend hours at every aisle before you decide on which book to borrow. Their catalogues are available with a search option and at the click of a mouse, the books you want are delivered at your doorstep. Tech-savvy, convenient and economic, online libraries are fast growing into a trend, says Anusha Parthasarathy

Iloveread
Amrutash Misra believes that while more people are reading now than ever before, the number of libraries in Chennai is startlingly low. Hence, in December 2009, Sahil Gore, a VIT Pune graduate and Amrutash, an alumnus of IIT Madras, quit their jobs to begin iloveread.in.

“There are only about 15 to 20 online libraries and a much less number is actually functioning as full-fledged physical libraries in the city,” says Amrutash. “We decided not to charge a late fee or have a due date because the whole point is to make people read.”

And with his 3200-strong library growing by 200 books every month, Amrutash and his team of 12 keep the spirit of reading alive. “We have about 2,000 customers across schools, corporates and individuals. We also do school programmes, recommend books to readers and share reading lists of people with similar tastes. Most of the books we buy are also recommendations from our readers. We can't offer the ambience that physical libraries do but this facility has its own advantages.”

Full report here Hindu

Pitching for queer lit

Shobna Kumar, the brains behind India’s first queer literature portal Queer Ink, encourages the possibility of more literature being available for the community

When she landed in India — after having lived in the queer capitals of the world such as Sydney and San Francisco — Shobna Kumar felt that access to literature on and by the gay community was limited. She felt that her community was grossly under-represented in mainstream literature. And that is how India’s first queer book portal came to be. Here she talks about the 15 months of Queer Ink, the desire for the gay community to be acknowledged for their literary work and more.

How did Queer Ink come about?
When I first came to India eight years ago to be with my partner, I found that there were hardly any books that related to the gay community. What was available online would invariably be unavailable as Indian shipping laws don’t really make provision for such books. Alternatively some sites that do source books from abroad have a really long delivery period. My interactions with members of the community also brought out that gay literature was largely unavailable and what is found cannot be had on a single platform. Also there is an embarrassment of sorts to purchase such books in mainstream bookstores. And so a year of research later, Queer Ink was born.

You also provide a platform for queer publication — do you think Queer Ink has helped more gay people express themselves?  
We have a segment on the site titled Writers Corner. This is an open invitation to people to pen their thoughts on a singular platform. What surprisingly happened is that many people began to send their work to me privately with expressions of interest in getting them published. This has led us to consider taking up publication of queer literature in the future.

Full report here Bangalore Mirror

WSJ launches Hindi blog

The Wall Street Journal India has launched a Hindi blog, called India Real Time Hindi, which offers consumers commentary – quick analysis and insight – on developments related to politics, business, sports, Bollywood in India. The WSJ does have an English blog of the same name, but the content doesn’t appear to overlap. Some stories – like this one on Rahul Gandhi is a translation of the English post, but much of the content is unique to each blog. WSJ has national language versions of its Real Time blogs for its corresponding China and Japan focused blogs as well.

It will be interesting to see how content consumption patterns on IRT Hindi evolves. For WSJ, it will initially serve as an experiment into understanding the Indic language consumption patterns, and their access to quality writers and content would serve them well. I wonder if they have plans for other Indian languages as well.

While there isn’t lack of Indic language content on the web, it’s discovery can be a bit of an issue. Thankfully, WSJ doesn’t appear to be just publishing or repurposing wire content, but going the blog way, with opinion.

Full report here Medianama

Website on writers launched

Kannada Sahitya Academy has launched, a website to disseminate information about Kannada literature and littirateurs. Academy chairman M H Krishnaiah told reporters here on Thursday that the website will also have information on Jnanpith awardees and their works.

He said arrangements are being made to videograph the recitation of poems by poets at their homes so they can be on the website. "So far, the recording of 65 poets has been completed. These poems will be sung by children. KSA will organize special programmes to celebrate the birth centenary of writers S S Malawad, G P Rajaratnam, V K Gokak, Raobahaddur and Joladrashi Doddanagouda," he added.

Full report here Times of India 

World's leading professional online library, debuts in India

Safari Books Online (www.safaribooksonline.com) is an on-demand digital library that delivers expert content in both book and video form from the world’s leading authors in technology and business.
Safari Books Online, a revolutionary online digital library and online gateway to instant knowledge, has announced its debut in India. Mr. Jeff Patterson, CEO, Safari Books Online, is in India to launch this extensive and comprehensive resource for students, academics, IT and business professionals, librarians and corporate entities (individuals, universities/colleges, corporations and government institutions).

Safari Books Online (www.safaribooksonline.com) is an on-demand digital library that delivers expert content in both book and video form from the world’s leading authors in technology and business.

 Technology professionals, software developers, Web designers, and business and creative professionals use Safari Books Online as their primary resource for research, problem solving, learning and certification training.  To date, more than 2200 corporations, 850 public and academic libraries and tens of thousands of consumers use Safari Books Online; in total, more than 15 million users have access to the library.

Full report here IIFL

Bookworm hub

“Nobody should ever walk out of a book store empty-handed.” This and several other aphorisms fill up the ‘About Us’ section of Literaturemachine.com. The new Kerala-based outfit, a Web book store, was set up by a group of friends who were unhappy with the kind of books in popular book stores. They set up the Web store with a database of around 22 million imported books.

It has 44 categories— everything from philosophy to gardening. Apart from classics and pop culture must-haves, there are eclectic offerings such as ‘10 Bad Dates with de Niro’ (Overlook Press) and ‘A Book of Scoundrels’ (Tutis Digital Pub). The selection is the website’s strong point since there is no real cost advantage over existing Web stores such as Flipkart.com.

Full report here Mint

You can order a book from e-libraries!

With the proliferation of e-readers and development of e-ink technologies, there are those who have already begun to put chisel to headstone of traditional reading.

On the other hand, technology is making access to books easier, such as in the form of online libraries that let readers browse and reserve books online, which are then delivered home.

EasyLib in Bangalore is one such establishment, marrying a "real" library of almost 22,000 titles with an online model. Proprietor Vanishree Mahesh used her own comfort with browsing online as an yardstick to build EasyLib.

"I built the website and software myself. The bricks-and-mortar version and the online version both pretty much launched on the same day." That was July 2001, and today EasyLib has over 2,000 members.

FriendsofBooks on the other hand is an exclusively online library, run from Delhi [ Images ]/the National Capital Region, though they do deliver in other cities.

Founder Arti Jain was fascinated by the network of public libraries in the US, a stark contrast to the situation in India. She and co-founder Manish Kumar decided to address this problem with FriendsOfBooks.

Full report here Rediff

Online libraries: 'E' for convenience

With the proliferation of e-readers and development of e-ink technologies, there are those who have already begun to put chisel to headstone of traditional reading. On the other hand, technology is making access to books easier, such as in the form of online libraries that let readers browse and reserve books online, which are then delivered home.

EasyLib in Bangalore is one such establishment, marrying a "real" library of almost 22,000 titles with an online model. Proprietor Vanishree Mahesh used her own comfort with browsing online as an yardstick to build EasyLib. "I built the website [and] software myself. The bricks-and-mortar version and the online version both pretty much launched on the same day." That was July 2001, and today EasyLib has over 2,000 members.

FriendsofBooks on the other hand is an exclusively online library, run from Delhi/the National Capital Region, though they do deliver in other cities. Founder Arti Jain was fascinated by the network of public libraries in the US, a stark contrast to the situation in India. She and co-founder Manish Kumar decided to address this problem with FriendsOfBooks.

Full report here Sify

Setting up flipkart.com

Preface
Browse, click and wait. Online book-shopping should really be a breeze. But all too often, in India, the wait turns endless, and frustration mounts. There could be disappointment in store at various levels. Either the book is out of stock, or the book arrives late, or sometimes never arrives. It is the freedom from this frustration, and the unfailing efficiency of its service that has contributed to making Flipkart.com the most popular Web site to buy books in India. At a recent e-commerce event organised by VC Cirlce in Bangalore, not a session went by without a reference to Flipkart. One panelist remarked that if Flipkart had not launched in 2007 and if makemytrip had not gone for an IPO, we would not even be talking about e-commerce in India today.

Characters
Sachin and Binny Bansal (not related to each other, but friends since their school days), engineers, book lovers, travel buffs and founders of Flipkart.com

Chapter 1
– The Beginning –
Sometime in 2006, Sachin and Binny Bansal found themselves at the Bangalore centre of Amazon.com. The two young engineers were drawn into the entrepreneurial, technology-obsessed and metric-driven culture of the firm that swore to be the earth’s most customer centric company. There were stories of how Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, would visit the warehouses and get his hands dirty, never failing to get a valuable insight or two in the process.

And of course, there was the engineer’s focus on efficiency — the urge to automate and measure in order to make better decisions. Sachin and Binny Bansal could get a definite sense of what it takes to succeed in e-commerce: A relentless focus on the back-end. This insight eventually helped them when they set upon their entrepreneurial journey.

Full report here Forbes

Internet wipes out printed Oxford Dictionary

Who can forget flipping through pages of the Oxford English Dictionary looking for that one elusive word. Looks like the venerable dictionary itself become elusive. Reason? The next edition of the vast tome will never be printed again due to dwindling book sales.

According to the publishers, the sales of the third edition of the dictionary have fallen due to increasing popularity of online alternatives.

"I don't think the third edition would be printed. The print dictionary market is just disappearing," Nigel Portwood, the chief executive of Oxford University Press told telegraph.co.uk. The dictionary will only appear online, the website reported.

The online version of the dictionary has existed for more than a decade and recieves more than two billion hits a month from subscribers.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Tibetan blogosphere is vibrant and empowering

As a place to meet, share and exchange, the Tibetan blogosphere has created opportunities for Tibetan netizens that would be unimaginable in the offline world. Keeping in mind the state of internet censorship in the People’s Republic of China today, these new spaces can be seen as new outlets but also as new areas involving personal risk. Tibetan cyberspace has opened up a new opportunity for expression, which has also brought new risks to this community.

There are several blog-hosting sites, both Tibetan and Chinese, that are favoured by Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) today. One of the of the most popular Chinese language sites is called Tibetan Culture Net or simply TibetCul. TibetCul was started by two brothers, Wangchuk Tseten and Tsewang Norbu, and their head office is in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu Province. According to Alexa, the web Information Company, TibetCul receives over 400,000 hits every month. TibetCul is primarily a news and blog-hosting site but there are many different sections on the site related to Tibetan music, literature, films and travel. There is a BBS forum (bulletin board) and there is even a section dedicated to “overseas Tibetans”.

For all Tibet related news, blogs and cultural activities, TibetCul is an invaluable resource and source of information. Many posts translated into English by High Peaks Pure Earth come from TibetCul, such as the translation of the popular Tibetan hip-hop song “New Generation” by Green Dragon that was first featured on the group’s TibetCul blog in February 2010 in which a gang of Amdo rappers boldly proclaimed:

“The new generation has a resource called youth
The new generation has a pride called confidence
The new generation has an appearance called playfulness
The new generation has a temptation called freedom”

Full report here thecommentfactory

Cyberabad Days

McDonald is a story-teller, not an expert on India; nor is he particularly bothered about getting his details correct

Cyberabad Days
 Ian McDonald
Hachette; Rs 350; Pp 313

It’s a magical idea: a collection of cyber-punk stories set in India, in the year 2047. Thus artificial intelligence and robotic warfare collide deliciously with an ancient history, religion, overpopulation, chaos, heat and dust. They also collide, in the process, with auto-rickshaws, slums, hijras, politicians, arranged marriages and every other cliche of Indian life.

This is an India that has disintegrated into a dozen conflicting nations, including Bharat, Avadh and the United States of Bengal, and armies of battle robots are facing off in the fields outside Varanasi. Distorted demographics mean that now only the richest men can get brides, and a complex shaadi industry has evolved to meet their needs. Bharat’s quantum-crypto industry has overtaken California’s, and Avadh’s TV industry entertains the planet with its soap operas, generated by artificial intelligence beings called “aeais”. But the biggest industry in this parched land is the water industry, controlled by two bloodily feuding family-owned corporations. (Sounds familiar?)

Cyber-punk is a genre of sci-fi that combines high tech and low life, and the award-winning Ian McDonald is a poet of the genre. But Cyberabad Days is not for everybody: McDonald is a story-teller, not an expert on India; nor is he particularly bothered about getting his details correct. What’s important to him is the soaring, celestial sweep of the sci-fi imagination, not nitpicking about little things like the accuracy of facts, names, etcetera. So, if you can’t live with that, you’re not invited to the party.

Full report here Outlook

Celebration of the real person

To those hassled by technology, the title of Jaron Lanier’s book – You Are Not a Gadget: A manifesto (www.landmarkonthenet.com) – can be very reassuring. The book, written for people, not computers, begins with the question ‘What is a person?’ Drawing inspiration from Publilius Syrus’ statement that speech is the mirror of the soul, the author defines that a person is not a pat formula, but a quest, a mystery, a leap of faith.

He acknowledges that his words will mostly be read by non-persons, ‘minced into atomised search-engine keywords within industrial cloud computing facilities located in remote, often secret locations around the world,’ and ‘copied millions of times by algorithms designed to send an advertisement to some person somewhere who happens to resonate with some fragment. Alas, fragments are not people, he frets.

Something started to go wrong with the digital revolution around the turn of the twenty-first century, narrates Lanier. The World Wide Web was flooded by a torrent of petty designs sometimes called web 2.0; and this ideology promotes radical freedom on the surface of the web, but that freedom, ironically, is more for machines than people, he adds.

Full report here Hindu

Regional Books Now Available At Infibeam.com

Regional languages in India have earned a predominant place in literature, since time immemorial. Ever since, readers in India have developed a speckled choice for books and Indian language books are an integral part of this variegated readership. The flavor of specific forms of literature is beyond compare, particularly when it is composed in the native languages. Journals, continuation series, novels, and books on poetry are popular readers' choices. In keeping with the trends, the online books store at Infibeam.com spreads its wings into regional language books category and brings to the forefront, a wide range of books in regional languages.

Speaking on the initiative, Neeru Sharma, Director - Corporate Development, Infibeam.com, said "Regional language books are an integral part of an Indian reader's collection. In keeping with the mixed trends, we have embarked on a unique collection, dedicated to regional language books. The new category will include translations of classics and bestsellers, original fiction, journals, mythological texts, books on arts, folk culture and others, which are best enjoyed in their innate local language formats".

Full report here

Online retailer offers electronic publishing services

Infibeam.com, an online retailer of books and other products in India, is offering electronic publishing services to budding authors of fiction and nonfiction books, including textbooks, the company's CEO said on Wednesday.

The service is being coupled with a print-on-demand service that will allow consumers to order books that are out of print, said Vishal Mehta, CEO and founder of Infibeam.com.

The Infibeam.com digital platform will provide Indian authors and publishers an additional channel to reach out to book readers, the company said in a statement.

The service may also be attractive to authors outside India who are looking for a nonproprietary format in which to publish their books, Mehta said. The service will digitize books in various formats including pdf, epub and mobi. Content delivery and use will be restricted to authorized buyers through digital rights management (DRM), Mehta added.

Full report here PC World

Publishing gets facelift with new tech & products

If you are a starry-eyed young man wanting to become a top-notch entrepreneur, you probably would want to launch a technology company than go for the brick and mortar types. But some lion-hearted entrepreneur will still tread the beaten path and take on the established giants while looking to change the game all over again.

Leonard Fernandes is one such brave man. The 34-year-old likes listening to Goan pop and Miles Davis and plays the guitar once in a while. In his spare time, he also likes reading books. When he is at work, he is busy printing these books. Fernandes owns the Margaon (Goa)-based Cinnamon Teal Publishing, an on-line e-publishing portal where anyone with an interest in writing can request for publishing his/her creations on-line. Publishing can be done either for one or hundred pieces, depending upon the author’s choice.

Since 2007, when Cinnamon was set up with a paltry sum of Rs 1 lakh, Fernandes and his wife Queenie have been busy launching 15 titles every month. Business is growing 50% year-on-year. “I earn almost a fifth of my Rs 20 lakh a year revenue from our buyers, and it gets multiplied as more people become members,” Fernandes says, as he discusses plans to raise Rs 1 crore “to expand operations and make tie-ups with major publishers like Penguin.”

Full report here Economic Times 

India scopes online book market

India is a country where book sales and numbers of publishing houses continue to grow, and not merely among the English-reading elite of nearly 11 million.

This country is also exhibiting a range of viewpoints when it comes to how the Internet factors into the work of books.

At the Jaipur Literature Festival earlier this year, India’s best-known investigative weekly magazine, Tehelka, ran a cover story based on a survey of 1,152 people in nine Indian cities, which found that “people still prefer reading a book that they can dog-ear, fold and spill coffee on.”

Only 20 percent of respondents said they have read e-books, and 92 percent of these have read them on PCs.

Still, the time famine and diminishing attention span that modern lifestyles impose on people mean that many readers in Indian metros are ready to turn to tools they can carry on the go… whether that means audiobooks, e-readers, netbooks, or video.

Full report here internet evolution

It’s short story time

Short stories are, in fact, not so small, but pregnant with big messages. P K Parakkadavu, the master teller of short stories in Malayalam, firmly believes so. He also believes in the power of getting connected through words, which is why you see him on the blogosphere. Log on to www.meshavilakku.blogspot.com, which is the writer’s nest online.

A couple of mini stories, lots of his interviews that appeared in journals, his own articles that throw light on the genre he is king of, his relationship with other writers and his take on the chemistry of short stories - PKP, the writer, reveals Ahammad, the man himself, before his readers without any camouflage.

Residing at Kozhikode, and discharging his duties as a magazine editor of a journal, PKP took to blogging almost two years ago. Two of his friends, Shanavas and Prajesh, had introduced him to blogging.

Full report here New Indian Express