India is a truly vibrant publishing market and has an important presence on the world publishing map being among the top 7 publishing nations in the world. With a population of about 1.2 billion with a literacy rate of 65% and growing, the expanding class of consumers including English-speaking technically adept manpower presents a huge untapped potential. To create new business ties and uncover the possibilities and challenges of this diverse book market, German Book Office New Delhi along with 7 international participants, set out on a journey into the heart of the publishing industry in India – the EXCLUSIVE INDIA programme. GBO New Delhi has been organising this trip every year since year 2013. This unique B2B Trip aims at offering international publishing professionals, with an interest in the Indian/South Asian publishing & allied industry, an expert insight and a direct market interface with key players from various domains of the Indian publishing industry.
What is special at EXCLUSIVE INDIA Trip this year is also symbolic of India and Germany sharing a fascinating partnership that spans more than 500 years. Max Mueller and Johann Georg Foster’s translations of Kalidasa and other texts have continued to enthuse Germans about India. On the Indian side, writers and intellectuals like Hermann Hesse and Bertolt Brecht are known names in Indian literary circles.
So, to take this longstanding interest to the next level this year, German Book Office New Delhi has also invited a delegation of German publishers to India, as part of the EXCLUSIVE INDIA Trip, for intensifying the literary exchange between the both countries. While fostering bilateral relations, the German delegates will also take part in the GLOBALOCAL conclave to be held from 12th-13th February in New Delhi. In effect, this is a German Publishers Trip which is a joint initiative of the Frankfurt Book Fair and Federal Foreign Office of Germany.
Exclusive India delegates with Radhika Menon and her team at Tulika Books
On 8th February, the 2015 edition of the trip kicked off in Chennai, where some powerhouse independent Indian publishers co-exist with global digital solution providers. The participating delegates from Germany, Italy, Russia and Malaysia got a glimpse of the very contemporary high quality children’s books at the Tulika books office. In her interactions, Radhika Menon, the publisher at Tulika, shared that, about until 20 years ago there was a dearth of high quality contemporary Indian content for children. The children in those days grew up on books either from the Anglo world or books in translation from Russia. Tulika was founded with a mission to bring out beautiful illustrated books for children that tell tales of today and reach a wide audience in 8 different languages. In the illustrated books category there is another prominent publishing house in Chennai which has many innovations to its glory – Tara books. Publisher Gita Wolf introduced the participants to the philosophy behind Tara Books and showed the lovely experiments with the form of the tactile books that have been done by them. An impressive collection of handmade books illustrated by Indian local artisans and telling stories from their eyes have traveled the world with co-editions in many languages like Japanese, Portugese and French.
Talking of translations, another small yet very passionate publisher in Chennai is CreA publishers which is driven by the philosophy of Dr. Ramakrishnan, the publisher, and keeps pace with the developments in the society to be reflected in his publishing programme. CreA has published remarkable works from French, German and English into Tamil as a direct translation. In a meeting in his office, Dr. Ramakrishnan explained about the current state of Tamil language publishing and touched upon the issues in Indic language computing which makes e-publishing an arduous task for a Indian language publisher. In the next meeting with the co-founders of New Horizon Media, Badri and Satya, the participants got informed in detail about the challenges that digital initiatives in Indian languages present and the problem with support for Indian languages on Kindle which is decelerating the indic content delivery.
The next stop in the programme is Delhi - home to prolific independent as well as MNC publishing houeses, book retail chains, local/indie bookstores, literary agencies and an active literary scene. The participants will visit selected publishing houses [independent and multinational], book stores [retail chains, e-retailers, independent shops], while also getting a chance to interact with literary columnists, editors, and authors. The Trip endeavours to be of benefit not only as a fact-finding exercise, but as a platform to scope out further collaborations and further contacts across the industry spectrum. This week long sojourn will have its finale at the GLOBALOCAL conclave packed with discussions, business networking and topical workshops.
