Gavin Summers (Digital Services Manager, Hodder Education) delivers the third and final instalment from the Publishing Next conference, spotlighting his findings on the latest opportunities and challenges ahead for India's immerging digital publishing scene.

Publishing houses of the future: 5 ways the Indian book industry is reinventing itself
(by Gavin Summers)

India is a country of big numbers. There are 19,000 Indian publishing houses, all battling to get their books into the hands of a 1.2 billion population that boasts 23 (official) languages. Literacy figures have risen to 800 million and there are a staggering 780 million people under 35.

These are big numbers and homegrown Indian publishers have a sizeable opportunity, no doubt, but how can they grasp it? Many publishers are small, many are family-owned and multinationals are increasingly competing for shelf space.

Can digital publishing make a difference?

Publishing Next, a conference held in bustling, beautiful, post-monsoon Goa last September, was designed to get the industry discussing such questions. This was a true publishing melting pot, drawing attendees from a diverse range of backgrounds and sectors, all with their own ideas and priorities on how take the industry forward.

Along with Oliver Brooks and Michael Bhaskar, I was fortunate to be in the mix as part of the British Council’s Young Creative Entrepreneur (YCE) initiative. Because my day job is in digital publishing, an area that has accelerated rapidly year on year since I’ve become involved, I was keen to find out how Indian publishing houses are innovating to take on a shifting market. This then is a personal take on the subject, informed by a few of the people I met during the trip who are working on the front line.

1. Plugging the gaps in the distribution chain
The clearest common challenge in the Indian book trade is distribution. Leonard Fernandes, winner of the YCE award 2010, and the mastermind behind Publishing Next, explained that 'many readers simply do not have an access to a book, not only because they cannot afford it, but because the books simply do not travel the last mile. The distribution system is archaic and is based on assumptions that may not hold true in today's IT-supported world.'

It’s a problem, not just for the small family-run businesses, but for the big players too. Mandira Sen, a partner at Bhatkal and Sen, and a speaker at the conference, pointed out to me that while educational textbook publishers such as Oxford University Press in India do have the advantage of better distribution practices and payment collections, 'its list of scholarly books is struggling, like the rest of us.'

A large-scale shift to digital publishing, or any new technology, requires motivating factors and in India, the need to solve the distribution conundrum could be the trigger.

Leonard believes that Indian publishers will begin to invest in technology 'if only to ensure that gaps in the supply chain are plugged,' and innovation on the web certainly abounds. It’s significant that internet usage in India has now reached 10% of the population, or 112 million people (a considerably higher figure, in fact, than are thought to read books), and at the conference there was much talk of Bangalore’s flipkart.com who have used the web to power their cash-on-delivery (COD) model for physical books. Infibeam.com, based in Ahmedabad, is another example, delivering everything from electronics to automobiles, and offers a resource sharing site for students.

Equally, though, the success of COD highlights the lack of a widely-used and trusted online payment network as the missing piece of the puzzle. It’s the presence of these systems in the UK, along with the prevalence of affordable ereaders, that has made the difference in the rise of ebooks.

A second strand to the distribution challenge is the threat to bibliodiversity. As Mandira says, 'small, under-capitalized, local quality publishers now face competition from the large multinationals that have come, hoping for a much larger market than exists amongst the readers available. So it will be a question of survival as this dilemma is compounded by the existing distribution system, used by the small, the big and the enormous, where it is hard to find shelf space.'

The types of book that the conglomerates tend to offer can be what Mandira calls "'safe' and ‘entertainment’ books, pushing out more creative, knowledge-based titles.” The diversity within Indian publishing is a great strength, but it would seem that this is under threat.

However, there are examples of the internet being used in India to raise awareness of more niche titles. Step forward, social media.

2. Using self-publishing and social media tools
A fascinating segment of Publishing Next was a workshop led by Maya Hemant of Pratham and Maegan Dobson of Tara, on this subject. In the UK, we can see that social media channels have potential in the battle for customer mindshare, but we’re still figuring out just how engagement on these platforms can translate into sales, and in India the situation is similar.

Maegan (whose excellent report on the event is here) mentioned that Tara, a publisher of picture books, has managed to build a significant community by utilising a combination of YouTube and Facebook, giving potential readers an insight into the book-making process and giving them a greater investment in the product. Maya’s Pratham Books, a children’s publisher, has had particular success with Twitter.

Meanwhile, mobile phones are everywhere, with Facebook eyeing up India to become its largest market on the back of this. With the spread of mobile devices, the reach for social media marketing channels is increasing at an astounding rate. Even the millions of users with so-called ‘feature phones’ can contribute to the online conversation on Twitter via sms, thanks to a deal with India’s largest mobile operator.

Titash Neogi, founder of Themeefy.com and a YCE, was also speaking at the conference. He believes that the prevalence of such promotional tools may also prove to be a threat to publishers in the long run, given that they can be used to aid self-publishing. 'I strongly feel that this, combined with increase in digital content consumption, ' he says 'is going to be the single biggest threat to Indian Publishers in the next decade.'

That may be, but my feeling is that if Indian and UK publishers can find the right ways to use these tools, and become skilled in opening these new routes to market, then the internet could prove to be a fine addition to the publisher’s tool kit.

3. Changing to a print & digital model, introducing affordable ereaders
The potential is there to market publications via the internet, but what about digital reading itself? For that, devices are key, and despite the ubiquity of mobile phones, ereaders have yet to make a big impact in India.

This isn’t for lack of trying.

Though at present ereaders and tablets exist in the hands of a fortunate few, incredibly there’s now a $35 reader available, Mandira mentioned to me 'an imaginative scheme of gifting laptops to schools...means a whole new class of people get computer-savvy and that would change the market.'

Recent years have seen the introduction of the Wink, and two devices from the aforementioned Infibeam, who offer their own eInk reader and touch-screen tablet.

With the reach of the internet, and the number of ereaders on the rise despite the lack of a big hit, Leonard sees that there’s an opportunity here for 'publishers to directly reach out to these readers whether through mobile applications or downloadable books or searchable catalogues.' And my feeling is that digital is a chance for publishers to promote bibliodiversity, aid discoverability of titles that sit beyond the top ten lists, and find an audience for the niche titles that give Indian publishing its flavour.

4. Forming partnerships
But do companies have the tech-savvy to seize this new market? Radhika Menon of Tulika Books, who spoke at the conference, has taken a lead with the children’s titles that her company has produced for the iPad (in English and Hindi). While the results were fantastic, the production did have its complexities, such as the need to tailor the product for multiple languages using technology designed only for Roman characters.

The emergence of publishing services companies like Leonard’s Cinnamon Teal, which aid publishers in overcoming some of the technical hurdles inherent in digital publishing, may help to ease the transition. We’re coming to a realisation in the UK that one of the best tactics for publishers in the digital realm is to secure partnerships with technology companies. India has a thriving technology sector, with experience of the peculiarities of digital publishing such as epub conversion and elearning materials, much of it gained from outsourced work with businesses from the UK and US.

Partnerships have potential in India.

5. Overcoming cultural resistance
However, as in the UK, overcoming cultural resistance within the industry is key to the success of digital. Titash’s perspective is that of a tech-startup on the verges of the publishing industry, and is aware of the differences between the established publishing game, and the fast-paced start-up culture. As he told me, 'India has traditionally been a market that is very slow to adopt any change. Though there are lot of tech enthusiasts and technology companies, it looks unlikely that in the next five years the majority of the publishing companies would undergo any major change.'

In Titash’s view, Indian publishers need to borrow something from tech-startup culture: 'The best strategy is to change mindsets and be more receptive to new ideas.'

And then there’s the most important player: the customer. Will India embrace ereading in the same way that the UK and USA have? As Kannan Sundaram, Tamil publisher, and another speaker at Publishing Next explained in his eloquent summary of the event, palm leaf writing flourished in India for centuries, despite printing technology, and we can’t discount the cultural and political issues that may have a say in the fate of books in India.

Cause for optimism
Though I’ve given an unashamedly optimistic snapshot here of how digital publishing can impact on the Indian book trade, it must be recognised, as Michael outlined in his report, that publishing in India can be difficult.

However in a country of big numbers, there’s much to be excited about.

Thanks to Mandira Sen, Leonard Fernandes, Titash Neogi for their thoughts, and to Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones for the use of her photos from the trip.

Gavin Summers is Digital Services Manager at Hodder Education and was one of four digital publishers from the UK that attended Publishing Next, India's first digital publishing forum. For more about Gavin, his work or if you have any questions, follow him @gavinsummers on Twitter.