Publishing houses devising alternate strategies to fight slump

New Delhi, June 28 (PTI) Dampened by the slump in demand
of books in the wake of the global meltdown, publishing houses
in India, particularly in the non-academic field, are devising
alternate strategies to tide over the crisis.

While the recession might not have hit the Indian
publishing sector as hard as it has in the West, publishers
are devising strategies at the micro-level to cushion
themselves against the impact, even as they cut down the level
of risk-taking in the content produced by them.

"In the present scenario, we have observed that
publishers are conservative about the choice of books they
produce. The level of risk-taking has gone down and until the
market recovers, they are going for mass-market choices," says
Akshay Pathak, Director of the German Book Office that offers
informative services to Indian and international publishers in
New Delhi.

Some publishers, meanwhile, are cautiously adjusting the
timing of release of books, customised to suit the needs of
the gloomy market conditions.

"At a micro-level more books have been published on the
world economic situation and books like Paul Krugman's 'Return
to Depression Economic' have been snapped up by people wanting
to find out how to cope up with the new situation," Mike
Bryan, CEO and President of Penguin Books told PTI.

To benefit from such interest, Penguin this month will
come out with author Nasah Fitter's 'You Are Hired'-- a manual
on how to get the job you want and keep it.

Bryan says, recession did have an impact on the new wave
of organised retail, partly because of the credit squeeze on
parent companies and partly due to reduced footfall through
new malls as a result of the dent in customer confidence.

He, however, believes India, where the English language
market has just started growing, "should be one of the first
real centres of recovery".

Given the evident impact in footfall on larger retail
chains, some publishers are looking to diversify their
distribution network by catering to smaller distributors.

"To tide over the impact on our business through retail
chain stores, we are going to new markets. We are now looking
to smaller, local distributors in the country and working in
collaboration with institutions to customise to their
demands," said Sunil Patki, Managing Director of BPI India,
publishers of supplementary books for children.

"We are also looking at diversifying our distribution
network, by producing in vernacular languages books that we
hitherto brought out only in English," he said.

For some publishers, their pre-recession collaborations
have also come in handy at the time of the crunch. According
to Pathak, multinationals who have been able to connect to the
local level through smaller Indian entities have faired
better.

"An example is the understanding between Penguin and
Zubaan Books wherein the former rides on the latter's local
distribution network, while sharing profits," Pathak said.

Meanwhile, producers of purely academic books have not
felt the heat of the moment, as they cater to the needs of
education sector, which remains robust in India.

"Enrollment in educational institutions only grows up
during periods of recession. As such our operations have not
been affected by the slowdown," said Rekha Natarajan,
Commissioning Editor of Sage Publications, that produces
academic books.

"Still we proceeded cautiously by producing a limited
amount of books during the period of March and April, the
pre-admission period of the year. This was to ensure our
inventories do not pile up in case of slump," she said.

At the National Book Trust, a semi-autonomous body that
produces books at subsidised rates, the demand for
non-academic books did face a slump at the global level. The
body is now working to market out in foreign countries to make
up for the fall in sales.

"Our sales at exhibitions last year were not up to the
level they usually are. To minimise the impact, we are trying
to reduce our own cost of production while also marketing at
the international level," said Aman Mudi, Joint Director at
the NBT.

"After marketing our books at the London Book Fair
where India was the focus this time, we are looking forward to
the upcoming Moscow Book Fair to rev up sales," he said.

India is the world's third largest market for English
books after the US and the UK. PTI WAJ
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