VIJAY NAIR
WRITERS lead a precarious existence. I find it easy to acknowledge that the Indian writing in English experiences this phenomenon more acutely. If I am not being attacked for my pretentiousness, I am being hounded for the grammar. I am often asked &# 8212; Why do you write in English?
It’s both easy and difficult to answer that one, simply because it is so loaded. Usually I make my escape by being pedantic. I mention my schooling that was primarily in English. At times I argue that such global times ensure English is an Indian language just like the “chicken tikka” is a British institution. Occasionally I take the more scholarly route of quoting Elliot.
No real answer
And yet the answer to the subtext always eludes in so far this question is asking me who I am loyal to. The Indian reader/ audience who astutely picks up my pretences or the foreign publisher who keeps the dream of a huge advance and a shot at the Booker alive for me? One would like me to be “Indian” in a framework that they have created for my writing. They prefer that I paint my canvas with their metaphors and their preoccupation with poverty, the caste system and the Kumbh Mela! The other detests me for the outsider mask I am compelled to wear and my pseudo concerns.
I experienced the underlying fascinating and destructive processes, sandwiched between this diverse set of patrons, when I participated in the Royal Court Theatre workshop for emerging playwrights. A theatre group in Mumbai organises this residential workshop in India. They are able to tap generous sponsorships from leading corporates for the residency as well as a festival of plays that is positioned as the grand finale. I had been in the audience when the first such theatre festival unfolded in Bangalore in 2002. However I took my time to decide. I decided to participate when a third set of workshops were announced in 2005.
Emerging markets
I was in an English university at that time as the writer in residence and getting interested in exchanges that happen between cultures. The mail that announced the workshop sought a sample script from interested playwrights. These scripts were to be evaluated to identify 12 “deserving” playwrights. My interest in the workshop was piqued because in the university that boasted of some of the leading names in contemporary British literary scene like Abdulrazzak Gurnah, Scarlett Thomas and Patience Ogabi, no one recommended the Royal Court. Clearly the days of “Beckettian” glory was over for the court. And like any other multinational it was seeking emerging markets.
I became a participant the following year. Only nine had made it through the stringent selection process. Three writers were last minute additions owing to a few drop-outs. The group had three Marathi playwrights and one Hindi playwright. The organisers had warned us in an email that a leading writer and director from the court were going to be the facilitators and we writers needed to keep our egos in check!
We met them in the space provided by a leading industrial group in their luxurious guest house for a fortnight. In the first week they mostly kept to themselves and communicated to us largely through the organisers. Questions were not encouraged. If a participant asked two questions on the same day the inevitable reprimand was “Have you read David Mamet?” It was difficult to answer that a few of us hadn’t thought it necessary to familiarise ourselves with the great man’s guidelines before venturing into playwriting.
The second week was more rewarding. There were one to one sessions with them and the exchange became more vibrant. It was evident that they had mastery in their craft and combined this expertise with insights on the writer and his writing. What unfolded in the workshop outside the sessions was equally remarkable. The dozen odd writers and the actors who had come down to help in the workshop bonded over games of “Uno”, drinking sessions and midnight dives into the pool.
We had all started writing furiously by then. The plan was that we finish the first draft of our plays in three months and one of the facilitators comes back to enable us to get them ready for the stage. However, we heard from the organisers that he had discovered other preoccupations at the last minute and they were to take on the mantle of facilitating the remaining process.
Headed downhill
It was all downhill from there. The organisers had their own views about our plays. They felt their primary responsibility was towards the sponsors. They did not want any play that may ruffle feathers and turned overbearing and strident whenever they encountered dissent. The lone Hindi playwright deserted the process after the second workshop.
Once the festival began, some of us discovered to our chagrin that the organisers, who had also doubled up as producers for some of the plays, had encouraged rewriting large chunks to cater to popular sentiments. Critics complained about the lack of depth and originality as there was more than one unacknowledged adaptation. Nothing remarkable emerged in the festival labelled “Writers Bloc,” apart from a moving treatise on Manipur by a first time playwright.
The aftermath was bloody. The stress of the badly handled workshop process started leaking out in petty squabbles. Battle lines were clearly drawn. The writers who had participated due to the generosity of the organisers felt those who were critical of the process read too much in the harmless failures. Others felt they had a more legitimate right to criticise because they had responded to an objective evaluation and had been invited.
The British had done it again. They had managed to divide us without seemingly being a part of the mess that followed after they left. And helped us identify the minefields that lie in the territory we would like to claim as our own.
Courtesy: The Hindu
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Looking for the great Indian novel
Nilanjana S Roy
Try this with your friends when you?re playing party games sometime. Ask them to name the twenty greatest European novelists, in no particular order.
These are some of the names that might come up: Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote), Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier Svejk), Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago), Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) and a slew of other Russians. Some will name Sandor Marai (Embers), many will name Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum), or Ismail Kadare (The General of the Dead Army), or Orhan Pamuk (Snow). Some might reach further back into memory and stake a claim for writers like Victor Hugo (Les Miserables) or Stendhal (The Charterhouse of Parma) or Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time).
With the exception of writers from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, few of those on the list of great European writers will have had English as their first language. And yet, few readers will have not encountered Kundera or Camus, Tolstoy or Maupassant.
Kundera and Hasek are Czech writers, Marai is Hungarian, Kadare Albanian, Grass German, Cervantes Spanish, Hugo and Maupassant French. Except for the few of us who read across four or five European languages, most of us will have read their works in English. Ask any European, and she will tell you that all these languages have distinct and separate traditions: a Russian writer inhabits a different landscape from a Spanish writer, a Hungarian writer will not necessarily share the same sense of history as his Italian counterpart. But few would question the category of the European novel.
Now ask your friends to name the twenty greatest Indian novelists of the last two centuries. I tried this a few weeks ago with a group of people who were in general both far brighter and far better-read than me. All of us could name the small but growing pantheon of those who write in English, from Mulk Raj Anand to Kamala Markandeya, Nayantara Sahgal to Salman Rushdie, Pankaj Mishra to Amitav Ghosh. After that, the lists divided sharply on regional lines. Few of us could do more than name a handful of great names who wrote outside the comfort zone of the languages we were born to and spoke at home.
Collectively, we came up with a respectable list. To quote it in full would be tedious, but this might give you a rough sense of the size and capacity of the category we call Indian literature. It would include Saadat Hasan Manto?s short stories, the novels of Rabindranath Tagore and Sharatchandra, plays by Girish Karnad and Vijay Tendulkar, stories by Ismat Chugtai, Qurrutulain Haider?s Aag ki Dariya, novels by C V Raman Pillai and short stories by Vaikom Mohammad Basheer, Srilal Shukla?s Raag Darbari, Rahi Masoom Raza?s A Village Dividied, Premchand?s entire oeuvre, Mahasweta Debi?s selected short stories, Ashapurna Debi?s work, U R Ananthamurthy?s writings. As you can see, this is by no means exhaustive or even more than mildly indicative, but even this brief list compares with the best of European writing.
What became sharply clear to me was the ?iceberg? quality of Indian literature. Even the best-read and most inquiring among us were constrained by language, and the availability of books in translation into English or other Indian languages. What I see of Marathi literature, for instance, is just the tip of the iceberg; what a Kannada author saw of Bengali literature was only a small sample of what has been published.
Canvassing bookstores over the next few weeks, I discovered that Indian literature in English translation can be very hard to find. Srilal Shukla?s classic Raag Darbari, a satire that should be on the required reading list of every politician and voter in the country, was unavailable in several bookstores, though I hear that a new translation will be out soon. U R Ananthamurthy?s Samskara was available in a few bookstores, but a friend who has read the original says that the translation is clunky, ungraceful and inadequate. There are some good translations out there, but they aren?t easy to find.
At the end of a fortnight, I had only six books on the list of the thirty essential Indian classics I?d compiled for a friend who is new to India and speaks none of the major Indian languages. All I could do was reiterate that the great Indian novel, like the great European novel, does exist. It?s just a far more elusive beast to corral.
Courtesy: Business-Standard
Try this with your friends when you?re playing party games sometime. Ask them to name the twenty greatest European novelists, in no particular order.
These are some of the names that might come up: Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote), Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), Jaroslav Hasek (The Good Soldier Svejk), Alexander Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago), Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment) and a slew of other Russians. Some will name Sandor Marai (Embers), many will name Gunter Grass (The Tin Drum), or Ismail Kadare (The General of the Dead Army), or Orhan Pamuk (Snow). Some might reach further back into memory and stake a claim for writers like Victor Hugo (Les Miserables) or Stendhal (The Charterhouse of Parma) or Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time).
With the exception of writers from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, few of those on the list of great European writers will have had English as their first language. And yet, few readers will have not encountered Kundera or Camus, Tolstoy or Maupassant.
Kundera and Hasek are Czech writers, Marai is Hungarian, Kadare Albanian, Grass German, Cervantes Spanish, Hugo and Maupassant French. Except for the few of us who read across four or five European languages, most of us will have read their works in English. Ask any European, and she will tell you that all these languages have distinct and separate traditions: a Russian writer inhabits a different landscape from a Spanish writer, a Hungarian writer will not necessarily share the same sense of history as his Italian counterpart. But few would question the category of the European novel.
Now ask your friends to name the twenty greatest Indian novelists of the last two centuries. I tried this a few weeks ago with a group of people who were in general both far brighter and far better-read than me. All of us could name the small but growing pantheon of those who write in English, from Mulk Raj Anand to Kamala Markandeya, Nayantara Sahgal to Salman Rushdie, Pankaj Mishra to Amitav Ghosh. After that, the lists divided sharply on regional lines. Few of us could do more than name a handful of great names who wrote outside the comfort zone of the languages we were born to and spoke at home.
Collectively, we came up with a respectable list. To quote it in full would be tedious, but this might give you a rough sense of the size and capacity of the category we call Indian literature. It would include Saadat Hasan Manto?s short stories, the novels of Rabindranath Tagore and Sharatchandra, plays by Girish Karnad and Vijay Tendulkar, stories by Ismat Chugtai, Qurrutulain Haider?s Aag ki Dariya, novels by C V Raman Pillai and short stories by Vaikom Mohammad Basheer, Srilal Shukla?s Raag Darbari, Rahi Masoom Raza?s A Village Dividied, Premchand?s entire oeuvre, Mahasweta Debi?s selected short stories, Ashapurna Debi?s work, U R Ananthamurthy?s writings. As you can see, this is by no means exhaustive or even more than mildly indicative, but even this brief list compares with the best of European writing.
What became sharply clear to me was the ?iceberg? quality of Indian literature. Even the best-read and most inquiring among us were constrained by language, and the availability of books in translation into English or other Indian languages. What I see of Marathi literature, for instance, is just the tip of the iceberg; what a Kannada author saw of Bengali literature was only a small sample of what has been published.
Canvassing bookstores over the next few weeks, I discovered that Indian literature in English translation can be very hard to find. Srilal Shukla?s classic Raag Darbari, a satire that should be on the required reading list of every politician and voter in the country, was unavailable in several bookstores, though I hear that a new translation will be out soon. U R Ananthamurthy?s Samskara was available in a few bookstores, but a friend who has read the original says that the translation is clunky, ungraceful and inadequate. There are some good translations out there, but they aren?t easy to find.
At the end of a fortnight, I had only six books on the list of the thirty essential Indian classics I?d compiled for a friend who is new to India and speaks none of the major Indian languages. All I could do was reiterate that the great Indian novel, like the great European novel, does exist. It?s just a far more elusive beast to corral.
Courtesy: Business-Standard
Insider tales by outsiders
MIHIR BOSE
In VS Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, a Sikh returns to India having lived many years abroad. When he arrives in Bombay, he sits down among his suitcases and begins to cry. “He had forgotten what Indian poverty was like,” writes Naipaul. “It is an Indian story, in its arrangement of figure and properties, its melodrama, its pathos.”
I have been reminded of this in recent weeks after my Bollywood — A History was published in India by Roli Books. Like the Sikh, I have felt like crying not because I have forgotten Indian poverty but because I had forgotten how very curious Indian critics can be, and how very different from British ones.
In a country whose culture is supposed to be gentle and non-violent, these critics can be vicious and malicious in a way no British critic would ever be. Of course, when you write a book you expect brickbats. That is part of the game and I believe you should not take part in the game if you are not prepared to accept it.
In 30 years of journalism I have written over 20 books, and while some have received rave reviews and even won prizes — my History of Indian Cricket was the first book by an Indian to win the prestigious English Cricket Society Literary Award — others have been panned.
Yet, in Britain there is always a balance. Even critics who do not like a particular book will make sure their criticism is not a rant. In India, there is no halfway house. The review is either a gushing piece or a hateful character assassination.
The reception of my history of Bollywood proves this. In Britain it has got very good reviews and even reviewers who found fault with some aspect of the book had overall praise for it. What is more, they all felt that a proper narrative history of Bollywood was long overdue.
In India, however, while there have been some very good reviews there have also been some exceptionally hostile ones. What makes some of these reviews extraordinary is that they seem to question my very right to pen a history of Bollywood, as if it is some sort of sacrilege and I have invaded some private, exclusive territory.
To me this seems to betray the fact that the Indian mind is still colonised. They cannot accept that Indian subjects may be of immense interest to the outside world.
In the past 30 years I have written five books of history and biography that have a specifically Indian theme. They have all come about as a result of a British publisher approaching me. They include a biography of Subhas Chandra Bose, a history of the Aga Khans, a social study of Indian cricket, Maidan View, a narrative history of Indian cricket, and now this history of Bollywood.
Some of these books have been published in India but their subjects first aroused the curiosity of English publishers, not Indian ones. I wrote the books because an English publisher approached me. The Indian publication is merely the reproduction of the English title.
This shows a curious split in the Indian literary world. Ever since Salman Rushdie’s great breakthrough with Midnight’s Children, Indians can make a fair claim to have colonised English fiction, having produced a stream of writers who dominate the genre. However, when it comes to non-fiction India has not moved on in quite that fashion.
It is an old truism that the first history of India was written by Alberuni, the scholar who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni’s invading forces. Since then, outsiders have recorded vast areas of Indian life more faithfully than Indians.
I always find it very instructive that the two most popular books that deal with how India won freedom are Freedom at Midnight, written jointly by a Frenchman and an American — Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, and Liberty or Death, by the Englishman Patrick French.
It is as if Indians feel their history is so awful they better turn away and concentrate on a form of higher history, namely fiction.
This gap in non-fiction is now being splendidly filled by a new generation of English writers led by William Dalrymple.
Not that there are no Indian writers writing good non-fiction. Abhraham Eraly’s history of the Mughals is a splendid example. Ramachandra Guha has just written a fascinating history of India since 1947.
And there are many fine particular studies of different aspects of Indian life. But the sort of history common in the West — the broad historical narrative, the biographies of leading personalities — these are not that common. Indeed, Guha in his book complains how his research had to struggle because there were no biographies of many of the leading politicians of the past 60 years. But even when Indians like Guha write non-fiction their approach is very different from that of a Western non-fiction writer.
There are two aspects of Guha’s India After Gandhi that are very revealing. The first is Guha’s reluctance to discuss the personal life of the politicians he is writing about. So he does not say Nehru had an affair with Lady Mountbatten but writes: “With both delicacy and truth, (Lady Mountbatten) can be referred to his closest lady friend.”
I cannot imagine a British historian being so coy. This is all the more significant as this means Guha does not explore the point made by Nirad Chaudhuri that Nehru was much influenced on certain policy matters by the lady’s husband, Lord Mountbatten, in particular over the disastrous policy towards China.
The other very glaring thing about Guha’s book is that while he has done massive research, and unearthed fascinating nuggets of information, it is all based on material from books or archives. He has not carried out any interviews, although many of the figures he writes about are still alive.
Contrast this with Peter Hennessy’s Having It so Good, a history of Britain in the 50s. Hennessy in his acknowledgements writes, “I have benefited from a host of communications, written, visual, sonic and oral, for the decade.” Hennessy may have overdone the interviews but they are essential to his book.
Guha feels you cannot write a proper history of an event unless 30 years have elapsed. This is what many governments do: archives do not release documents until after 30 years. So the final section of his book, which deals with India since the 1990s, is called not history but “historically informed journalism”. Not many British writers would accept such a distinction.
What this indicates is that what may be called popular history — history written by non-historians like me — has not developed in India. In the West this is a thriving business. One of the greatest exponents of this was David Halberstam, the American writer who was tragically killed not long ago in a car accident in California. I was an accountancy student in London when I came across Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, a study of how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations got into the Vietnam war. I consider it one of the finest history books I have read. Halberstam, who had been a New York Times reporter in Vietnam in the 1960s, interviewed the leading personalities associated with the war and produced a masterpiece that stands the test of time.
In India, the wall between academic historians and popular historians — “historically informed journalism”, to borrow Guha’s phrase — seems as strong as the old Hindu divide between the higher castes and untouchables.
Such histories are all the more important because unlike the West there is a dearth of primary source materials here, as I have found when writing about Indian historical subjects, and again with Bollywood. Often the best material on India is to be found in Western libraries. You do need to talk to as many people as possible to discover what exactly happened.
Indian historians have a horror of oral testimony. They need to overcome that if they are to prevent the foreigner, let alone a hated nri like me, to dominate the non-fiction genre.
Bose is Sports Editor, BBC, and author, most recently, of Bollywood — A History
In VS Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness, a Sikh returns to India having lived many years abroad. When he arrives in Bombay, he sits down among his suitcases and begins to cry. “He had forgotten what Indian poverty was like,” writes Naipaul. “It is an Indian story, in its arrangement of figure and properties, its melodrama, its pathos.”
I have been reminded of this in recent weeks after my Bollywood — A History was published in India by Roli Books. Like the Sikh, I have felt like crying not because I have forgotten Indian poverty but because I had forgotten how very curious Indian critics can be, and how very different from British ones.
In a country whose culture is supposed to be gentle and non-violent, these critics can be vicious and malicious in a way no British critic would ever be. Of course, when you write a book you expect brickbats. That is part of the game and I believe you should not take part in the game if you are not prepared to accept it.
In 30 years of journalism I have written over 20 books, and while some have received rave reviews and even won prizes — my History of Indian Cricket was the first book by an Indian to win the prestigious English Cricket Society Literary Award — others have been panned.
Yet, in Britain there is always a balance. Even critics who do not like a particular book will make sure their criticism is not a rant. In India, there is no halfway house. The review is either a gushing piece or a hateful character assassination.
The reception of my history of Bollywood proves this. In Britain it has got very good reviews and even reviewers who found fault with some aspect of the book had overall praise for it. What is more, they all felt that a proper narrative history of Bollywood was long overdue.
In India, however, while there have been some very good reviews there have also been some exceptionally hostile ones. What makes some of these reviews extraordinary is that they seem to question my very right to pen a history of Bollywood, as if it is some sort of sacrilege and I have invaded some private, exclusive territory.
To me this seems to betray the fact that the Indian mind is still colonised. They cannot accept that Indian subjects may be of immense interest to the outside world.
In the past 30 years I have written five books of history and biography that have a specifically Indian theme. They have all come about as a result of a British publisher approaching me. They include a biography of Subhas Chandra Bose, a history of the Aga Khans, a social study of Indian cricket, Maidan View, a narrative history of Indian cricket, and now this history of Bollywood.
Some of these books have been published in India but their subjects first aroused the curiosity of English publishers, not Indian ones. I wrote the books because an English publisher approached me. The Indian publication is merely the reproduction of the English title.
This shows a curious split in the Indian literary world. Ever since Salman Rushdie’s great breakthrough with Midnight’s Children, Indians can make a fair claim to have colonised English fiction, having produced a stream of writers who dominate the genre. However, when it comes to non-fiction India has not moved on in quite that fashion.
It is an old truism that the first history of India was written by Alberuni, the scholar who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni’s invading forces. Since then, outsiders have recorded vast areas of Indian life more faithfully than Indians.
I always find it very instructive that the two most popular books that deal with how India won freedom are Freedom at Midnight, written jointly by a Frenchman and an American — Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, and Liberty or Death, by the Englishman Patrick French.
It is as if Indians feel their history is so awful they better turn away and concentrate on a form of higher history, namely fiction.
This gap in non-fiction is now being splendidly filled by a new generation of English writers led by William Dalrymple.
Not that there are no Indian writers writing good non-fiction. Abhraham Eraly’s history of the Mughals is a splendid example. Ramachandra Guha has just written a fascinating history of India since 1947.
And there are many fine particular studies of different aspects of Indian life. But the sort of history common in the West — the broad historical narrative, the biographies of leading personalities — these are not that common. Indeed, Guha in his book complains how his research had to struggle because there were no biographies of many of the leading politicians of the past 60 years. But even when Indians like Guha write non-fiction their approach is very different from that of a Western non-fiction writer.
There are two aspects of Guha’s India After Gandhi that are very revealing. The first is Guha’s reluctance to discuss the personal life of the politicians he is writing about. So he does not say Nehru had an affair with Lady Mountbatten but writes: “With both delicacy and truth, (Lady Mountbatten) can be referred to his closest lady friend.”
I cannot imagine a British historian being so coy. This is all the more significant as this means Guha does not explore the point made by Nirad Chaudhuri that Nehru was much influenced on certain policy matters by the lady’s husband, Lord Mountbatten, in particular over the disastrous policy towards China.
The other very glaring thing about Guha’s book is that while he has done massive research, and unearthed fascinating nuggets of information, it is all based on material from books or archives. He has not carried out any interviews, although many of the figures he writes about are still alive.
Contrast this with Peter Hennessy’s Having It so Good, a history of Britain in the 50s. Hennessy in his acknowledgements writes, “I have benefited from a host of communications, written, visual, sonic and oral, for the decade.” Hennessy may have overdone the interviews but they are essential to his book.
Guha feels you cannot write a proper history of an event unless 30 years have elapsed. This is what many governments do: archives do not release documents until after 30 years. So the final section of his book, which deals with India since the 1990s, is called not history but “historically informed journalism”. Not many British writers would accept such a distinction.
What this indicates is that what may be called popular history — history written by non-historians like me — has not developed in India. In the West this is a thriving business. One of the greatest exponents of this was David Halberstam, the American writer who was tragically killed not long ago in a car accident in California. I was an accountancy student in London when I came across Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, a study of how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations got into the Vietnam war. I consider it one of the finest history books I have read. Halberstam, who had been a New York Times reporter in Vietnam in the 1960s, interviewed the leading personalities associated with the war and produced a masterpiece that stands the test of time.
In India, the wall between academic historians and popular historians — “historically informed journalism”, to borrow Guha’s phrase — seems as strong as the old Hindu divide between the higher castes and untouchables.
Such histories are all the more important because unlike the West there is a dearth of primary source materials here, as I have found when writing about Indian historical subjects, and again with Bollywood. Often the best material on India is to be found in Western libraries. You do need to talk to as many people as possible to discover what exactly happened.
Indian historians have a horror of oral testimony. They need to overcome that if they are to prevent the foreigner, let alone a hated nri like me, to dominate the non-fiction genre.
Bose is Sports Editor, BBC, and author, most recently, of Bollywood — A History
'A writer's first audience...'
"I just got off the auto rickshaw on MG Road and bumped into a student I used to jam with," smiles Amitabha Bagchi. While he enjoys playing the drums, he can't quite relate to the heavy metal music that Gen Now plays. "I used to listen to Aerosmith a lot in the 1990s. Now it's west African pop, jazz and qawaalis . And yes for old time's sake, I do listen to Neil Young and Led Zeppelin ," says Amitabha.
Jamming with students aside, Amitabha draws inspiration from these real life characters for his writing. "I've noticed that there are two categories of students - the good and the no good. And when people realise that you are good, there is the weight of expectation from your family and friends. Along the way, you internalise these expectations and keep striving to do better," says Amitabha who, after a rigorous spell of talent search exams, an engineering degree and a post doc came back to work as an assistant professor at IIT. And perhaps this is also why his characters are based on real people he's known and met along the way. "But the main plots in my story are fictional ," he adds.
If a writer draws inspiration from books, then Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyaa's Pather Panchali and William Saroyan's An Armenian Trilogy are Amitabha's idea of stories well told.
"Although there are a lot of other things going around, reading is still a core activity. And each book you read influences you differently . As an author, my job is to write and there is a mixed response to my writing . Some find it relevant or interesting and others may not relate to it at all," says Amitabha.
And does an Indian writing in English appeal to an international audience? "Yes, more so now than earlier . Then, writers used to talk a great deal about spinning the language the Indian way. Today, writers don't talk about it, they just do it. But always, a writer's first audience must be his or her own people, then his writing can also be appreciated across cultures. Like Siddhartha Deb and Chetan Bhagat writing for international audiences," says Amitabha.
What about Bangalore? "Bangaloreans are very stylish. And you can't expect weather like this in May in Delhi. You can fry eggs on the roof back home now."
For the future, Amitabha plans more writing. "It'll be very different from my first book," he smiles.
Jamming with students aside, Amitabha draws inspiration from these real life characters for his writing. "I've noticed that there are two categories of students - the good and the no good. And when people realise that you are good, there is the weight of expectation from your family and friends. Along the way, you internalise these expectations and keep striving to do better," says Amitabha who, after a rigorous spell of talent search exams, an engineering degree and a post doc came back to work as an assistant professor at IIT. And perhaps this is also why his characters are based on real people he's known and met along the way. "But the main plots in my story are fictional ," he adds.
If a writer draws inspiration from books, then Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyaa's Pather Panchali and William Saroyan's An Armenian Trilogy are Amitabha's idea of stories well told.
"Although there are a lot of other things going around, reading is still a core activity. And each book you read influences you differently . As an author, my job is to write and there is a mixed response to my writing . Some find it relevant or interesting and others may not relate to it at all," says Amitabha.
And does an Indian writing in English appeal to an international audience? "Yes, more so now than earlier . Then, writers used to talk a great deal about spinning the language the Indian way. Today, writers don't talk about it, they just do it. But always, a writer's first audience must be his or her own people, then his writing can also be appreciated across cultures. Like Siddhartha Deb and Chetan Bhagat writing for international audiences," says Amitabha.
What about Bangalore? "Bangaloreans are very stylish. And you can't expect weather like this in May in Delhi. You can fry eggs on the roof back home now."
For the future, Amitabha plans more writing. "It'll be very different from my first book," he smiles.
Books, a click away
A reason to rejoice for book-lovers, especially children as Katha Publishers have launched the 'Katha Book Club'. This is the first time that an NGO would be operating a book club. The proceeds will be given to Kathashala, its school, and 57 other communities in Delhi and Arunachal Pradesh, where 1,300 slum children would benefit.
The books will cater mainly to schoolchildren, since the summer vacations are on, besides teachers, professionals and housewives. Till now, Katha's books were mainly sold to literary societies and institutions but with the book club, Katha's books would now be available to individuals and children as well. The club will introduce Indian authors to children, offering something more than Harry Potter, and also create space for regional literature. Also, children may interact with each other online, and subsequently, develop skills such as expression, creative writing and critical thinking.
"We are not only promoting reading, but also introducing Indian authors and creating space for regional literature through their stories. We get children to interact with each other, share, and discuss what they have read to inculcate reading habits in them," said Vaishali Mathur, editor-in-charge, children's books.
According to Lubna Haq, Katha marketing strategist, "We want to bring the joy of reading directly to people's homes."
The book club will have an initial five-year membership fee of Rs 500. A member will get Rs 10 credit points for every Rs 100 of reading pleasure they buy. These credit points can be redeemed on the next purchase or kept for future purchases. They will also receive an online newsletter of Katha's latest releases and events including storytelling and puppetry. Also, they will receive a coupon to buy the Katha book of the month at a 30% discount.
And for every member you enrol for them, you receive credit points of Rs 100.
For membership, mail to directmarketing@katha.org
The books will cater mainly to schoolchildren, since the summer vacations are on, besides teachers, professionals and housewives. Till now, Katha's books were mainly sold to literary societies and institutions but with the book club, Katha's books would now be available to individuals and children as well. The club will introduce Indian authors to children, offering something more than Harry Potter, and also create space for regional literature. Also, children may interact with each other online, and subsequently, develop skills such as expression, creative writing and critical thinking.
"We are not only promoting reading, but also introducing Indian authors and creating space for regional literature through their stories. We get children to interact with each other, share, and discuss what they have read to inculcate reading habits in them," said Vaishali Mathur, editor-in-charge, children's books.
According to Lubna Haq, Katha marketing strategist, "We want to bring the joy of reading directly to people's homes."
The book club will have an initial five-year membership fee of Rs 500. A member will get Rs 10 credit points for every Rs 100 of reading pleasure they buy. These credit points can be redeemed on the next purchase or kept for future purchases. They will also receive an online newsletter of Katha's latest releases and events including storytelling and puppetry. Also, they will receive a coupon to buy the Katha book of the month at a 30% discount.
And for every member you enrol for them, you receive credit points of Rs 100.
For membership, mail to directmarketing@katha.org
Auctioneer Osian’s set to launch publishing firm, literary agency
Rajeshwari Sharma
As Indian authors write their way to international best-sellers’ lists, the country’s leading archive and auction house Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art Pvt. Ltd plans to launch a publishing and design firm as well as a literary agency.
The moves, scheduled to be announced on Friday, reflects a growing interest in managing talent in a country where writers have historically dealt directly with publishers.
“The whole practice of literary agenting has just started,” says Renuka Chatterjee, senior vice president of Osian’s planned literary agency. “We realized that the time is right for a professional literary agency given the ever-increasing interest in Indian writing and the way publishing in India has grown from strength to strength,” she adds.
There have been attempts before on this front. Jacaranda Press has been operating as a literary agency and consulting company since 1997, while Anuj Bahri of book retailer, Bahri & Sons, has been doubling as a bookseller and literary agent for more than a year.
Meanwhile, many recent blockbusters that have won literary acclaim and financial success—Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, for instance—have been authored by Indians resident abroad, who worked with agents in New York and London.
Indeed, in a recent interview with Mint, Desai’s agent David Godwin had said that he hoped to set up an India office. Godwin was also agent to Desai’s fellow Booker Award winner, Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things. Sophie Hoult, a spokeswoman for David Godwin Associates, said on Wednesday that nothing was imminent.
India’s English trade books market represents Rs800-1,200 crore in sales every year. The last few years have seen some headline-grabbing advance payments—Raj Kamal Jha’s world rights to The Blue Bedspread to Picador were sold at £160,000 (Rs1.28 crore).
Observers, however, say that the book business within India still does not make it financially attractive to have an organized literary agency model.
Indian agents typically charge between 5% and 15% commission compared with the standard 15% in the West.
“Unlike the West, where an adult book goes for an average of say £5-6, or Rs400-480, in India it typically sells for anything between Rs150-250,” says Thomas Abraham, chief executive officer and president of Penguin Books India. “Can an agent in India sustain herself by merely being a literary agent?” he asks.
Indeed, many Indian writers, such as the best-selling Shobaa De, have no literary agent; De does have overseas agents, including Frauke Jung-Lindemann, who controls the German rights for her books.
Osian’s publishing arm will focus on books about arts, culture, cinema and philosophy. The literary agency will operate separately and acquire writers of fiction and non-fiction, Chatterjee explains.
Publishers say literary agents can add significant value to the writers they represent as well as to their publishers. For Indian writers, they might help garner overseas rights.“Foreign publishing houses do not even look at manuscripts unless they come through agents. The Indian publishing industry is different in this respect, since authors can, and do approach publishing houses directly,” says Jayapriya Vasudevan, director of Jacaranda Press in Bangalore. Jacaranda has been working with authors such as Shashi Warrier, Anita Nair, Aditi De and Tushar Gandhi.
Agents assess manuscripts, pitch them, review contracts and help manage schedules for writing, editing, proofing and release. They not only bring value to both the writer and the publisher, but also help weed out manuscripts that don’t make the grade, notes Bahri, adding, “It is not an easy task for a publishing house to read through some 500-odd manuscripts that reaches its desk each month.”
For now, publishers feel the role of agents in India will be limited to talent scouting and selling world rights. “There is a high output of quality writing generating from India and the country will remain a prime ground for new literary discoveries,” says Abraham. “It would take a long time before agents in India start wielding power like in the West.”
Courtesy: Livemint.com
As Indian authors write their way to international best-sellers’ lists, the country’s leading archive and auction house Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art Pvt. Ltd plans to launch a publishing and design firm as well as a literary agency.
The moves, scheduled to be announced on Friday, reflects a growing interest in managing talent in a country where writers have historically dealt directly with publishers.
“The whole practice of literary agenting has just started,” says Renuka Chatterjee, senior vice president of Osian’s planned literary agency. “We realized that the time is right for a professional literary agency given the ever-increasing interest in Indian writing and the way publishing in India has grown from strength to strength,” she adds.
There have been attempts before on this front. Jacaranda Press has been operating as a literary agency and consulting company since 1997, while Anuj Bahri of book retailer, Bahri & Sons, has been doubling as a bookseller and literary agent for more than a year.
Meanwhile, many recent blockbusters that have won literary acclaim and financial success—Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss and Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games, for instance—have been authored by Indians resident abroad, who worked with agents in New York and London.
Indeed, in a recent interview with Mint, Desai’s agent David Godwin had said that he hoped to set up an India office. Godwin was also agent to Desai’s fellow Booker Award winner, Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things. Sophie Hoult, a spokeswoman for David Godwin Associates, said on Wednesday that nothing was imminent.
India’s English trade books market represents Rs800-1,200 crore in sales every year. The last few years have seen some headline-grabbing advance payments—Raj Kamal Jha’s world rights to The Blue Bedspread to Picador were sold at £160,000 (Rs1.28 crore).
Observers, however, say that the book business within India still does not make it financially attractive to have an organized literary agency model.
Indian agents typically charge between 5% and 15% commission compared with the standard 15% in the West.
“Unlike the West, where an adult book goes for an average of say £5-6, or Rs400-480, in India it typically sells for anything between Rs150-250,” says Thomas Abraham, chief executive officer and president of Penguin Books India. “Can an agent in India sustain herself by merely being a literary agent?” he asks.
Indeed, many Indian writers, such as the best-selling Shobaa De, have no literary agent; De does have overseas agents, including Frauke Jung-Lindemann, who controls the German rights for her books.
Osian’s publishing arm will focus on books about arts, culture, cinema and philosophy. The literary agency will operate separately and acquire writers of fiction and non-fiction, Chatterjee explains.
Publishers say literary agents can add significant value to the writers they represent as well as to their publishers. For Indian writers, they might help garner overseas rights.“Foreign publishing houses do not even look at manuscripts unless they come through agents. The Indian publishing industry is different in this respect, since authors can, and do approach publishing houses directly,” says Jayapriya Vasudevan, director of Jacaranda Press in Bangalore. Jacaranda has been working with authors such as Shashi Warrier, Anita Nair, Aditi De and Tushar Gandhi.
Agents assess manuscripts, pitch them, review contracts and help manage schedules for writing, editing, proofing and release. They not only bring value to both the writer and the publisher, but also help weed out manuscripts that don’t make the grade, notes Bahri, adding, “It is not an easy task for a publishing house to read through some 500-odd manuscripts that reaches its desk each month.”
For now, publishers feel the role of agents in India will be limited to talent scouting and selling world rights. “There is a high output of quality writing generating from India and the country will remain a prime ground for new literary discoveries,” says Abraham. “It would take a long time before agents in India start wielding power like in the West.”
Courtesy: Livemint.com
Chidambaram Releases TERI books on environment management and CSR practices
TERI is released two books at the 6th TERI Corporate Award Function, held in New Delhi . The Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram, presided over the event and released the two books on the occasion – each of which deals with exemplary case studies of environment management and social practices by organizations in India.
With its rich insights into the implementation of effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) within organizations, Citizens at Work is a must-read for business managers, development experts, management practitioners, corporate sector specialists, consultants, and business management students. It offers insights into the most effective and successful CSR programmes launched by Indian corporations.
The cases featured in the book encompass integrated socio-economic development of rural communities; capacity building, employment and education of the youth; empowering citizens; developing and providing support for the mentally and physically challenged; unique micro finance programme for the poorer sections of society; and IT-based interventions for rural India.
Cleaner is cheaper: case studies of corporate environmental excellence is a compendium of business cases highlighting the best environmental practices in Indian industry. Each of the write-ups in the book demonstrates the ‘first-ever’ in the industry and deal with various examples of process improvement, waste and water management, resource conservation and environmental management. The objective of both these books is to provide viable solutions to the industry in the form of replicable models and state-of-the art technologies and practices.
With its rich insights into the implementation of effective corporate social responsibility (CSR) within organizations, Citizens at Work is a must-read for business managers, development experts, management practitioners, corporate sector specialists, consultants, and business management students. It offers insights into the most effective and successful CSR programmes launched by Indian corporations.
The cases featured in the book encompass integrated socio-economic development of rural communities; capacity building, employment and education of the youth; empowering citizens; developing and providing support for the mentally and physically challenged; unique micro finance programme for the poorer sections of society; and IT-based interventions for rural India.
Cleaner is cheaper: case studies of corporate environmental excellence is a compendium of business cases highlighting the best environmental practices in Indian industry. Each of the write-ups in the book demonstrates the ‘first-ever’ in the industry and deal with various examples of process improvement, waste and water management, resource conservation and environmental management. The objective of both these books is to provide viable solutions to the industry in the form of replicable models and state-of-the art technologies and practices.
Global award to boost Dalit cause, says Indian publisher
An Indian publishing house specializing in caste inequalities and identity politics says a prestigious award it has won will help generate support for the country's oppressed communities.
Most unexpectedly, the British Council's prestigious International Publisher of the Year Award was awarded in London to S. Anand's publishing house Navayana.
Anand told IANS: 'I think the award will help mobilise international opinion on the caste question which India has always said is its internal matter.'
The 33-year-old owner of Chennai-based Navayana received the coveted prize at an International Publisher of the Year - awards ceremony at the London Book Fair last month.
Selected by a five-member panel of judges from a shortlist of finalists representing small-to-medium-sized publishers from Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa and Syria, Anand got 7,500 pounds as prize money and a free stand at the London Book Fair 2008.
'I do not see the IYPY award as a recognition of my work as an individual because Navayana's work reflects the anxieties and concerns of the anti-caste movement and the Dalit movement in India,' he said.
'One of the major concerns of the Dalit movement has been to internationalise the issue of caste discrimination and to get the global community to recognise caste discrimination as equal to racial discrimination and other forms of xenophobia.
'In India, we recently witnessed the ugly sight of privileged caste students sweeping the roads and polishing shoes as a form of protest against reservation. In no other country will we witness such vulgar protests, egged by the media, against a policy that seeks to usher in social equality in society,' he added.
Navayana says it seeks to restore sanity in such a society. Its latest book is Kancha Ilaiah's 'Turing the Pot, Tilling the Land: Dignity of Labour in Our Times'.
'This richly illustrated work seeks to engage children with the issue of caste discrimination. Illustrated by Durgabai Vyam, a Gond adivasi artist, the book is very topical given the heat generated over the issue of reservation. Being the first children's book in India to inculcate dignity of labour and an anti-caste perspective among children, this title is a major pedagogical intervention,' explained Anand.
Anand looks forward to returning to the London Book Fair in 2008.
'It will offer an important platform to internationalise caste discrimination and help form a coalition with like-minded players in the British publishing industry. This award is an important step for us and gives a small publisher like us the opportunity to think big,' he said.
Founded in 2003, Navayana has sought to fill a serious gap in the Indian publishing market.
Inspired by the ideals of B.R. Ambedkar - an icon of the anti-caste movement in India - Anand has committed himself to selling books that critically engage with the issue of caste despite distribution and retail bias.
In 2005, along with seven other publishers, Anand established the Independent Publishers Distribution Alternatives, demonstrating that in a deeply conservative market, publishing for social change can also be profitable.
Courtesy: Sujoy Dhar, IANS
Most unexpectedly, the British Council's prestigious International Publisher of the Year Award was awarded in London to S. Anand's publishing house Navayana.
Anand told IANS: 'I think the award will help mobilise international opinion on the caste question which India has always said is its internal matter.'
The 33-year-old owner of Chennai-based Navayana received the coveted prize at an International Publisher of the Year - awards ceremony at the London Book Fair last month.
Selected by a five-member panel of judges from a shortlist of finalists representing small-to-medium-sized publishers from Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Romania, Slovenia, South Africa and Syria, Anand got 7,500 pounds as prize money and a free stand at the London Book Fair 2008.
'I do not see the IYPY award as a recognition of my work as an individual because Navayana's work reflects the anxieties and concerns of the anti-caste movement and the Dalit movement in India,' he said.
'One of the major concerns of the Dalit movement has been to internationalise the issue of caste discrimination and to get the global community to recognise caste discrimination as equal to racial discrimination and other forms of xenophobia.
'In India, we recently witnessed the ugly sight of privileged caste students sweeping the roads and polishing shoes as a form of protest against reservation. In no other country will we witness such vulgar protests, egged by the media, against a policy that seeks to usher in social equality in society,' he added.
Navayana says it seeks to restore sanity in such a society. Its latest book is Kancha Ilaiah's 'Turing the Pot, Tilling the Land: Dignity of Labour in Our Times'.
'This richly illustrated work seeks to engage children with the issue of caste discrimination. Illustrated by Durgabai Vyam, a Gond adivasi artist, the book is very topical given the heat generated over the issue of reservation. Being the first children's book in India to inculcate dignity of labour and an anti-caste perspective among children, this title is a major pedagogical intervention,' explained Anand.
Anand looks forward to returning to the London Book Fair in 2008.
'It will offer an important platform to internationalise caste discrimination and help form a coalition with like-minded players in the British publishing industry. This award is an important step for us and gives a small publisher like us the opportunity to think big,' he said.
Founded in 2003, Navayana has sought to fill a serious gap in the Indian publishing market.
Inspired by the ideals of B.R. Ambedkar - an icon of the anti-caste movement in India - Anand has committed himself to selling books that critically engage with the issue of caste despite distribution and retail bias.
In 2005, along with seven other publishers, Anand established the Independent Publishers Distribution Alternatives, demonstrating that in a deeply conservative market, publishing for social change can also be profitable.
Courtesy: Sujoy Dhar, IANS
The Revenues from Indian Publishing Offshoring Are Slated to Grow
Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c57342) has announced the addition of "Offshoring in the Publishing Vertical - An Update" to their offering.
The revenues from Indian publishing offshoring are slated to grow from $440 million in 2006 to reach $1.46 billion in 2010. There were an estimated 26,000 employees in this space in 2006 and this number will grow to 74,000 by 2010. The report "Offshoring in the Publishing Vertical - An Update - focuses on the three key segments: STM/Academic, Educational and Legal publishing that form a bulk of offshoring to India.
A vast majority, or 96% of the India-based vendors have capabilities to service the STM/Academic publishing segment. About 56% and 39% of the vendors have the capability to handle educational publishing and legal publishing respectively. The range of offshored services includes: Editorial, Data (operations), Design, Training and IT. Each of these has achieved varying levels of offshoring maturity, which is analyzed in detail in the report. In the Indian offshoring space, the strongest capability is within the Operations space, followed by Editorial services.
There are over 100 vendors in the publishing offshoring space and we have identified a minimum of 28 credible vendors, which fall within the scope of the study. These vendors have been categorized into clusters (between 1 to 5) and analyzed based on their services, focus, positioning and strategies. Cluster 1, 2 and 3 together account for over 80% of the total employment in the publishing offshoring space in India.
Based on our exhaustive primary research and analysis of this sector, we have identified a "list of frontrunners", that have the highest potential to emerge as winners within their chosen niches. This is on account of strong capabilities, onshore and offshore presence, well-defined growth strategies and execution capabilities, brand and financial strengths. Included in this list (across all clusters) are SPi, OfficeTiger, Aptara (formerly TechBooks), Macmillan India, Newgen, Integra, Infomedia India, Premedia Global, Q2A Solutions and CyberMedia Services. We believe these will be among the most exciting companies in the medium term.
This report: "Offshoring in the Publishing Vertical: An Update" provides an in-depth information and analysis of the Indian vendor space along with vendor profiles of all major and upcoming players in the STM/Academic, Educational and Legal Publishing segments.
The report provides an in-depth analysis of the Indian vendor space along with profiles of all major industry players. The report is designed to help:
- Publishers looking to outsource/offshore
- Publishing BPOs to assess their competitive environment
- American and European Publishers looking for Indian partners
- Outsourcing consultants evaluate and compare the offerings of Indian vendors
- Researchers and others looking for detailed information on Publishing outsourcing
The report is based on secondary data as well as extensive interviews with key people at various publishing outsourcing companies in India. Publishing houses will find it invaluable in understanding the capabilities of Indian vendors, and selecting the best fit.
Companies Mentioned:
- Alden Prepress
- Aptara
- Techbooks
- Cybermedia Services
- Datapage
- Diacritech
- Digital Publishing Solutions
- Dps, Hurix
- IBH
- Infomedia
- Innodata Isogen
- Integra Software Services
- Integreon
- Knowledge Works Global
- Kwg, Lapis Digital
- Laserwords
- Lason India
- Macmillan
- Mizpah Publishing
- Newgen Imaging
- Office Tiger
- Olympus
- Premedia Global
- Q2A
- Qpro Infotech
- SPI Technologies
- SPS
- SR Nova
- Thomson Digital
- Tnq
- Blackwell Publishing
- Butterworth Heinemann
- CRC Press
- Elsevier
- Forbes
- American Heritage
- Greenwood Publishing
- Harvard University Press
- Houghton Mifflin
- IEEE
- John Wiley
- Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
- Mcgraw-Hill
- Nature Publishing Group
- Oxford University Press
- Pearson Education
- Prentice Hall
- Proquest
- Reed Elsevier
- Springer
- Taylor & Francis
- Harcourt Education
- Harpercollins
- The Watts Publishing Group
- Scholastic
- Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
- Mayer
- Brown
- Rowe & Maw LLP
- Smithsonian
- Wolters Kluwer
- Netherlands Business Legislation
- The International Encyclopedia of Laws
For more information, visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c57342
The revenues from Indian publishing offshoring are slated to grow from $440 million in 2006 to reach $1.46 billion in 2010. There were an estimated 26,000 employees in this space in 2006 and this number will grow to 74,000 by 2010. The report "Offshoring in the Publishing Vertical - An Update - focuses on the three key segments: STM/Academic, Educational and Legal publishing that form a bulk of offshoring to India.
A vast majority, or 96% of the India-based vendors have capabilities to service the STM/Academic publishing segment. About 56% and 39% of the vendors have the capability to handle educational publishing and legal publishing respectively. The range of offshored services includes: Editorial, Data (operations), Design, Training and IT. Each of these has achieved varying levels of offshoring maturity, which is analyzed in detail in the report. In the Indian offshoring space, the strongest capability is within the Operations space, followed by Editorial services.
There are over 100 vendors in the publishing offshoring space and we have identified a minimum of 28 credible vendors, which fall within the scope of the study. These vendors have been categorized into clusters (between 1 to 5) and analyzed based on their services, focus, positioning and strategies. Cluster 1, 2 and 3 together account for over 80% of the total employment in the publishing offshoring space in India.
Based on our exhaustive primary research and analysis of this sector, we have identified a "list of frontrunners", that have the highest potential to emerge as winners within their chosen niches. This is on account of strong capabilities, onshore and offshore presence, well-defined growth strategies and execution capabilities, brand and financial strengths. Included in this list (across all clusters) are SPi, OfficeTiger, Aptara (formerly TechBooks), Macmillan India, Newgen, Integra, Infomedia India, Premedia Global, Q2A Solutions and CyberMedia Services. We believe these will be among the most exciting companies in the medium term.
This report: "Offshoring in the Publishing Vertical: An Update" provides an in-depth information and analysis of the Indian vendor space along with vendor profiles of all major and upcoming players in the STM/Academic, Educational and Legal Publishing segments.
The report provides an in-depth analysis of the Indian vendor space along with profiles of all major industry players. The report is designed to help:
- Publishers looking to outsource/offshore
- Publishing BPOs to assess their competitive environment
- American and European Publishers looking for Indian partners
- Outsourcing consultants evaluate and compare the offerings of Indian vendors
- Researchers and others looking for detailed information on Publishing outsourcing
The report is based on secondary data as well as extensive interviews with key people at various publishing outsourcing companies in India. Publishing houses will find it invaluable in understanding the capabilities of Indian vendors, and selecting the best fit.
Companies Mentioned:
- Alden Prepress
- Aptara
- Techbooks
- Cybermedia Services
- Datapage
- Diacritech
- Digital Publishing Solutions
- Dps, Hurix
- IBH
- Infomedia
- Innodata Isogen
- Integra Software Services
- Integreon
- Knowledge Works Global
- Kwg, Lapis Digital
- Laserwords
- Lason India
- Macmillan
- Mizpah Publishing
- Newgen Imaging
- Office Tiger
- Olympus
- Premedia Global
- Q2A
- Qpro Infotech
- SPI Technologies
- SPS
- SR Nova
- Thomson Digital
- Tnq
- Blackwell Publishing
- Butterworth Heinemann
- CRC Press
- Elsevier
- Forbes
- American Heritage
- Greenwood Publishing
- Harvard University Press
- Houghton Mifflin
- IEEE
- John Wiley
- Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
- Mcgraw-Hill
- Nature Publishing Group
- Oxford University Press
- Pearson Education
- Prentice Hall
- Proquest
- Reed Elsevier
- Springer
- Taylor & Francis
- Harcourt Education
- Harpercollins
- The Watts Publishing Group
- Scholastic
- Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
- Mayer
- Brown
- Rowe & Maw LLP
- Smithsonian
- Wolters Kluwer
- Netherlands Business Legislation
- The International Encyclopedia of Laws
For more information, visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c57342
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