A host of opportunities beckon entrepreneurs in the publishing space, which has moved beyond the realm of printed books
If a book is a man’s friend, then Badri Seshadri, K Satyanarayan and R Ananthkumar make plenty of new friends every day. The trio founded New Horizon Media, a Chennai-based publishing house, in February 2004.
In the last four years, they have churned out over 700 books in three languages (Tamil, Malayalam and English), and release 30 new titles every month. Not just printed books, the company also publishes e-books and audio-books. “In 2004, our aim was to merely learn the book publishing business in Tamil. If it looked interesting and profitable, we were planning to jump in. We learnt quite a bit,” says Seshadri. Move to the west of the country and you meet Leonard Fernandes and his wife Queenie in Goa, who co-founded CinnamonTeal Print and Publishing, a print-on-demand and editorial services provider. The couple entrepreneurs moved back to India in 2006, after spending seven years in the US. They initially started an online bookstore, but were soon flooded with requests from authors seeking to get their works published. “Initially we recommended them to publishers, but the economics of publishing doesn’t afford everybody to be published. So we started our print-on-demand service in August 2007,” says Fernandes. They began with five titles a month. Now, CinnamonTeal publishes 50 titles a week.
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| While the e-book industry is still considered relatively new, in just over a decade, the demand for e-books has been steadily growing particularly amongst the younger generation. Terrie L Balmer | We have grown 100% in the last one year in terms of revenues, customer base as well as employees. Bhupesh Trivedi |
Both New Horizon and CinnamonTeal reflect the modern face of the Indian publishing business, driven by entrepreneurial spirit. Not just printed books, with technology carving new imprints on our reading habits that have changed with hectic lifestyles, the future also looks bright for the growth of audio books and e-books that can be loaded on to your laptop and iPods. In this article, DARE looks at some of the opportunities that beckon entrepreneurs in the publishing space and talks to the people who have “been there, done that.”
Audio booksThese are narrations of the printed material distributed through audio cassettes and CDs. They are also available in digital formats such as MP3, and are downloadable on computers. Our busy schedules and match-box living is sure to drive the audio books market further. According to industry sources, audio books constitute just around 1% of the books in Indian stores. One of the reasons could be the price, as most books carry the tag of Rs 300 and above and are imported.
Sensing the huge opportunity in the audio books space, some entrepreneurs have made quick foray into the sector. One of them is Vishwanath Parsuram, who started Karadi Tales in 1996. The first title of Karadi Tales featured Naseeruddin Shah as Karadi, the bear. New Horizons Media too, has published a little over 60 audio books in Tamil and 4 audio books in English.
So what does it take to start a audio book publishing business? “Depending on the creative and production values one chooses, the investment per title can vary from Rs 1 lac to Rs 10 lacs. A definitive creative edge is priceless, so the value of the product cannot be gauged by the investment alone,” says Parsuram. The cost of the first CD depends on the length of the book, which includes voice-over costs and studio rental time. “However, once you master a CD, cost of production per CD is the same irrespective of the duration. This is a major advantage in case of audio books vis-à-vis printed books,” says Seshadri. The price of Tamil audio books from the stable of New Horizon Media is higher than that of the printed books, while in the case English books, the audio and printed versions cost the same.
| DARE/new kids on the block |
| Audio books: These are narratives of books or documents, recorded by voice-over artistes. These are available on CDs, cassettes or in MP3 format. Audio books in the children, non-fiction, and management category are gaining popularity. Apart from Karadi Tales, which is the pioneer in audio books in the country, and New Horizon Media, there are not very many dedicated audio book publishers around. Many audio books are imported and sport a price tag of anything above Rs 300. E-books: These are books available in electronic formats (most popular being pdf) and can be read on a computer, an e-book reader such as Amazon’s Kindle or a mobile device that supports Microsoft Reader, Adobe Acrobat, or Palm format. A volunteer effort, started in 1971, aimed at digitizing books in the US came to be called Project Gutenberg. Today, there are over 25,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. In total, however, over 100,000 titles are available at Project Gutenberg Partners, Affiliates and Resources. Print-on-demand: In this process of publishing, a document is printed only when someone orders a copy. Thus , commission of the publisher depends on the demand for the book/document. As offset publishers assess the cost of printing, marketing etc before agreeing to publish a work, many authors are turned down by them. Many of those approach PoD publishers, who print only limited copies. Custom/Contract publishing: As the name suggests, this form of publishing is done exclusively for a targeted reader, and is aimed at delivering a clear marketing message. As cost and clutter of advertising is going up, most companies prefer to reach out to their end-customers through magazines, pamphlets, newsletters etc and thus give contracts to publishers for tailor-made documents. While the print-on-demand concept has more to do with the volumes of the print, custom publishing is more about design, number of pages and size of the document. |
As the business of audio books is all about good voice, getting the right narrator with the suitable voice is the biggest challenge of coming out with audio books. Famous film and theater personalities such as Naseeruddin Shah, Gulzar and Usha Uthup have narrated for Karadi Tales’ audio and video books. The company has also turned former President APJ Abdul Kalam’s autobiography into a musical audio-book.
| DARE/the publishing market |
| Printed books: There are no “official” figures available, but it is believed that the size of the printed books market in India is around Rs 7,000 crore. “But this is the only number that has been talked about over the last three years,” says Badri Sheshadri of New Horizon Media. English is supposed to be over 40% of this market, with all the other languages covering the rest, he says, and adds that this includes text books and educational books. Leonard Fernandes of CinnamonTeal says the book industry is assumed to increase at an annual rate of 12%. Audio books: As the market for audio books is still in a nascent stage, even the players in the business are not ready to peg a figure, but they are unanimous about the tremendous growth potential of this segment. As of now, they constitute a mere 1% of the books in Indian stores. Custom/Contract publishing: One of the major players in the business, Chronosphere, pegs the size of the custom publishing market at Rs 1,200 crore. However, the company’s CEO, Bhupesh Trivedi, hastens to add that the figures are “grossly underexploited/explored.” He says, “The current annual growth rate in terms of business generated by different companies in this space would be about 35%.” Print-on-demand: It is difficult to gauge the size of PoD at this stage, but believing that any book that can undergo offset printing can also be “published” on demand, the number is quite high. Add to this, PhD thesis, school text books, poetry, songs etc and opportunities are galore. E-books: Again, it is a new segment for Indian readers, but surely holds a lot of promise in view of increasing Internet penetration, changing lifestyles and the launch of compatible mobile devices. One of the world’s leading publishers is believed to have reported that its e-book sales in the first four months of 2008 surpassed the company’s total e-book sales for all of last year. The statement, however, could not be confirmed independently. |
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Your article does a good job of talking about various new trends emerging in print media. I am a firm believer myself that soon the face publishing will change as dramatically as it has happened with music. You can read some of my thoughts here:
http://abhaga.blogspot.com/2008/05/pod-is-to-self-publishing-what-free-is.html
I am the co-founder of a print on demand, self publishing company called Pothi.com (http://pothi.com ). We are building tools and marketplace that help solve the problems faced by self publishers currently. Would like to connect with you regarding this. Could you please write back to me?
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