JLF was seen in a different hue with conversations and intriguing sessions on eclectic subjects and ideologies on the second day as well. Along with the literary flow, Jaipur Bookmark (JBM), the premier publishing conclave of the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024, carried forth the momentum.
Seven sessions took place on Day 2 of JBM and covered themes such as innovative marketing strategies, groundbreaking technological advances, progressive niche publishing and ever-expanding lexicography, permeated with an overarching concern with translations and multilingual publishing.
Marketing in the times of social media
Marketing has emerged as an important facet in book publishing, where modern marketing methods are experimenting and striving towards expanding readership, with writers, publishers and marketing agencies trying to work in tandem to build a community and get the book in the hands of readers.
“Building a community goes a long way. Even if you have five hundred engaged followers, that’s like having five hundred people you can directly speak to and get them to know about your book. You can target new readers by running ads, and if targeted well, it will reach the right audience,” said Pragya Tiwari, Creative Director of Oijo Media, throwing light on the growing value of social media marketing.
“Another indirect way of marketing is to create content around the book. When you start building content and take the essence of the book and present it without oversimplifying it, the returns are enormous,” Tiwari also added.
To boldly go where no man has gone before – 40 years of feminist publishing in India
While the word ‘pioneers’ is often used loosely in casual parlance, it applies with credible veracity to Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon, veterans in the world of feminist publishing in India. They broke fresh ground forty years ago when they founded Kali for Women, the country’s first exclusively feminist publishing house.
“It was a different world in 1984! We were told that there weren’t many women writers and questioned about the viability of our intended project. Did we have a business plan? Where would we get the funds? All well-founded concerns. It was a big gamble, as it always is, but it worked in our favour that we were both experienced publishing professionals and understood the nuts and bolts of the industry,” stated Menon.
The mid-eighties publishing scene in India was dominated by textbook publishing, with Indian subsidiaries of British companies such as Oxford University Press, Orient Blackswan (then Orient Longman), Blackie & Son and Macmillan Publishers dominating the market. Trade publishing was in a nascent stage in the country and Kali was part of the initial wave of the industry’s “Indianization”.
The dynamic Butalia-Menon duo decided their company would be entirely independent, having no recourse to the corporate or the family business models.
Menon added, “In this dramatically changing Indian publishing landscape, the national women’s movement was our godmother and the best parentage in hindsight. As activists, we had been demonstrating in the streets against dowry, rape, and other evils befalling women, but we started to realise that there were no studies or books about the history of these social problems. We started publishing books on these subjects, which sold well at feminist book fairs and festivals in the UK and the US and therefore gained prominence back home.”
The Language toolbox: Lexicons, dictionaries, thesaurus
The discussion explored less-known aspects surrounding the making of dictionaries and why lexicographers are devoted to the cause of putting them together, the need for updating lexical tools and the innovative ways in which online databases of dictionaries are helpful. “Computerised databases of dictionaries allow you to cull out any words, permutations, expressions and even rhymes,” pointed out Meeta Lall, publisher and CEO of Arvind Linguistics.
Lall also highlighted the nature and need for adaptation. “Societies change, we as people change, our philosophies change, and that is why our lexical tools also have to change,” she said, while also speaking about the efforts of her father Arvind Kumar in creating the first thesaurus in Hindi.
Lall added, “After Amarakosha, there was no thesaurus. We needed lexicographical works. He tried Roget’s Thesaurus, and he tried the Amarakosha structure but neither worked. It took him 14 years to reach his own unique structure.”
Deep connections: Podcasts and books
At a time of soaring demand for content, multiple platforms have arisen to fill the gaps in the market, one of the most successful ones in recent years being podcasts. Speaking of his popular history podcast Empire, acclaimed author and Festival Co-Director William Dalrymple said, “Nothing I’ve ever done has reached a fraction of the number of people you can reach through podcasts. Empire crossed 20 million downloads. It’s amazing!”
Interestingly, podcasts, novel as they are, have come to share an intimate dynamic with books, one of the oldest mediums of engaging people’s minds. “Podcasts and books have a lot in common,” explained English author and television presenter Richard Osman, who co-hosts the podcast ‘The Rest is Entertainment’, adding, “Podcasts are slow culture and the ultimate slow culture is books. Many people fell out of love with reading some time ago, but the pandemic showed us that the love affair was revived again.”
There are sometimes concerns that podcasts might eat into the popularity of books, but Osman is not worried. “Advertising books is one of the hardest jobs, so it’s a wonderful thing that famous podcasts often become a platform to be able to do just that! In general, if you’re an interested person—a fan of the world, so to say—and curious about things, podcasts and books will not be in competition with each other for your attention. One platform will amplify the other.”
Infinite horizons: The landscape of translation
The publishing world in India has recently been taken over by a wave of translations with as many writers engaging in the practice of translation as readers wanting to read them. Co-director of the Ashoka Centre for Translation and acclaimed translator Arunava Sinha spoke on how easily young people have taken to translation as an exercise.
Sinha said, “It’s exciting. In fact, I fear for our publishers…there is an avalanche of translations. We are working on ways of putting these translations out there. The real concern is that great work in translation is being produced but the books are not reaching the audience. We have to find new ways of making people find these books.”
Writer, poet, and translator Ranjit Hoskote said, “Translation for me became a way of connecting to different kinds of contexts. As a poet, it enriches my practice and allows me to bear witness to contexts that might otherwise go under the radar or remain relatively marginal.”
Hoskote also referred to translations as an “invariably political act” as the conversation later ventured into the hierarchies that play out in the languages that largely get translated and read, while English remains a bridge for translation across languages. “The discussion has to move from translation of regional languages into English to translation between regional languages,” said Hoskote.
The next chapter: AI and the future of publishing
A lot of fear and excitement surrounds the immense potentialities of AI in publishing. “There is a spectrum of people responding to the invasion of AI. At one end are people who are saying they are never going to use it, that it’s here to destroy creativity as we know it. On the other hand, some people are saying they are curious and don’t know whether it’s good or bad but they are excited to try it,” said publishing professional and founder of Editrix, Meru Gokhale, highlighting industry professionals’ divided views around AI.
Despite the promises it holds, there are concerns about the lack of regulation and accountability surrounding the use of AI. “We have to think about jobs, livelihoods, and civilisation in the ways that AI is being used or going to be used. We will be fools if we don’t recognise that regulation and protocols have to come first,” said lawyer, producer and literary agent, Charles Collier.
Gokhale also underlined how the nature of the popular AI tool ChatGPT was to be a research tool but it has evolved into a consumer product. Adding to that, entrepreneurial lawyer and author, Safir Anand, also pointed out how the legal frameworks around AI will “not just have to be about intellectual rights but also consumer rights.”
Confluences: Multilingual publishing in the global south
The final session explored the diverse publishing landscapes operating in the Global South, including countries such as Mauritius and Tibet, where writers battle many odds, often political or infrastructural, to make the written word accessible to a wide readership. In particular, Tibetan poet Bhuchung D. Sonam spoke of the perils and profundities of writing about one’s homeland while in exile.
The second day of JBM concluded on a note of anticipation around the discussions that are to follow over the next few days as the conference examines the whole spectrum of the business of writing and selling books.
