‘Appbased publishing houses are an experiment ahead of its time’
The idea is ahead of its time, though digital is the future: Sugata Ghosh
NEWDELHI: The publishing industry in India is undergoing not merely a transformation, but a tectonic shift. Regional markets in India have become the focus area for major publishing houses. Oxford University Press (OUP) has recently forayed into the Indian Language Publishing Program where the focus will be to provide quality content in two popular languages in the country – Hindi and Bangla.
Sugata Ghosh is currently Director, Global Academic Publishing at OUP in South Asia with responsibilities in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. With over two decades in the industry, Ghosh is a trained economist who loves to travel, cook and read. He spoke to us on the impact of vernacular non-fiction and the current landscape of how regional markets have become the focus area for major publishing houses in India. Edited excerpts:
Tell us something about the Indian Language Publishing Programme.
We are very excited about the Indian language publishing programme which fits in very well with the University’s mission too. It is part of the Oxford Global Languages (OGL) programme that was started to save languages from dying, to invest in banishing languages. So within that we have started the Indian languages programme that will make high quality content.
The first two languages we are working on is Hindi and Bangla and the first 15-20 titles are coming out this December. We will be doing translations of classics in Hindi and Bangla, as well as newly commissioned work too. Also, we have plans to get into three more languages but the first three years will be focused on Hindi and Bangla. These will be available in both print and digital.
These are interesting times to be in publishing as one does not know where the industry will be three years from now on -- so far as the delivery mode is concerned, content will always be there. The number of authors have shot up, only if readership had gone up proportionately it would have been fantastic for the industry too.
What else is OUP doing?
OUP primarily has three main divisions: Education which includes school level texts and the higher level texts and then the global academic division which I represent and which is the largest. It contributes to 60% of the press business globally, is present in 51 countries editorially and have over 6,000 people. This is the division which does everything from journals to dictionaries. Beyond academics we also do books of general read, which is the serious non-fiction category that caters to the general reader. We found that there is a strong readership that doesn’t mind reading serious stuff so that is what we are trying to do. 30% of our programme goes into serious non-fiction while 70% remains in academic. Then there are a couple of new programmes that we started in South Asia -- the medicine program and legal publishing programme that is doing pretty well. We are looking forward to releasing some great work. For instance, there is a controversial work next year about the corruption in the healthcare sector, that is bound to raise the angst of the medical council. So we have had a very exciting journey and this fits in with the university’s mission. OUP, besides being the largest press, is the only press in the world which actually contributes money back to the University system. We are also looking at associations with the two big universities of Singapore – NYU and NUS and will announce this next year.
What do you think of appbased publishing houses like Juggernaut, for example?
It is an experiment ahead of its time. The kind of expectation that people had, I think, it couldn’t match up to that level. Very light fiction may still work. For instance, Juggernaut did Pankaj Mishra’s last book which was very serious reading but very few people have read that through their mobile. People went and actually bought the book so perhaps you would like to read a chapter on the mobile, but a whole book the readership has not graduated to that level. But I appreciate that somebody had the courage to do this so that was fantastic. It’s an idea that came in ahead of its time but the future lies in digital there is no doubt about that.
What is your opinion on Chetan Bhagat’s novels being part of the undergraduate programme in DU ?
I would say this is an encouraging sign because you simply can’t expect readership to change overnight from 0 to 100 and what’s wrong in exploring the possibility because what he writes is the society today. We must also understand that education and academics is increasingly getting interdisciplinary so when you study English literature today a lot of elements of sociology goes into it, a lot of political economy goes into it. And I think Bhagat has done a smart way of presenting contemporary society on the platform so let the readership and market decide what they want to read. You and I have every right to say we don’t like these books but let us see what happens. If it is bad, trust me, it will vanish in 3-4 years from the reading lists.