Books: Complete Overhaul of the Gutenberg Mind

A 90s movie buff would remember the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks classic You’ve Got Mail for its strong commentary on the future of physical bookstores, how technology and business giants like Starbucks (which was inching closer to world domination during the time) would determine human relationships and attitudes towards letter-writing, a vibrant reading culture, and all things old-world. With demonetisation and digital literacy paving the way for how the current regime in this country would want its citizens to evolve, it could not have been a better time for the publishing industry in India to experience a complete overhaul with the launch of Juggernaut books. A mobile-first digital platform for the Indian reading community, Chikki Sarkar and Durga Raghunath’s new publishing start-up, Juggernaut Books, is being considered a major gamechanger. All you need to do is download the app, pay a small fee through your credit, debit, or PayTM account and just read. Some of the reasons that had gone into the making of Juggernaut, as stated by Sarkar in various interviews before the launch, were untimely payments from distributors, lack of good booskhops in the country and low sales of what are considered “popular” books. According to a Frankfurt Book Fair white paper, titled “The Business of Books 2016”, the most exciting challenge for book publishers active in the Indian market may come from its digital development — this refers not necessarily to digital books, but much more broadly to eCommerce and purchases made with mobile phones. And this obviously goes on to explain why Amazon is so big today. The biggest category on amazon.in, which started as an online bookstore, but soon diversified, is literature and fiction. It also goes without saying that today, the maximum number of trade sales in the Indian book market have been accounted by only English language titles, with reports like the Nielson Book Report estimating sales of books in Hindi to be only 35% of the total, and all other Indian languages clubbed together under a miniscule 10%. While the newly launched Juggernaut Books is currently focusing on Hindi and English titles, Amazon, in the first week of December, updated its Kindle tablets and Android and iOS apps to support Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati and Malayalam texts in India. But hopes are pinned on the not-so-widely known publishing startups such as the ebooks and mobile app Dailyhunt, and the self-publishing platform like Pratilipi, which are aiming to bridge the gap between vernacular content and the general reader. — Srija Naskar