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: Kiran Desai’s Booker win may have come as a pleasant surprise for Indian literary aficionados, the publishing sector in India is anything but surprised at its growing prominence as a global literary powerhouse. Jane Friedman, president and CEO, HarperCollins, was in India recently to take stock. Suman Tarafdar speaks to her about the international publishing giants’ plans, for India and beyond.
HarperCollins has been present in India for a while. Do we see a spurt in the organisation’s involvement in India?
Yes, we have been in India, but just in distribution. In the recent past though, we have got into trade books. And going ahead, that’s what we are interested in as we draw up a five-year plan through which we are looking at about a 30% growth. We have signed a deal with our partners to increase our presence in retail.
Why has HarperCollins published and distributed certain books in other parts of the world, but not in India?
That is something we are looking to correct. Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games is a case in point, as we are distributing the book in North America. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things continues to be among our top backlist sellers. But yes, going ahead we are looking at world rights for our books.
What areas are you looking to expand in?
While we will bring books published in other parts of the world by us, we are looking at an increase in local publishing. And in local languages too. We are starting with a translation of CS Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia in Hindi, scheduled for release in 2008. We are also looking to publish in other Indian languages. As for categories, we are very interested in literary fiction of course, but are also looking at areas like lifestyle and business books. Children’s books offer great scope in India too. We are also very pro Internet. We have a global digital warehouse, and though the e-world is still in the R&D stage, in the next few years, we expect exponential growth. India still has a long way to go as China is reading online, on PDAs, through text.
How do you compare China and India?
Both are emerging nations and there is a huge curiosity about books. Before this I was in China and I must clarify that both are in very different places. India has a wide acceptability in...
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