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Myths of publishing revealed
Highlights
Myths of publishing revealed. A manuscript takes form of a book only after the caressing touch of an editor in line with it how could the Hyderabad Literary Festival end without a talk about this elephant in the room.
A manuscript takes form of a book only after the caressing touch of an editor in line with it how could the Hyderabad Literary Festival end without a talk about this elephant in the room. Urvashi Butalia, co-founder of Kali for Women and current Director of Zubaan, and Karthika VK, Publisher and Chief Editor at HarperCollins India, with T Vijay Kumar as Chair had a lively insightful discussion on the myths, facts, challenges and fallacies associated with publishing industry in India.
Talking about the ideology driven publishing Zubaan does Urvashi observed that the shift of female centric issues and women writing from neglected to mainstream as a great inspiration to continue her agenda. Karthika on the same subject sees the lack of an agenda for the trade publishing houses like Penguin or HarperCollins as a boon allowing them to bring out works from different kinds of genres and topics.
To a query about the challenges that the industry is facing both of them expressed optimistic outlook for the future with gradual improvements being made to strengthen associations, reduce friction between different houses and to build publishing as an Industry or Orgnisation in its own right. Addressing the advent of e-publishing and self-publishing Karthika felt that it was a big relief for the publishing houses as the number of books that could be published through the traditional medium is limited and the digital age had opened new and easier avenues.
Urvashi noted that the various segments of publishing, STM publishing (Science, Technology & Medicine), Textbook publishing, Fiction, Academic Trade, Academic, Children’s publishing etc could do better by having a dialogue across the board to improve the literary standard and the readers’ market in general. She expressed concern at the financial woes the small publishing houses have to face due to the credit cycle of the trade where money flow is minimal.
The void separating the ground reality from the hyped villainy of the publishing houses was partly filled through the open discussion and it became clearer that one shouldn’t judge a book just by its cover.
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