The Global eBook Report: Current Conditions & Future Projections. Update October 2013 by Rüdiger Wischenbart Page B
Authors: Rüdiger Wischenbart
had sold around 45,000 copies across India. After the book’s initial success, Westland picked up the series for publication. The Trilogy has sold more than 1.7 million copies in print within a two-and-half year period, with retail sales of over Rs 43 crore ($7.17 m). It has been hailed as “the fastest selling book series in the history of Indian publishing.”
Having foreseen an opportunity, Penguin Books India along with Author Solutions, launched a self-publishing imprint, Partridge India, in early 2013. Every Partridge India title is released in digital format as an e-book, and print format is offered as an option.
Localisation efforts
The fact that English enjoys a privileged status in India and is also the language of instruction for almost all higher education courses in the country, chiefly for STM subjects and professional courses. Publishers of Indian-language content have a few hurdles to surmount before e-publishing in these languages can catch up with the pace of change taking place in English publishing. The most important obstacle is that computing with Indic scripts has been a struggle due to the presence of multiple standards in text encoding and keyboard layouts, as well as because of poor Indic-script support on reading devices. Often fonts need to be bundled with the content files. Readers require plug-ins to be able to read such files on their devices. Although agencies of the government, not-for-profit organisations, and also technologists’ groups and industry bodies are making efforts, especially for adoption of UNICODE standards, there is still a distance to cover in this regard.
(Some of the publishers in Indian languages who have launched their ebook lists, and the platforms which support them are mentioned in the trade e-books section above.)
A Tamil e-reader application, NHM Reader , was recently launched by the Chennai -based publishing company, New Horizon Media . The cloud-based ereader application, inspired by the Kindle app and its features, is currently available for iOS. The app will allow readers to adjust font sizes and background colours. New Horizon Media is developing the NHM Reader for Android devices too. The company, which has been involved in developing a series of Indian-language software applications, also runs an online retail store.
Notes 1. Indian Youth: Demographics and Readership – Results from the National Youth Readership Survey 2009, National Book Trust, India in association with National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi: 2010. See the table of contents and an executive summary here.
Source: Vernacular Report 2012. Report by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with IMRB International, Mumbai: January 2013.
Source: Mobile Internet in India – December 2012. Report by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with IMRB International, Mumbai: January 2013.
Source: Personal interview with Malcolm Neill, Director Content Acquisition and Publisher Relations APAC for Kobo. 22 September 2013.
Source: Personal communication with Kailash Balani, Managing Director, Balani Infotech, a library and information services company, which supplies ebooks to universities and libraries.
Source: R. Krishna Mohan, Manager (production) – Higher Academics at Orient Blackswan. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: PM Sukumar, CEO, HarperCollins Publishers India. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: Kapish Mehra, Managing Director, Rupa Publications. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO, Westland Limited. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: Kinjal Shah, COO, Crossword Bookstores. Spoken on the panel discussion “The Evolution of Book Retail in India”, at Publishing Next, 2013,
Having foreseen an opportunity, Penguin Books India along with Author Solutions, launched a self-publishing imprint, Partridge India, in early 2013. Every Partridge India title is released in digital format as an e-book, and print format is offered as an option.
Localisation efforts
The fact that English enjoys a privileged status in India and is also the language of instruction for almost all higher education courses in the country, chiefly for STM subjects and professional courses. Publishers of Indian-language content have a few hurdles to surmount before e-publishing in these languages can catch up with the pace of change taking place in English publishing. The most important obstacle is that computing with Indic scripts has been a struggle due to the presence of multiple standards in text encoding and keyboard layouts, as well as because of poor Indic-script support on reading devices. Often fonts need to be bundled with the content files. Readers require plug-ins to be able to read such files on their devices. Although agencies of the government, not-for-profit organisations, and also technologists’ groups and industry bodies are making efforts, especially for adoption of UNICODE standards, there is still a distance to cover in this regard.
(Some of the publishers in Indian languages who have launched their ebook lists, and the platforms which support them are mentioned in the trade e-books section above.)
A Tamil e-reader application, NHM Reader , was recently launched by the Chennai -based publishing company, New Horizon Media . The cloud-based ereader application, inspired by the Kindle app and its features, is currently available for iOS. The app will allow readers to adjust font sizes and background colours. New Horizon Media is developing the NHM Reader for Android devices too. The company, which has been involved in developing a series of Indian-language software applications, also runs an online retail store.
Notes 1. Indian Youth: Demographics and Readership – Results from the National Youth Readership Survey 2009, National Book Trust, India in association with National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi: 2010. See the table of contents and an executive summary here.
Source: Vernacular Report 2012. Report by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with IMRB International, Mumbai: January 2013.
Source: Mobile Internet in India – December 2012. Report by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with IMRB International, Mumbai: January 2013.
Source: Personal interview with Malcolm Neill, Director Content Acquisition and Publisher Relations APAC for Kobo. 22 September 2013.
Source: Personal communication with Kailash Balani, Managing Director, Balani Infotech, a library and information services company, which supplies ebooks to universities and libraries.
Source: R. Krishna Mohan, Manager (production) – Higher Academics at Orient Blackswan. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: PM Sukumar, CEO, HarperCollins Publishers India. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: Kapish Mehra, Managing Director, Rupa Publications. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO, Westland Limited. Interview published in Book Special, PrintWeek India special issue, September 2013.
Source: Kinjal Shah, COO, Crossword Bookstores. Spoken on the panel discussion “The Evolution of Book Retail in India”, at Publishing Next, 2013,
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