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  • Goa, India

Publishing Next 2013

Dates: 20th September to 21th September 2013
Venue: Krishnadas Shama State Central Library, Panaji, Goa – 403001. India.

Inaugral Address

Inaugural Speaker: Shri Vishnu Surya Wagh

Keynote Address

Keynote Speaker: A. R. Venkatachalapathy

Panel Discussions
Indian Content and its Global Future: With India seeking to assume its place among the leading nations of this world, perhaps it is time to examine its contributions to the literary landscape. This panel discussion will focus on creating “home grown content”, marketing it to global audience and exploring ways to encourage and facilitate content creation. It will discuss ways and means towards creating content that is “originally Indian” rather than consuming it, encouraging creators of such content and then understanding how a market can be created for such work and how that market can be served through proper distribution mechanisms.

Panelists: Praveena Shivram | Ameya Nagarajan | Arpita Das | Manasi Subramaniam | Namita Gokhale | Praba Ram

Indian Language Publishing: Publishing books in Indian languages is still plagued with various issues. Although the environment has vastly improved, many niggles persist. This panel discussion, based on a sample of Indian language publishers, will try to identify these issues, especially those in need of urgent solutions, develop an understanding of the current state of markets, and of the efforts made to improve readership and sales, distribution.

Panelists: Vinutha Mallya | Arun Maheshwari | Mamta Sagar | Paramita Tripathy | V C Thomas | Subhabrata Deb.

The future of e-publishing in India: The transition from the traditional paperbacks and hardcovers to the new digital versions has not been as smooth as e-book developers had anticipated it to be. E-books are a whole different entity by themselves, but somehow the growing mass of readers have not yet taken to e-books in the numbers that were expected. This maybe because of the problems faced while downloading one, or the non-availability of the proper e-reader software, thus lowering the possible success rate of e-publishing. This panel will help us understand the prevalent issues from various perspectives – issues such as technical constraints faced during development, marketing and sales.

Panelists: K. Satyanarayan | Amit Goel | Ganesh Venkatesan | Malcolm Neil | Sakshi Jain | Sunil Mehta | Venkatesh Hariharan

Cultivating readership in Indian languages: Among the many ills plaguing the publishing industry in India is the declining number of those reading in Indian languages. While publishers have been brave enough to venture into Indian language publishing, they haven’t quite been able to create readers for their body of work. This panel discussion will focus on concrete ways to develop readership for Indian literature, whether by adequate marketing and distribution or by developing translations of “bestsellers”or by working with schools at the primary level to encourage reading in Indian languages.

Panelists: Uddipana Goswami | Menka Shivdasani | R. Sivapriya | Ravikant | V C Thomas

Is the Indian reader changing?: Have the reader’s demands changed? Are they looking for new formats in style and substance? What has been their reaction to ebooks? Is there demand for them from the reader? How have they taken to new genres? What has been the demand for books in Indian languages and how have publishers responded?

Panelists: Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan | Anuradha Goyal | Frederick Noronha | Satyanand Nirupam | Swapna Dutta

The Evolution of Book Retail: In today’s world, everything is made accessible to us at just the click of a button. The internet being the major contributor, online retailing or e-retail is growing fast with large number of websites now selling all types of commodities including books to a large number of buyers everyday. But is e-retail the only viable option? Can bookstores be sustained? What are the challenges in developing a good retail business? Can Indian language publishing be better served through a viable book retail business? Are there common issues faced by online and offline book retail? What is the way forward? Is it possible for offline and online bookstore to co-exist? Attend this panel discussion to find out.

Panelists: Tom Mangatt | Anil Kumar | Diviya Kapur | Kinjal Shah | Venkat Valliappan

Understanding Print: This session is designed to help publishers “understand” how print could save them money and help them become more competitive. Printers and publishers often work in isolation thus being unable to understand the constraints the other faces. This workshop will discuss the expectations of the printer and the publisher from each other and particularly address how:

  • printing costs can be saved through efficient book design
  • colour consistency can be achieved through various reprints
  • competencies based on print output can be developed
  • the printer can be incorporated into the design process to ensure the best output
  • add-onsfor your book (like a book-case, or especially made bookmarks) that will help these books stand out can be designed and incorporated
  • short-run printing can be used for special cases (choosing an optimal print run)

Besides the workshop will focus on understanding the processes that can lead to the efficient and seamless production of books

Conducted by: Indu Chandrasekhar | Bipin Shah | Gerad da Cunha | A Appadurai | Winnie Yung

Workshops
Working with Poetry: This workshop will discuss the nuances of publishing poetry by juxtaposing the environment in India with that of France and discussing issues related to the encouragement of poetry as also its marketing.

Conducted by: Aurélia Lassaque | Menka Shivdasani

Film and TV adaptations: Insight into the adaptation rights sale process – stories that work (and those that don’t), developing the pitch, commercial terms and related aspects.

Conducted by: Dhruvank Vaidya

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Need and Best Practises in the new digital world: Managing relationship with direct customer / reader of our content is becoming an important aspect of CRM in today’s world. Making efforts to centralize Customer data from different sources and effectively communicating with clients can lead to direct top line growth and also generate awareness of the brand.

Conducted by: Sangeeta Mamgain

The Importance of Book Reviews in Book Marketing: The workshop will discuss

  • Evolution of Book Reviews Landscape
  • Increasing relevance of book reviews
  • Publishers leveraging the Influencers
  • New spaces for Book Reviews – Online Stores & Book based Communities
  • Way forward – Book Reviewers as an important link between publishers / authors and readers

Conducted by: Anuradha Goyal

Strategies for Trading Rights: The sale of rights is increasingly forming an important part of publishing agendas. In a globalised and smaller world, books and content from every part of the globe is becoming relevant and accessible. Generating a foreign rights revenue stream is a low-cost way of garnering readership from across the world.

A rights sale is basically the act of licensing the right to a foreign publisher or a different language publisher to reprint, translate, and distribute your book. But the process of going about foreign rights sales can be challenging. In this workshop, we focus on two specific types of the rights trade as it exists in India:

1. Rights trade within India between various Indian languages:

  • What are the opportunities and challenges?
  • Why are there not enough translations happening between Indian languages?
  • How do we encourage more in this field?
  • Is it a self-sustaining model or do we need to set up financial assistance schemes and grants for translations?

2. Rights trade between Indian and foreign publishers:

  • What are the general terms and conditions of foreign rights sales?
  • Does funding exist?
  • What is the process of contacting foreign publishers?
  • How do international book fairs work?
  • How can we promote Indian writing overseas?
  • Can the Central and State governments support this process?

In this workshop, Indian language publishers with extensive experience in Indian and international markets share their personal experiences and thoughts about the process of navigating the foreign and domestic rights trade industry for books.

Conducted by: Manasi Subramaniam | Kannan Sundaram | Rubin D’Cruz

Strategies for Trading Rights: The sale of rights is increasingly forming an important part of publishing agendas. In a globalised and smaller world, books and content from every part of the globe is becoming relevant and accessible. Generating a foreign rights revenue stream is a low-cost way of garnering readership from across the world.

A rights sale is basically the act of licensing the right to a foreign publisher or a different language publisher to reprint, translate, and distribute your book. But the process of going about foreign rights sales can be challenging. In this workshop, we focus on two specific types of the rights trade as it exists in India:

1. Rights trade within India between various Indian languages:

  • What are the opportunities and challenges?
  • Why are there not enough translations happening between Indian languages?
  • How do we encourage more in this field?
  • Is it a self-sustaining model or do we need to set up financial assistance schemes and grants for translations?

2. Rights trade between Indian and foreign publishers:

  • What are the general terms and conditions of foreign rights sales?
  • Does funding exist?
  • What is the process of contacting foreign publishers?
  • How do international book fairs work?
  • How can we promote Indian writing overseas?
  • Can the Central and State governments support this process?

In this workshop, Indian language publishers with extensive experience in Indian and international markets share their personal experiences and thoughts about the process of navigating the foreign and domestic rights trade industry for books.

Conducted by: Manasi Subramaniam | Kannan Sundaram | Rubin D’Cruz

Does content really need to be free on the internet?: The world is fast moving towards more and more content being consumed on digital platforms like smartphones and tablets. The device revolution is changing the reader behavior. Now, users want rich, enhanced and interactive content everywhere, be it magazines, newspapers or books. And with loads of user generated content in form of blogs and Q & A on forums etc., the premium content publishers in print and digital are taking a hit as readers are into the belief that anything which is on the Internet , has to be free. The print sales are already on the decline with the magazines shutting down in the West and, recently, in India with Outlook discontinuing their alliance to publish Marie Claire, People & Geo. In such a fast changing technology, how can publishers still change the strategy and look further to beat the trends.

In this session, there will be discussion on:

  • Monetization of Content in the digital world : We’ll talk about various monetization models apart from advertisements
  • User behavior on Digital devices and how it affects the publishing industry
  • How Independent/Freelance authors and publishers can ride the elephant of digital publishing rather than being wary of it
  • How to leverage social media and various aspects of content consumption and discovery

Conducted by: Amit Goel

e-Distribution of Indian Language Content: As e-Reading evolves in India and Indian Language publishers seek solutions to the myriad challenges that face them, they seek to understand how to best adapt their production workflow to suit the demands of e-publishing. This workshop will address some of the questions that affect the ecosystem:

  • What are the challenges that are peculiar to Indian Language Publishers in adopting the e-Publishing and finally e-Distribution ?
  • Does there opportunities exist in consumption of Indian language eBooks in India? What about the Indian Diaspora?
  • What are some of the solutions that one can undertake to cut the “go-to-market” time ?
  • What are the various trends and options exist for the Indian Publishers to get onto the “eBook distribution” ?

Conducted by: Santanu Chowdhury

Content creation, collaboration and communication tools for publishers, illustrators, translators and authors in digital publishing for kids: Content creation, collaboration and communication tools for publishers, illustrators, translators and authors in digital publishing for kids to

  • Inspire learning and Creative thinking in kids
  • Focus on story creation, illustration, story writing and reading, graphic design and digital art, games and fun activities etc.
  • Engage with the customer to build a compelling experience in the digital world

Part of the workshop will be about educating the audience about digital media and technology and how to adopt it for kids.

  • Kids today use media and technology to communicate with their friends, play games, express themselves, and connect with the world
  • The reality is that kids spend far more time interacting with media than they do at school or with their parents. The average 8- to 18-year-old spends 7 ½ hours a day online, watching TV and movies, playing games, and listening to music. Kids no longer make a distinction between the “real” world and the “virtual” one. It’s all one and the same to them
  • The digital world offers amazing opportunities for kids, but, because it’s a world with a huge audience, where kids who crave recognition are rewarded for boundary-pushing behavior, and actions are separate from consequences, there are also multiple challenges
  • The session will discuss about all of these opportunities and challenges in the context of kids’ development and what’s different about media today than when we were growing up and how can publishers/authors/creative artists use these behaviors to adapt, learn and develop content

Conducted by: Jagdish Repaswal

Social Media for Authors and Publishers: This work shop will cover how authors and publishers can use all types of social media for both writing and publicizing their work. This will include:

  • Online writers groups and tools
  • General social media including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
  • Special social media specifically for authors
  • Creating and promoting a writer’s website

Conducted by: Greg Acuna

Publishing and Design: Anna Gerber from Visual Editions will present on their approach to publishing including how they work with designers, the collaborative nature of what they do and why they choose to approach book publishing in the way that they do.

Conducted by: Anna Gerber
Insight Talks:
by Anusha Yadav, founder of the Indian Memory Project , on how the concepts of preservation and archiving have evolved with the advent of the Internet

Publishing and Design: Anna Gerber from Visual Editions will present on their approach to publishing including how they work with designers, the collaborative nature of what they do and why they choose to approach book publishing in the way that they do.

Conducted by: Anna Gerber

Insight Talks
Insight Talk by Venkatesh Hariharan: India has a vibrant publishing industry in Indian languages. However, digital publishing in Indian languages is a completely different story. Indian languages are among the largest spoken languages in the world, but digitally speaking, they are at the bottom of the ladder. India has 150 million Internet users, but the vast majority of these users use the Internet in English. As the next 150 million users come online, most of them will be mobile users and Indian language Internet users.

However, a huge number of issues from keyboards to fonts need to be resolved before Indian language computing becomes a reality. The government also has a vital role to play by creating the right policy ecosystem for encouraging the growth of Indian language computing. The Eighth Schedule of the Indian constitution lists 22 languages that the Government of India has the responsibility to develop. The Government of India has spent hundreds of crores in promoting Indian languages and in building language technologies. However, these investments will bear fruit only when millions of Indians come online in their own languages.

For linguistic communities that are concerned about the health of their native tongues, digitizing their languages should be a very high priority in the Internet age. The Internet is one of the finest methods of archiving and propagating culture and lack of a presence in the digital world could result in languages eventually atrophying and dying.

This session will draw upon the author’s background in Indian language computing and public policy to suggest a road map for publishers.

Conducted by: Venkatesh Hariharan

Insight Talk by Shabnam Aggarwal: Founder of the Millee Project , exploring how mobile technologies could be used to foster education, whether to help kids (especially those in rural India) learn, or evaluate them or make content digitally accessible to them.

Conducted by: Shabnam Aggarwal

Insight Talk by Anusha Yadav: Founder of the Indian Memory Project, on how the concepts of preservation and archiving have evolved with the advent of the Internet.

Conducted by: Anusha Yadav

Insight Talk by Vijay Sampath: CEO of ACK Media, on the challenges and opportunities in managing multiple brands within one publishing house.

Conducted by: Vijay Sampath