Publishing Next 2014 @ NDWBF

Dates: 16th February 2014
Venue: Hall No. 8, Auditorium on 1st Floor, Pragati Maidan

Inaugural Function

Poetry Session by Mamta Sagar, Kannada poet: Mamta Sagar, an Indian poet, translator and playwright writing in the Kannada language has four collections of poems, four plays, an anthology of column writing, a collection of critical essays in Kannada and English on gender, language, literature and culture and a book on Slovenian-Kannada Literature Interactions to her credit. She has translated poetry and prose into Kannada and English, collaborated with the translation activity in many Indian and foreign languages. Mamta has conducted poetry workshops, curated poetry events, invited and organised events in India for poets from Senegal, UK, Malta and Slovenia. She has collaborated and performed with artists and poets from India, Australia, Philippines and Vietnam. She is interviewed and included in the documentary, ‘Cultures of Resistance’ directed by Iara Lee. Her poetry and interviews are showcased in ‘Los Chicos de Mañana’ a documentary directed by Javier Monero, Spain. She has presented poems at poetry festivals including STRUGA in Macedonia, Poetry Africa in South Africa, Granada Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, Medelline International Poetry Festival in Colombia, in Cuba, Serbia, Slovenia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. She has presented her poems in the USA and was a ‘Poet in Residence’ in Belgrade, Serbia. Mamta teaches at the Centre for Kannada Studies, Bangalore University and lives in Bangalore, India. Her latest book ‘Hide & Seek’, a collection of her poems in English translation with the source text in Kannada was published in January 2014.

Poets: Mamta Sagar

Panel Discussions
Indian Language Publishing: This session, on Indian language publishing, will continue our focus on Indian languages and the publishing ecosystem therein. In previous editions, similar discussions have brought into focus the abysmal lack of readership, poor distribution and the absence of translations as some of the reasons that have belied the potential of Indian language publishing. Similarly, it has brought into focus many positive aspects of these markets. This session will focus on the Punjabi, Telugu, Hindi, Santali, and Kannada market, among others. We will focus on the evolution of publishing in these languages, the progress of readership and authorship, translations and the book distribution systems that occur in the case of each language.

An Analysis of the ePublishing Ecosystem: This session will concentrate on issues that have impacted the growth of ePublishing in India and the ecosystem of producers and consumers that have developed around it.. It will examine the infrastructural issues that have undermined the proliferation of eBooks in India, issues such as the non-availability of adequate fonts, the absence of a home-grown reader and the absence of well-evolved tools such as OCR that could facilitate the development of eBooks within an Indian context. It will look for answers that could aid the development of eBooks in India, especially among Indian languages, and the impact such a development could have in cultivating a readership for these languages.

Going Solo: Examining Self-Publishing: This session will focus on the phenomenon of self-publishing and examine its place in today’s publishing environment in India. It will examine the causes for its popularity despite the fact that new publishing houses are emerging ever so rapidly, and how technology may have catalysed this popularity. The session will also exchange views on the so-called negative aspects of self-publishing: the fact that it is equated with vanity publishing and disdain among traditional publishers and retailers alike. The increasing appeal of self-publishing, especially to first time authors, the distribution issues related to self-published books and the genres that have benefitted from self-publishing will be among the issues discussed here.

Workshops
ePublishing 101: Feedback for past conferences prompted the conception of this session that we chose to call “ePublishing 101”, a basic primer on digital data development that would address issues especially raised by publishers with limited resources. The workshop will build a case for eBook development, help the audience understand the pros and cons of undertaking eBook development and will address the issues related to the basic workflow involved in producing an eBook. A few technical concepts essential for the development of eBooks will also be introduced and discussed. The organizers of the conference hope that small and large publishers alike, whether publishing in English or in Indian language, will attend the workshop to understand how eBooks should be embraced and be acquainted with the intricacies of such an undertaking.

Speakers: Amit Verma | Vidula Tokekar