India has 755 million people online, second only to China. That’s more than double the USA’s online population despite being at only 54% penetration. And it’s expected to rise to 900 million by 2025, just shy of three times the USA. India is the most exciting publishing prospect on the planet for publishers willing to engage. But it seems many publishers in India itself still cannot bring themselves to step into the 21st century.
Digital gets a hard time at India’s Kolkata Literature Festival where some seem still, even in 2022, unable to grasp the idea of reading on a screen being reading.
And Telegraph India feeds this nonsense with this summary:
“Panel divided on whether digital devil is here to stay.”
That will be Telegraph India’s online version, of course, but the irony is lost on them.
One of the panellists opined:
Children, in any case, do not read and on top of that, you have these devices. They would want to go back to these devices. Reading has taken a beating.
The thing is, if educators and publishers got their act together and made children’s reading material readily available on “these devices” more children would be reading on their screens and, like in digitally-inclusive markets, reading and book sales would be up, not “taking a beating”.
The irony is doubled down on by the fact that the Kolkata Literature Festival was part of the much larger Kolkata International Book Fair, which this year was hybrid for the very first time. The physical event attracted an undeniably impressive 1.3 million visitors. But the online element attracted 3.5 million visitors.
Per TNPS analysis in January, India in 2021 became a tale of two publishing narratives, with one half the country seeing record book sales as they used digital to its full advantage to ride out the Pandemic, while the other half “faced starvation” as it stubbornly resisted all things digital.
With 755 million people online, second only to China, that’s more than double the USA’s online population despite being at only 54% penetration. And it’s expected to rise to 900 million by 2025, just shy of three times the USA.
India is the most exciting publishing prospect on the planet for publishers willing to engage – something I’ve been saying since 2017. But it seems many publishers in India itself still cannot bring themselves to step into the 21st century.
But it seems many publishers in India itself still cannot bring themselves to step into the 21st century.
This is no reflection on Me Mark Williams’ expertise and knowledge. But I, an Indian author of 86, have been trying to get four of my books (an experimental literary novel, a memoir of my experiences in advertising, a memoir of old Bombay and a children’s book) getting published traditionally in both India and abroad. I already have two children’s books published, one of them a Children’s Book Trust Award recipient. The quality of my writing is better than most of the stuff I see getting published, even if I say so myself. My submissions are persuasive and logical. Is my repeated failure to get published a freak instance, Mr Williams? [NOT POSTED – the form does not accept my email address]