Indian publishing |

September 17, 2018
by Sucharita Dutta-Asane Leave a comment

A tiny Indian publisher is translating hidden gems of world literature for global readers

(From Quartz India. Link to the complete article given below)

“It isn’t about size. Or the scale. It is about the choice. The instinct that allows you to take the risk to step outside the structures the world of corporate publishing has so magnificently set up. And publish books that in your opinion need to be read.”

The mission statement of Seagull Books says it all: This is not your usual Indian publisher.

Founded in 1982, the Kolkata-based company publishes everything from literary fiction and poetry to philosophy and even cultural anthropology. But these books aren’t what you’d find on the catalogues of publishing giants such as HarperCollins or Penguin Random House. At Seagull Books, the focus is on translated writing from around the world, much of which has never before appeared in English, in India or anywhere else.

“We publish anything and everything to do with what I like to call ‘the human condition,’” founder Naveen Kishore told Quartz. “It is in many ways a wish-list of books we want to publish. Not dictated by trends or the marketplace or target readers.”

And that’s a far cry from the norms in India’s publishing business, which is estimated to be worth $6.76 billion, according to Nielsen. Though the sector is poised to grow at a compounded annual rate of over 19% until 2020, far above the global rate, it is overwhelmingly dominated by educational books. As a result, the massive success of commercial fiction writers, such as Chetan Bhagat, has prompted most publishers to focus more on cookie-cutter stories that sell well. And in this quest for bestsellers, original and unconventional writing has been pushed to the sidelines.

Book Excerpt: Two city poems from ‘Like Earth to Stars’ by H.S. Shiva Prakash

‘Like Earth to Stars’: Forthcoming from Poetrywala, Mumbai

Heracleion and the City of Shiva Prakash

Thank you, archaeologists, for excavating
the great ancient city
of Heracleion,
hidden in the depths of the Mediterranean
for one thousand and two hundred years.

Our stone children,
gods and goddesses,
still lie there
dreamy-eyed and smiling
though heads and limbs are broken
and eroded by sea salt.

Why did this city drown?
Experts reason:
It stood on the foundation of sand
that could not bear and support
its ever increasing weight of buildings
and statues of gods and people,
poor sand gave way…

But a lot of the city’s glory still survives poignantly
hidden in water and surrounded by unmindful fish
waiting to be discovered and admired…

My heart too is a city
bursting with palaces, temples and gardens
I built for you.

So many pilgrims and merchants come here day and night
and most settle down
as they cannot say goodbye to a city so exquisite,
because of you and my art
but, alas, I have built all this
on the foundation of wet sands
of your ever dwindling faith in me.

So the City of Shiva Prakash too will collapse
due to a great error of the builder:
He never thought of the strength
of the foundation.

But,
once it goes under the sands of the ever-changing world
will someone discover its wonders
when neither of us will be around?

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August 3, 2018
by Sucharita Dutta-Asane Leave a comment

Forget Cinderella, these 5 books tell kids it’s okay for boys to cry and girls to be strong

(From edexlive. Link to the complete article given below)

From Cinderella to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood to Sleeping Beauty — traditional stories may come with morals, but there is no denying the fact that they tend to pander to gender stereotypes and perpetuate biases. The fair maidens and chiseled princes, the damsel in distress and the knight in shining armour routine, kissing women in their sleep (sexual assault lawsuit, anyone?) — these stories are riddled with ‘chivalrous’ crap (for lack of a better word) like this. Who said girls can’t rescue themselves or that all boys are brave?

In today’s world, there is no scope for kids to relate to these characters or situations, despite the various retellings and re-readings of these tales over the years. Children need, scratch that, deserve better stories that they can resonate and relate with. And for that, we need better writers. This is where ‘The Irrelevant Project’ comes in and it’s more relevant now than ever. Started by Alishya Almeida and Meghna Chaudhury as a series of workshops, which has now turned into a power-packed punch of five illustrated books that were released this January, these books tell children that it’s okay for boys to cry and girls to be strong.

Let’s do this

If every conversation between Almeida and Chaudhury, ever since they met through the Young India Fellowship, was subjected to the Bechdel Test, they would easily pass as all they spoke about was intersectionality, feminism and the education scenario. “There is space for more and there needs to be more,” says 29-year-old Chaudhury, during our call with the feisty duo. They decided to initiate a pilot workshop to understand the deep-rooted biases that creep into the minds of kids, in 2015. This was done in four classrooms of two government schools in New Delhi. The activities that they conducted helped children recognise the stereotypes that exist in their minds and the environment, along with certain critical thinking and problem-solving exercises. The inferences they gathered compelled them to start The Irrelevant Project. “We have five books with children, who are all of different builds and temperaments so that more and more children connect with them, as the protagonists,” explains 26-year-old Almeida. And this is just the beginning.

May 31, 2018
by Sucharita Dutta-Asane Leave a comment

Ahlawat Gunjan on the art of designing book covers, and why he loves experimenting with fonts

(From firstpost. Read full article at the link below.)

Ahlawat Gunjan, the design head of Penguin Random House India, has had a prolific career thus far; he has designed over 200 book covers. After having studied graphic design at the National Institute of Design, the maverick designer did his Master’s from The Glasgow School of Art. In this conversation with Firstpost, he talks about latest work — a series of covers for a box set of Premchand’s works, which have been appreciated for the subtle use of imagery and colors.

Was it a passion for design that led you to become a book designer?

In my case, I think it was purely accidental. I started off by working at Hidesign in Pondicherry as a graphic designer. I moved back to Delhi in 2006 and joined Dorling Kindersley. While at DK, I freelanced for Penguin with a cover, and this turned out to be the first of many. I then decided to move to Penguin, but I was always clear that I wanted to study further. I realised that my heart lies in creating book designs while pursuing my Master’s at the Glasgow School of Arts. This passion for books bagged me a job at Faber and Faber in London.

How do you ideate and settle in on the color, pattern, fonts and design?

While there is a process and parameters involved in designing a book cover, I think one needs to observe and listen, above all. You need to hear the echo in an author’s words and with your skill set, lend a visual personality to them. Also, it is quite an intuitive process and has a lot to do with one’s understanding of the subject at hand. But the one rule that I always stick to is to design, not decorate!

For me, fonts are the most important ingredient in cover design, and getting them right is very crucial. Choosing the right font is a sort of sensory experience. For example, you cannot use an Archie comics font for a book like Indica, and vice versa. It’s a marriage between the image and the typography. I do have ones I am partial to. For example, I’m currently hooked to ‘Baskerville’ and ‘Garamond’. I’ve used ‘Gotham’ and ‘Archer’ for a long time. Whether it’s the title, author, or sub-title, these particular fonts do find ways to sneak in somewhere. Font defines an image, too. There are different ways in which a designer can use the same font, just by playing with size, color, and letter case.

Counterview: Urvashi Butalia’s rejoinder to AR Venkatachalapathy on women publishers and editors

Long years ago, when I began working in publishing, it was an almost entirely male world. Women were to be found in some publishing houses, but mainly in administrative and secretarial positions. The bosses were all men – at least in English language publishing in India – and so were the editors. There was something about their anatomy that seemed to qualify them more to work in the business of creating and disseminating knowledge – an activity that is generally governed by the brain, something that lies between the ears (and not the legs) and looks the same no matter what sort of bodily shell it’s placed in.

As women, we – the handful of us who joined the industry at that time and who slowly made our way to becoming editors – knew well we would never rise to the top of our professions. My bosses at the Oxford University Press were concerned that I was a woman: “We’ve never employed a woman in an executive position,” they told me. “They get married and go away.” They made it sound like a crime – one, clearly, that the men never had to answer for.

The Oxford University Press, where I began work, was filled with kind and caring men: Charles Lewis, Santosh Mukherjee, Ravi Dayal, Adil Tyabji, Adrian Bullock, Dipen Mitra. Yet none of them ever had to answer to the kind of questions posed to me. None of them needed to worry about how they would get home at night if they had to work late. None of them needed to be concerned about the safety of seedy hotel rooms when they travelled on business. None of them had to defend themselves against leering printers who wanted to take you out to coffee when all you wanted was to get a book printed. Not surprising then that their paths to the top were smooth, whereas ours were non-existent.

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