The recent lockdown caused by the pandemic has forced Indian publishing to rethink its ways. For language publishers, who don’t have a part...
The recent lockdown caused by the pandemic has forced Indian publishing to rethink its ways. For language publishers, who don’t have a particularly active digital presence, this was doubly challenging. But as the pandemic raged on and all economic activities were brought to a standstill, even those initially hesitant decided to make a digital shift.
Almost all publishing stakeholders in the Hindi sphere – authors, publishers, editors, booksellers and reviewers – moved to social media to keep the ideas and conversations flowing. Though the response has been mixed, everyone has acted in their own way.
Perhaps the last time that Hindi publishing responded so unanimously was more than ten years ago, when Flipkart started selling non-English language books online. The Hindi literary sphere went into a frenzy, from creating data sheets to making books available on the platform with the correct information. There was barely any training programme or user manual to follow, and everyone depended on one another to learn these new ways of doing business.
Then Amazon arrived in 2012 and transformed the scene further. The concepts of easy discoverability, market equality, and direct selling reduced dependence on traditional distribution systems. This was a watershed moment in the history of Hindi...
