If, say around this time last year, someone had told you that 2020 would be a time when it wouldn’t be possible to go out and meet people, ...
If, say around this time last year, someone had told you that 2020 would be a time when it wouldn’t be possible to go out and meet people, when to venture out at all you would need to wear face masks, when you would be working from home indefinitely and meetings would be on virtual platforms, when author events and on-ground literary festivals would have to be cancelled…and, in the larger scheme of things, that mankind would be faced with a deadly virus that would result in over a million deaths, they might well have met with the retort: “What have you been smoking?”
But these things did come to pass; truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction.
Like so many other things, the mechanics of publishing – which are derived from the time of the Industrial Revolution and are therefore driven by machines and human labour – were severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true especially in India. As printing presses, warehouses and bookshops had to be shut due to the lockdown and transport systems ground to a halt, it became impossible for publishers to print new books or get books out to shops, and for readers to lay their...
