Recognising India's huge book industry. According to a recent report, India's publishing industry is worth $20b and generates some $1.5b in revenues a year.
India was recently the "Guest of Hohour" country at the Paris International Book Fair .(PIBF),which was held from March 23 to 29. Ori the sidelines of the fair, numerous Indian activities and pro-,grammes took place with the participation of prominent Indian intellectual, academics, writers, po-.ets, playwrights, artists, film-stars,publishers and journalists.In 2006,,' India was also chosen from among 110countries by the organisers of the Frankfurt Book Fair (FBF), one of the largest book fairs in the world and an important event that facilitates the negotiation of the international sale of rights and licences, to be the "Guest of Honour" country. With this, India became the only nation accorded this honour twice since the setting up of the FBF 59 years ago, having earlier won this distinction in 1986. Both events were viewed as recognition not only ofIndia's rich cultu°re and colourful heritage but also of its. significant role in the production, publishing and promotion of books.
Huge
Book publishing in India is an old industry, thanks first to British rule which encouraged some British publishers.by the beginning of ., the 20th century to set up their offices in India to capture the market for text books for schools and colleges, and second to the post-independence government which helped and facilitated the setting up of national publishing houses in the 1960s to serve the rapid increase in the number of educational institutions.,Today the industry is huge both in terms of volume (number of titles titles published and copies printed per title) and value of production.It has massively grown since the earl~ 1990s due to such factors as the country's economic reforms and its leadership in information technology and software design,both of which attracted leading Western publishing houses -;- such as Thompson, Penguin, Macmillan,Springer, and John Willey - to invest in the Indian market.,
India is the only country in the world
that publishes books in more than 24 languages.
And Indians are book lovers. The country also holds several major
book fairs every year
According to a recent report, India's book-publishing industry is worth $20 billion (Dh73.4 billion) and generates some $1.5 billion (DhS.5 billion) in revenues a year, despite the fact that nearly 40 percent ofIndians are illiterate. It pub-lishes every year some 200,000 new titles written in the official languages of the Indian subcontinent. This, of course, includes the English language whose share of the total is nearly 30,000 titles, making India rank third in publishing English books after the United States and the United Kingdom. Comparing this figure alone with the total new titles per year in the entire Arab world, one would be shocked, as the latter does not produce more than 8,000 titles or less than 1 percent of the world's total.
What has strengthened India's image and position among nations in this field, however, is not only confined to the' aforementioned facts and figures. India is the only country in the world that publishes books in more than 24 languages. And Indians are generally book lovers, something that one can easily realise by visiting Kolkata, the country's largest home of reading, publishing and writing, where thousands of booksellers line College Street, or in Mumbai where hundreds of pavement bookstores have been attracting millions of people for decades.
India also holds several major book fairs every year, such as Mtinibai International Book Fair which traditionally attracts a significant number of publishers and receives an overwhelming response from the common public.Moreover, Indian book publishers in recent years have greatly developed their business, using the fruit of the country's rise in the fteld information technology,with which the gap between them and their Western counterparts no longer exists. What is really surprising is that S,o far none of the products of India's book industry, at least those in English, can be found in the Gulfbook market, despite the long interaction and multi-dimensional ties between the two regions.
Notes taken from:-
Dr Abdullah Al Madani is an academic researcher and lecturer on Asian affairs.
