LOGOS
161 LOGOS 21/3-4 © 2010 LOGOS
Jaya Bhattacharji
Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, currently working as an independent
publishing and editorial consultant, is one
of the Indian subcontinent’s leading experts on children’s
and young adults’ literature. Associated with
Indian publishing since the early 1990s, her responsibilities
have included guest editing the special children’s
and young adults’ literature section of The Book
Review, and producing the fi rst comprehensive report
on the Indian Book Market for the Publishers’ Association,
UK. Her extensive editorial experience includes
stints with Zubaan, Routledge, and Puffi n. She
is a regular columnist for Mail Today on children’s and
and young adults’ literature, and her articles, interviews
and book reviews have appeared in numerous
publications. As a Literary Director with Siyahi, she
helps identify and guide the next generation of Indian
writing talent.
E-mail: jayabhattacharjirose@gmail.com
Much to Look Forward to
Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature in India
Children’s and young adults’ literature as distinct
genres are a recent phenomenon in India, the second
most populace country in the world, with 50%
of the population under the age of twenty-fi ve and
65% under thirty-fi ve.1 Traditionally, Indian children
have been brought up on a vast repertoire of
storytelling based on oral tales, folk tales2 and mythology.
Literature in print is a relatively new concept.
In addition, there is the sociological problem
of parents who stress education (text books) more
than reading for pleasure. Having said this, publishing
for children and young adults is now booming.
Today it accounts for Rs. 400 crores or nearly
US$ 90 million per annum.3
Publishers
Independent and multinational publishers who
have dedicated lists of literature in English for children
and young adults include the National Book
Trust (NBT), Children’s Book Trust (CBT), Tulika
Books, Tara Books, Karadi Tales, Katha, Pratham
Books India, Puffi n, Roli Junior, Young Zubaan,
Scholastic India, Hachette India, Arvind Kumar
Publishers, Eklavya, Anwesha, Room to Read
books, Goodword Books and Mango, an imprint of
DC Books.4 Of these, NBT, CBT, Tulika, Pratham
and Young Zubaan also publish literature for children
in other Indian languages. NBT’s mandate is
that every title they publish must be automatically
translated into fi fteen other Indian languages; Tulika
publishes in nine languages. Arvind Kumar
Publishers and Mango bring translations from
other European countries into India. This list does
not take into account the variety of books that are
brought into the country by wholesalers, importers
and distributors. A wide spectrum of lists and
genres is covered by these publishers. These range
from picture books, chapter books, fi ction, fantasy,
translations, retellings of mythological and folk
tales, anthologies of theme-based fi ction, historical
fi ction, graphic novels, adventures, DOI: 10.1163/095796511X560051 mystery, time162
LOGOS 21/3-4 © 2010 LOGOS
travel fi ction, realistic fi ction, terrorism, confl ict,
romance, some poetry and non-fi ction including
biographies, quiz books, travel stories, and drama.
Authors and Illustrators
Given this growth potential, publishers are searching
for authors and relying on the commercially
successful ones to churn out new titles. Some of
the more popular and well-known authors are Anil
Menon,5 Anita Nair,6 Devdutt Pattanaik,7 Paro
Anand,8 Ruskin Bond,9 Samit Basu10 and Sudha
Murthy.11 And they are only the tip of the iceberg.12
Many of these writers have been ably supported
with fantastic illustrations and layouts by illustrators
like Atanu Roy, Bindia Thapar, Tapas Guha,
Vishwajyoti Ghosh and Pooja Pottenkulam, to
name a few.
Market
The richness and variety of the above lists are
unsurprising given India’s multilingualism, with
eighteen regional languages in use in addition to
English, the country’s lingua franca. The market
is heterogeneous and readers are comfortable with
more than one language. For this reason, publishers
are competing with each other for even a miniscule
share. Translated into numbers, this share may
actually be attractive – the population is large and
even a small percentage would mean substantial
unit sales. But there are other specifi cs to be considered.
The consumer profi le varies from a family
that has to survive on less than US$ 1 per day to
millionaires. The priority for most Indians is education
and not reading for pleasure. Changing this
mindset takes time, but some developments are already
being seen. Schools and parents, for instance,
are now seeking trade books that can supplement
school syllabi. Publishers like Tulika are regularly
asked to create such modules. Another factor that
has contributed to the growth of, and interest, in
children’s literature is the transition from joint
families to nuclear families. In joint families, older
Bad Moon Rising: An Anthology of Mystery Stories.
Published by Puffi n Books India, 2010. Illustrated by Kunal Kundu.
Jaya Bhattacharji
163 LOGOS 21/3-4 © 2010 LOGOS
people would normally have told children stories
but now parents in nuclear families need books for
their children to fi ll the vacuum created by the absence
of storytelling elders. Also, there are more
double-income families which means there is some
disposable income available for books. Children
and teenagers have greater exposure to books also
through various projects, among them book exhibitions
and direct marketing initiatives in schools,
like those by Scholastic; book clubs that circulate
regular newsletters; book weeks organised by
schools wherein authors are invited to participate
in Q&A and storytelling sessions, dramatisations
and author-in-residence programmes; and storytelling
nights organised in many cities and towns.
Within this context, it is no surprise that the
sales of children’s books in Crossword bookstores
reach 20-25% – the single largest category by volume.
13 Most publishers are recording leaps in annual
sales. “Scholastic brings out 100 titles every
year. While the number of titles published hasn’t
changed in the last fi ve years, the sales fi gures have
grown by 20 per cent. Puffi n recorded a 30 per cent
growth over the last year, while Radhika Menon of
Tulika says it has seen almost a 100 per cent growth
in the past three years.”14 There is a voracious appetite
for books across all segments of society, but
especially children’s and young adults’ books. According
to Ravi Lalwani, Managing Director of
Mediastar, who is an importer and a distributor of
books and periodicals in India, the bulk of his business
comes from precisely these two genres.
Promoting Reading
Given that the market for books is very price sensitive
and that the majority of people in India can
ill-afford even low-priced books, there are many initiatives
to encourage reading. For instance, NBT
has mobile libraries which visit rural and urban
areas; sometimes one-week author tours are organised
as well. The automobile industrialists, Mahindra
and Mahindra, have begun to develop plans
to establish over 250 libraries across the northern
state of Punjab, much like what Sudha Murthy has
been doing in the southern state of Karnataka.
Pratham Books is a not-for-profi t organisation that
publishes affordable and quality books for children
in multiple Indian languages. Their mission is to
see “a book in every child’s hand” and democratise
the joy of reading.15 A minimum Pratham Books
print run is 12,000 copies, and each title is reprinted
at least 5-8 times. Pratham publishes in eleven
languages, which is especially remarkable given
the low price of their books.
Growth and Possible Reasons
The phenomenal growth in recent years could be
attributed to many factors. In spite of the multimedia
information explosion, young readers show a
keen interest in books. At times it is online social
communities like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, fan fi ction
sites, Amazon and Flipkart that are creating
the demand as friends, cutting across geographical
boundaries, post links, join discussion groups, follow
their favourite authors or read online reviews.
This generation wants their demands met immediately
and with easy and immediate access to information;
they do not have much patience. Until a
few years ago, there was a time lag of a few months
before an Eoin Colfer or an Anthony Horowitz or
a J. K. Rowling reached Indian readers. Now, new
titles by these authors are released in India at the
same time as they are internationally. Apart from
this, schools too are encouraging the reading of
books for pleasure. If school authorities approve of
a book, they make it a mandatory supplementary
reader. According to publishers, editors, distributors
and importers, reading has defi nitely increased
in the past few years. E-books are available but are
accessed by an elite minority who own an iPad, a
laptop, a Kindle, an iPhone or a Wink.
This boom in children’s and young adults’
publishing could also be attributed to a growing
number of spaces where there are regular interactions
between authors, illustrators and storytellers
and their readers. For instance, there are now
children’s annual literature festivals. One such is
Bookaroo16 which is growing in popularity every
year.17 The organisers bring in international and
Indian authors for wonderful interactive sessions
with children and parents. These could be storytelling
and book reading sessions, workshops, literature
craft corners, author signing sessions, Q&A
with the children, dramatisations based on favourite
pieces of literature, competitions, doodling on
a wall under the guidance of an illustrator, or an
Much to Look Forward to: Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature in India
164 LOGOS 21/3-4 © 2010 LOGOS
exhibition of prominent illustrators. There are also
author trips organised across the city schools in the
week preceding the festival. Some of the other festivals
are UNESCO’s Ghummakad Narain and the
one-week festival organised by Anwesha in Guwahati,
Assam where they include Assamese literature
as well. Similarly, Scholastic organises regular
storytelling nights in various cities and these are
becoming very popular. Authors enjoy the interaction
with their readers; publishers like the storytelling
nights and children’s book fairs as they
open up new spaces for promoting their books and
authors; editors like them as this gives them an opportunity
to meet prospective authors, gauge the
reaction of the market to the books and look for
new ideas; and children and parents like them, as
it is an entertaining evening spent together. Apart
from this, there are now regular “book weeks” organised
in schools, where there may even be an author-
in-residence sitting in the school library for a
couple of hours every day, chatting and discussing
books. An initiative organised by the writer Paro
Anand called “Literature in Action” uses literature
as a pretext to discuss sensitive topics like identity,
relationships and bullying.
Rights
Surprisingly, in spite of the observed growth in
the market, it is still very diffi cult to sell international
rights of local authors, even though Indian
publishers have begun to regularly attend the Bologna
Fair, for example. Still, some publishers like
Karadi Tales, Tara Books and Tulika Books have
managed to sell internationally. According to Gita
Wolf, author, publisher and director at Tara Books,
which now has an offi ce in London, the company
has “continued to be active in the global market,
with over 100 rights to our 85 titles sold all over the
world. In total, 30 per cent of our turnover is from
the sale of rights, and a further 25 per cent from
direct sales into other English speaking markets.”18
At the same time, many international authors vie
to be published in India and seek every opportunity
to do so. A measure of their popularity is that
cheap pirated editions19 of many foreign books can
be regularly spotted being sold by hawkers at traf-
The Storyteller: tales from the Arabian Nights by Anushka Ravishankar.
Published by Puffi n Books India, 2011. Illustrated by Kunal Kundu.
Jaya Bhattacharji
165 LOGOS 21/3-4 © 2010 LOGOS
fi c lights. International bestsellers are not the only
victims of piracy. Even Indian children’s fi ction titles
like Younguncle Comes to Town have been pirated
– a sort of back-handed compliment and a
testimony to the commercial success of this market
segment.
Awards
For the fi rst time in the history of publishing in
India, two awards for children’s and young adults’
literature were announced in 2010. The fi rst one
was the Vodafone Crossword Book Award,20 won
by Siddhartha Sarma for The Grasshopper’s Run.
The second ones called the Bal Sahitya Puraskar
awards21 were announced by the Sahitya Akademi,
India’s National Academy of Letters, on 14 November
2010.22
Conclusion
Children’s and young adults’ literature is a segment
of publishing that is growing at such a rate that it is
impossible to predict the scenario even three years
down the line. Certainly though, it was lovely to
see at least one-third of the little hands shoot up
when at the 2010 Bookaroo Festival in New Delhi
British author Anthony Horowitz asked his audience,
“Who wants to be a writer?”. Choosing writing
as a profession was unthinkable even fi ve years
ago in a country where emphasis is traditionally
placed on “sound and steady” jobs such as doctor
or teacher. So there is much to look forward to. Already
there are budding teenage writers23 who will
be published in the coming months.
Pyre of Queens by David Hair.
Published by Puffi n Books India, 2010. Illustrated by Kunal Kundu.
Much to Look Forward to: Children’s and Young Adults’ Literature in India
166 LOGOS 21/3-4 © 2010 LOGOS
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India.
2 Folklore and Children’s Literature, National Folklore Institute,
Chennai, April 2006. http://wiki.indianfolklore.org/
images/1/16/Ifl _21.pdf.
3 Statistics shared by Ravi Lalwani, Managing Director,
Mediastar on 3 Dec 2010.
4 http://www.nbtindia.org.in/. It is organised by Ministry
of Human Resources and Development, Government of
India. http://www.childrensbooktrust.com/. This trust was
established in 1957 by Shankar Pillai to focus on different
facets of children’s publishing in India.
http://www.tulikabooks.com/.
http://www.tarabooks.com/.
http://www.karaditales.com/.
http://www.katha.org/kathawp2/.
http://www.prathambooks.org/.
http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/category/Children.
aspx.
http://www.rolibooks.com/children/.
http://www.zubaanbooks.com/zubaan_books.
asp?CategoryID=5.
http://www.scholastic-asia.com/scholastic/index.
php?regionid=31.
http://www.hachetteindia.com/.
http://www.arvindkumarpublishers.com/.
http://eklavya.in/go/.
http://blog.roomtoread.org/room-to-read/india/.
http://www.goodwordbooks.com/.
http://www.mangobooks.net/.
5 A confi dent, brilliant new voice in Indian literature, Menon
is at the vanguard of a revolution in changing the way
people from India and the region imagine the future. He
was recently shortlisted for the fi rst Crossword Vodafone
Award for children’s literature, 2010, India.
6 http://www.anitanair.net/.
7 http://devdutt.com/. Devdutt Pattanaik is very well-known
for his retellings of the Indian mythology.
8 http://www.paroanand.com/. An award winning writer,
Anand is also popular as a storyteller. She has been writing
for over thirty years, but has recently authored her fi rst
novel for adults as well. She is one of the fi rst children’s
authors in the country to tackle the subject of terrorism in
No Guns at my Son’s Funeral.
9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruskin_Bond. Bond is an incredibly
popular children’s writer.
10 http://samitbasu.com/. Basu is credited with having published
the fi rst fantasy trilogy in India (The Simoquin
Prophecies) causing a burst of popularity for the genre.
11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudha_Murthy
Sudha Murthy is the wife of Narayan Murthy, one of the
richest Indian businessmen, but she is better known as a
successful children’s writer.
12 Other prominent children’s authors include Aditi De,
Anshumani Ruddra, Anu Kumar, Anupa Lal, Anushka
Ravishankar, Bindia Thapar, Deepa Agarwal, Eunice Desouza,
Geeta Dharmarajan, Gita Wolf, Githa Hariharan,
Hema Pande, Kalpana Swaminathan, Manisha Choudhary,
Manjula Padmanabhan, Monisha Mukundan, Payal
Dhar, Prema Jayakumar, Ranjit Lal, Roopa Pai, Sampurna
Chattarji, Shreekumar Varma, Siddharth Sarma, Sirish
Rao, Swapna Dutta, Vijaya Ghose, Zai Whitaker and
Mala Dayal.
13 In a telephone conversation with R. Sriram, ex-CEO and
cofounder, Crossword Bookstores. 3 June 2010.
14 “Baby boom”, The Telegraph, Sunday, 1 August 2010.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100801/jsp/7days/story_
12755840.jsp.
15 http://www.pratham.org/M-26-3-Pratham-Books.aspx.
16 http://bookaroo.in/v2/.
17 Lavakare, Jyoti Pande, “The Li’L Wizard,” Outlook Magazine,
13 December 2010.
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268541.
18 http://www.book-fair.com/en/fbf/news-media/newsletter/
issue_october/01572/index.html.
19 I recall hearing Bloomsbury’s Alexandra Pringle talk some
years ago in Delhi where she said that when she arrived
in Mumbai, she was stopped at a traffi c light by a hawker
trying to sell her a pirated edition of a Harry Potter book.
She was not sure what to make of the situation, but seeing
a pirated edition of the book did convince her of the huge
popularity of the series.
20 http://www.crosswordbookstores.com/html/cwbahomepage.
htm.
21 http://ifp.co.in/shownews.php?newsid=13443.
22 14 November is the birthday of the fi rst Prime Minister of
India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who loved children very much.
The date is now commemorated as Children’s Day in India.
23 Basu, Arpita, “Five go to Gutenberg,” Outlook Magazine,
13 Sept 2010. http://www.outlookindia.com/article.
aspx?266990.
Endnotes
Jaya Bhattacharji
No comments:
Post a Comment