It’s time books are defined as an essential commodity

PrintWeek: The value proposition of Indian publishing: Trends, challenges, and future of the industry report by the Association of Publishers in India and EY-Parthenon paints a rather flattering picture of the Indian publishing industry. Valued at Rs 500-billion in 2019, the industry is set to be Rs 800-billion by 2024. Yet, there seems to be issues galore — from copyright to piracy to lack or rising cost of paper to a disrupted supply chain ecosystem. Under the circumstances, what is your takeaway from this report?  

Neeraj Jain: I’d like to start by giving you a background of why the report was conceived in this format and what was our intent when we started discussing the report with EY-Parthenon.

Nielsen’s report on the Indian market was done for the first time back in 2015 which gave a baseline for the size of Indian publishing.

This report was planned to move ahead from where we were rather than embarking on an updated version of the same. Forming a focus group and setting up the scope was one of the first things we envisioned. Bringing aboard a partner who has the expertise and knowhow for creating such a research-based report was essential.

Our focus for this report was very clear, we needed something that would provide a wider lens with which the publishing industry was looked at and encompass each and every area we work in and how we contribute to making India a knowledge economy. It was important for us to depict all the things in the value-chain where we contribute; especially in areas like capacity building for teachers, research, setting up of KPOs in India, with a sustained focus on Indian arms of publishing companies supporting the global teams on various pre-publishing, publishing and post-publishing functions. We also wanted to use this report to highlight our efforts on creation of digital assets which have proved hugely beneficial for educational institutes during the ongoing pandemic and would be equally useful post pandemic to build a strong blended learning environment.

PW: How will it help the industry?
NJ: This report will help establish the publishing industry as a critical knowledge partner for all stakeholders like individual consumers, educational institutes, educationists, partner industries and the government of India.
One of the first takeaways we wanted from this report was to outline the full spectrum of activities and impact they have, rather than limiting it to the size of the industry or just focus on number of titles and number of copies sold.

Furthermore, we wanted this report to become the “go-to document” for all the partners in the publishing industry (including pre- and post-publishing services), printing industry, and educational institutes both in school as well as higher education. The report is also expected to highlight the future roadmap for the industry and aims to be used as a blueprint that effectively serves internal and external audiences.

We envision this document as a key report that would help various ministries and departments under the government of India to visualise how we could become key partners in each of their initiatives. For example, Make in India, Make for Global, AtmaNirbhar Bharat, NEP implementation and all others.

PW: What is the role of the Association of Publishers in India in the betterment of Indian publishing?  
NJ: One of the key roles of the Association of Publishers in India is to represent international publishers at various forums, highlight the contributions made by them and also ensure that the challenges faced by them are brought to the attention of relevant authorities. We also work closely with key departments to reduce/eliminate the challenges faced by us by making representations and engaging these departments in discussions with our representatives.

PW: Last year, the Indian Book Market was dented. How has it been for you?
NJ: The Indian book market was also impacted in the same way as the overall economy. I feel one of the good things in the last year was that we were equal to the task of being innovative enough to manage the impact. One of the things which impacted us all was the fact that books are not defined as an essential commodity by GOI. We are working to have that corrected in the near future. In fact, it was not dented from a user perspective. Many publishers offered free digital resources for education and research purposes which led to a wider readership.

PW: How did the pandemic impact education publishing in India?
NJ: The pandemic did have its impact on education publishing, in particular print publishing. Unfortunately, both the lockdowns were during the peak of prescription cycle and that meant it was difficult to ensure timely supplies. It also resulted in higher inventories for education publishers. As we all know school education is driven by books being available at school and the schools have remained shut since the onset of Covid which has made it worse for education publishing in India.

At the same time, I would like to highlight one of the positives of the pandemic. In my view, it has strengthened the relationship between publishers and educational institutes as all publishers have gone out of their way to help and support educational institutes in digital delivery of education by not only providing digital resources but by supporting the training needs too. I have seen numerous examples of digital resources being provided to the educational institutes by the publishers for free to ensure that learning gaps are minimised.

Everyone, including we (Scholastic) are working round the clock to ensure the needs of educational institutes are met not just during the pandemic but towards the long-term objective of blended learning post the pandemic.  

PW: But the situation is improving, isn’t it?
NJ: The situation is definitely improving and we are hopeful that in the coming months, we will be back on track. A few things that can help our growth prospects are — including books in the list of essential commodities; schools reopening; and opening up of retail across the country (currently eCommerce has been fuelling the growth in the absence of retail). We, at our end, are planning various activities to boost growth. One of the initiatives we have launched along with FICCI is called Roz Ek Nayi Kahani. We are working to use this initiative to drive readership in a big way.

PW: Apart from Covid-related challenges, the industry has been severely impacted by price hikes due to substrate hike plus a substantial hike in other input costs such as manpower, starch, freight and other overheads which has been calculated as 60-70%. Did this impact you?
NJ: Rising costs have been a huge challenge for the publishing industry. Key contributors to rising costs have been the fact that we have been put on the nil list for GST which doesn’t allow us to get the credit of GST included in the costs, RCM on royalty, import duty imposed on books, rising paper costs and freight costs. Add to this a significant strain on working capital due to delayed payments and increased inventory. All of this has been clearly captured in the report. We have also been equally impacted as has been the impact on the overall industry.

PW: Has the pandemic scenario led you to any innovation the way books are made?
NJ: I think audiobooks have been seen in a very different light in the last few years. Partly, it was due to the whole new dimension it was adding to the newer ways of consuming content, and obviously, the pandemic helped it cement further. The other thing I observed during the pandemic is that reading is getting a lot more emphasis. This was not the case in the last decade, and the situation has acted as a catalyst for parents and teachers to actively promote the habit amongst their students and children respectively. I’ve observed some of the schools putting in a lot of effort to make these books come alive in the online delivery of education. I am hopeful that these efforts in some schools might see a multiplier effect if shared properly with others.

PW: How do we make the printed book more popular in India?
NJ: I would always start by saying that we should make books and reading more popular and printed books would definitely benefit from this approach. If we try to focus on making the printed book more popular then we might not be able to increase the pie size in a big way. Once we are able to increase the readers without emphasising on the medium of consumption, we would have increased the pie of readers manifold. One of the researches we had done at Scholastic in 2015 clearly spelt out that 64% of students who had been exposed to an eBook preferred a print book (Source: Kids and Family Reading Report, 2015) and therefore, if we make them readers then number of printed books in circulation would automatically increase.

PW: What are the most profound changes the pandemic has brought upon the book publishing industry? Do you think some of these changes will be permanent? If yes, what would be those?
NJ:One of the most important changes that this pandemic has brought is that everyone has started focussing on working capital management and that has made everyone think about inventory woes and has made each of us focus better on cost benefit analysis of large print-runs vs multiple short runs and I feel this might be permanent in nature. With the new facility of print on demand in place the inventory can be managed in the short term.