“We wish to continue bringing best books for medical professionals”

says Jitendar Pal Vij, chairman, Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers (P) Ltd, an icon in the field of medical publishing.

Jitendar Pal VijEstablished in 1969, Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers has become every doctor’s trusted education resource for all his/her professional life, be it undergraduate, postgraduate, ward round handbooks or be it the professional and reference books for practitioners. Headquartered in New Delhi, Jaypee is a global company and its cerebral resource collection centres are located in UK, USA, and Panama. As a well reputed publisher in the world, Jaypee has been publishing the works of eminent KOLs and academicians from every nook and corner of the world. Started by Jitendar Pal Vij, the company has come a long way.

Today, his name is synonymous with entrepreneurship, innovation, perseverance and hard work. Though he has not received any formal training in management, his management skills are self-learnt and his intuitive perception of the need of the target users for his books is a rare quality. Here, he shares his views on the industry and the times ahead.

Industry…then and now

“It has been a long journey of 47 years, dedicated to medical science publishing. When we started in 1969, there were very few medical publishers and it was dominated by publishers from Mumbai and Kolkata. Infact, the authors were also from these regions. Our industry was dominated by imported books from US and UK. Very few Indian authors were very well-written at that time due to many reasons. In last 10 years, the table has turned around. Almost 70-80% books are now written by eminent Indian faculty, which are selling not only in India but abroad as well. Only 15% books are imported, written by highly professional medical practitioners for sale in libraries,” Jitendar Pal Vij, chairman, Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers (P) Ltd, outlines the history of medical publishing.

Industry growth…

“The growth in medical publishing is directly related to the growth in medical colleges in India. Almost 100-150 medical colleges will come up in next 3 years. If this happens, there will be a big growth, told Vij. “We also hope that Indian authors will have a market share of 80-85% in next couple of years.”

Ebooks vs. printed ones…

“The world is fast changing and ebooks will be a turnaround in the next 10 years, though I am not very sure that it will make much impact in India but in countries like US and UK, digital will surpass the print version. Even today, the ratio of digital to print is 80:20 in these countries. Presently, in India, ebooks account for 5% while printed is still 95% but it is going to change very fast,” he said.

Vij also opined that as soon as new generation will come into medical publishing, they will go for ebooks rather than printed ones.

On challenges…

Talking about the challenges faced in his journey so far, Vij told that initially, the biggest challenge was the quality of printing. “Books were badly produced, binding was not good. We started focusing on the quality of the production, while maintaining the quality of the content as well. Today, our books are accepted not only in India, but all over the world,” he shared.

Elaborating on the quality of the content, Vij shared, “Earlier, the Indian content used to be almost 2 years old as Indian authors were not familiar with the latest research abroad. But, now with electronic gadgets, they get the latest information, the content has improved and they are now accepted all over the world.”

“India is such a market where availability is very important. Piracy has now gone from India because the books are now available easily,” he added.

On libraries…

“Almost 95% libraries in India are still keeping printed books and students are familiar with printed books. While, overseas it is totally the opposite – they are keeping only the ebooks now,” shared Vij. “Indian libraries are now gearing up, government has also released funds for ebooks. Most of the Indian libraries have ejournals,” he added.

On Jaypee…

Talking about Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers, Vij said that they are enjoying a market share of 50-55% in medical books in the Indian sub-continent. With 20 offices in the Indian subcontinent, Jaypee Brothers has made a mark for itself. Apart from distributing its own books, Jaypee is a distributor as well in the Indian subcontinent for McGraw Hill, Arnold, FA Davis, Elsevier, LWW, Springer and Thieme’s products. Jaypee has a great network of more than 1100 booksellers in different regions to reach all its existing and prospective clients.

Jaypee products are being distributed globally by renowned distributors in the USA, Central and South America, UK, Canada, Europe, Africa, Middle East, South East Asia, North Asia and in the Australia/ Pacific Region.

“We have 4000 medical books, including nursing and dentistry tiles. We have about 45 journals, many of which are society journals. For the last 5 years, we have been investing on epublishing. Almost 3000 books have already been converted into ebooks and 4000 videos. All of our journals are now available online,” he said. “Our professional titles are already translated into foreign languages like Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese, to name a few. “We wish to continue to bring the best books for the medical science students,” concluded Vij.