Textbook publishing: seriously affected by Covid-19

Founded in 1995, Bookman India is a well-known publishing house of children educational books in India, producing quality educational material, textbooks & activity worksheets. They publish Hindi & English medium children’s school books from Pre-Nursery to 12th Class for CBSE Board, UP Board & other State Boards. “Since the inception, we published English Medium Books under “Jack and Jill Series”. To further strengthen and expand our enterprise, we launched another sister concern under the name of “Premier Publishing House” in 1998 to bring out both English and Hindi medium books. Motivated by its grand success, we launched another series by the name of “Horizon Press” to bring out the latest strategies in the field of modern education in 2010,” tells Sandeep Gupta of Bookman India.

“Furthermore, we have successfully launched our Children’s School Books Series under the name of Smart Series, Runway Series, Ramsheela Series, UP Board Books Series, Little Wings and Seedling Series in providing innovative tools of education to encourage the students to make pace with the fast changing world,” he adds.

From conception to delivery…

“Our Hindi & English Medium school textbooks are updated with the latest content and study material as per MHRD Guidelines. We have our own ultra modern printing press at Muzzafarnagar (U.P.) accompanied with sophisticated printing, lamination and binding machineries to meet with modernization-cum-expansion plans of the company,” tells Sandeep.

On New Education Policy…

The NEP states: Wherever possible, students till class 5 in schools should be taught in mother tongue/regional language/local language. So, how will this impact your publishing company? “As far as Hindi medium books are concerned, we are already producing them. Secondly, if this law comes into effect, many small regional publications will come up and the competition will rise immensely due to which the prices will be low and quality will be compromised,” he says.

“The government should decide and publish the definite curriculum and syllabus as soon as possible so that we can plan and publish accordingly . Also our firm along with other such firms, booksellers, schools, etc. have a large amount of stock held up due to COVID-19 and lockdown. So, if we are not pre-informed all will suffer a huge amount of financial loss,” he adds.

Impact of Covid…

“Due to Covid-19, our publishing house, along with the concerning industries like printing, binding, school, authors, editors, designers, artists, etc are all badly affected and are on a verge of unemployment. Our sole firm gives employment to more than 150 people. We mainly publish books from nursery to 8th standard and not for a day the schools were opened and further the opening date of schools is uncertain. The entire money flow is on a halt. Still, we are continuously paying taxes, bank interests, salaries, wages, allowances, etc. And till now, there is no financial help provided by any sector of government to our industries. We hope that government will look into our situation,” concludes Sandeep.