The industry eyes ‘e-publishing’

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More than 20 speakers...jam packed conference halls – the atmosphere was electrifying at the recently held e-publishing seminar, concurrent to the New Delhi World Book Fair. Excerpts. On the sidelines of the New Delhi Word Book Fair, the e-publishing seminar was successfully organised by W3C India and Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP), managed by SPH Consultancy & eServices Pvt Ltd and S Media Group, with active support from All About Book Publishing. Split in two half days, the seminar was held on March 1-2, 2012. Both the days saw the hall jam-packed with audience who wished to know more about the e-publishing – content creation, new technologies, etc.

The inaugural session…

The seminar began with an inaugural session, with chief guest Swaran Lata, country manager, W3C India while MA Sikandar, director, NBT was the guest of honour. Other dignitaries present at the dais were Pradeep Gupta, CMD, CyberMedia; Sudhir Malhotra, president, FIP; Ramesh K Mittal, chairman (Books, Publication and Printing Panel) CAPEXIL, and Pramil Mittal, president, Delhi State Booksellers’ and Publications’ Association (DSBPA).

While, Swarn Lata introduced the e-publishing standards through a presentation and the work that W3C India is doing for the implementation of these standards, Sikandar welcomed this initiative and reiterated his commitment to work with the standards body and help popularise and implement the same in NBT and its constituent network.

Sudhir Malhotra of FIP welcomed the guests and thanked them to have taken precious time from their busy schedule to be at the seminar. He raised the practical problems of book piracy and the dilemma of which standards to adopt and which platforms/devices to adopt for e-publishing. He was thankful to W3C India for giving useful information on the standards in the e-publishing space which would help the publishers and the audience to make an informed choice.

Ramesh Mittal spoke briefly of the kind of potential e-publishing has, considering the huge untapped export markets, not just in developed countries but also developing countries. He also invited the participants to come forward and participate in other international publishing events which CAPEXIL is organising in the next few months.

Pradeep Gupta shared the journey of CyberMedia of last 26 years in the areas of e-publishing activities of the company. While, the magazine business has an e-published version for most of the print magazines of the group; he mentioned that their GLOBAL SERVICES magazine is only e-published (no print version) for world- wide audiences. He also mentioned that a division of CyberMedia handles outsource development of books and magazines content in electronic mode spanning Legal, Technology and Generic content. The power of e-publishing can be exploited if you re-examine the power of each channel and what/how the content has to be purposed to take the maximum advantage. He shared that BBC has made it mandatory for every news item which is produced to develop the 140 char version of same for distribution through twitter and a small clip for promotion through Youtube. Back home, he shared the success of the “Kolavari Di” song by offering the free download partially but charging for the full version of the song and making huge amount of money by advertising, etc.

The e-publishing session…

The e-publishing session was chaired by Dolly Bhasin, MD, SPH Consultancy & eServices Pvt Ltd. She indicated that the publishing industry has been witnessing a paradigm shift from print to digital publishing. The basic trends in e-publishing and the segments which can be tapped, various aspects of e-publishing and the trends were discussed by a panel of veterans from the industry - MM Sharma, head competition law, Vaish Associates Advocates;

Leonard Fernandes, Cinnamon Teal; Adi Jain, Digiraatis; Abhaya Agarwal, founder, Pothi.com; and Dr Brijesh Kumar, Digital Media Initiatives.

While Sharma elaborated the legal aspects of e-publishing, Leonard touched upon the new emerging formats of e-publishing. Adi Jain shared his experiences of working on digital content for projects at the World Bank and African school children while Abhaya Agarwal emphasised the role of electronic distribution of the e-published content to reach untapped global markets. Dr Brijesh shared his experiences as a publishing BPO operation as well as an e-distribution platform for e-publishing and his tryst with e-books.

Session on e-content creation & new technologies…

A rapid change is occurring in content creation approaches and underlying publishing technologies. The choice of multiple devices like PCs, e-book readers, smart phones and tablets force a publisher to adapt to these new developments. The next session on e-content creation & new technologies discussed some of these trends.

The session was chaired by Satish Jha, OLPC India Foundation and presentations were made on the experiences of e-publishing Legal Content by Shuchita Singhal, COO, Manupatra and on the software suites of the Adobe Digital Solutions by Mayank Kool of Adobe Systems.

The sessions ended with a promise to meet the next day to have more intense deliberations on the issues of e-publishing.

Session on e-publishing on day 2...

The second day of the seminar began in the Hall 14 and after the welcome address by SM Dutt, technical editor of S Media group, the programme format was introduced by Dolly and the technical sessions were initiated.

The session of the second day was on e-publishing, which was chaired by Dolly Bhasin, MD, SPH Consultancy & eServices Pvt Ltd. She shared that the basic e-publishing industry can be looked upon as composed of e-books, e-magazines, e-documents and e-newspapers. While in US the e-books have already surpassed the physical book sales in 2011, other countries have still not fully adopted the same. She also shared some of the statistics of the e-book sales and the major target segments and devices on which they are being offered.

Various aspects of e-publishing and the trends were then discussed by a panel of veterans from the Industry, which included Shantanu Dash, MosPay Pvt Ltd; Leonard Fernandes, Cinnamon Teal; Adi Jain, Digiraatis and Dr Brijesh Kumar, Digital Media Initiatives.

Shantanu discussed the importance of Mobile Publishing and some of the key reasons why e-publishers need to adapt it in the Indian context. He also urged the educational e-publishers to consider offering e-versions of their content to the new generation of students.

While, Leonard discussed how self-publishing and on demand publishing works with the special reference to book publishing. He emphasised that special business models like subscription services and digitization services can be offered to schools. Adi Jain stated that mobile and new devices are here to stay and valuable content needs to be made available through e-publishing for this huge untapped opportunity across the globe. He urged that Indian publishers should rise to the opportunity and create their own niche.

Dr Brijesh shared his vast experience in e-publishing and shared the emerging standards being adopted by publishers in India for offshore as well as new e-published work.

Session on E-Publishing Standards and Education E-Publishing…

This session was chaired by Swaran Lata, country manager, W3C India. She shared the basic e-publishing standards and the work being done on implementing these standards in India. Various aspects of standards and their implementation were then discussed by a panel of veterans from the industry – Prashant Verma, W3C India; Jaya Jha, Pothi.com; Satish Jha, OLPC India Foundation and Sangeeta Mehra, VRVirtual.

The open source content in education in particular and e-publishing in general were discussed by Satish Jha, who iterated that educational content needs to be made available to young children in an interesting and engaging manner. He shared the experience of Nepal who have adopted OLPC in local language for the entire early school system.

Sangeeta Mehra discussed some of the nuances of educational publishing in India through her experiences with Pearson, VRVirtual Bookshop and other educational initiatives. While Prashant shared the work being done on Indian languages standards and sought the industry to work with them to consolidate the effort by providing their valuable inputs.

While, Jaya Jha discussed the various myths of going digital. She iterated that every publisher needs to plan their journey to go digital. Some may just consider the strategy to experiment with few new titles, some may try the same with low print run titles, or as they deem fit considering their business. She also indicated that piracy is not just restricted to e-publishing, any book can be pirated whether printed or e-published. The main reason of piracy in e-publishing is due to non-availability of the content in some geographies, or the price is too high or the DRM protected copies are too complicated for readers.

Session on e-content creation, new technologies & self publishing…

This session was also chaired by Dolly Bhasin. A rapid change is occurring in content creation approaches and underlying publishing technologies. The choice of multiple devices like PCs, e-book readers, smart phones and tablets force a publisher to adapt to these new developments. The session introduced the concepts of crowd sourcing, Google Books, self publishing and talking pens. The panelists for the session were Himanshu Giri, CEO, Pratham Books; Ajay Malhotra, strategic partnerships, Google Books; Sairee Chahal, co-founder, Fleximoms and Manish Rajoria, director, Aadarsh.

Flexible work options for women in publishing were elaborated by Sairee Chahal. She also shared her experiences in working with new tools and methods to source content through blogs, twitter and other social media. Malhotra shared the information pertaining to Google Books and how selective e-published documents were being shown to readers for them to take decision to aid the book buying process, which is further helped by independent reviews of the books.

While Himanshu, in his deliberation explained how Pratham Books is crowd sourcing the content for their children books from the community. Last but not the least, Manish Rajoria showcased the talking pen technology which would make the printed books more accessible to the readers (especially young and illiterate) by reading the text aloud for benefit of many listeners at the same time.

The vote of thanks was delivered by S K Khurana, editor, S Media Group, who thanked all the panelists and the participants for making this seminar a success and formally closing the seminar.