Business_Spotlight_No_04_August__

• GLOBAL BUSINESS PUBLISHING

A HEARl FUR INDIA

Namhafte Verleger sind davon überzeugt, dass sich Indien innerhalb des nächsten Jahrzehnts die

Spitzenposition auf dem englischsprachigen Buchmarkt erobern wird. JASON BURKE berichtet. EtiIfl"U I

n among ehe slig htly decrcpit halls of New Dclhi's

Pragati Maidan conference cent re is a stand cov-

ered in pink a nd powder blue. Bcnearh rhe posters

for Rlithless Magnate, Cot/veuiellt \Vife a nd

Accidellta/{y Expec1;ug, puhljsher M a nish Sing h,

Mills & Boon's country mana ger fo r India, is busy.

MilJs & Boon's popula r romance novels were launched

in India exacd y two years ago a nd doubled eheir s..a..ks

in rhe past year. "We are looking fO expa nd still fur-

ther in 2010 ," Sing h says.

H arlequin Mills & Boon is not the o nly publisher to

bc nefj[ hom a boom in book sa les rhrougho ut India.

Dan Brown's ggml to T he Da ViI/ci Code, The Lost

Symbol, has a lready sold 100,000 copies in ha rd back

alone. Aravind Adiga's Man Booker winner TlJe White

Tiger has sold more than 200,000 copies since ir was

first published, in 2008.

Drjvjng the demand is th e country's continuing eco-

nomic boom - 6.7 pe r cent growth in 2009, despire rhe

global crisis - and th e rasres of [he new Indian middle

d ass. " Ir is a forward-looking generarion, " said Singh.

" The low-ha nging fruit for us is the single working

wo man w ho has rnoney in her hands, rhe liberry to

read, no responsibiliries yet, no husband , children and

so on."

In rhe nexr decade, publishers foreca sr, India will be-

come rhe biggesr English-Ianguage book-buying marker

zugangfleh; hier:
verst3ndhc,~h .-_
affordable [;J'h :dJb'll erschwinglich
appeal: ~(with sb.) [J'pi:'11 (bei jmd~~r~A-~"~kl~,~"g~f:in=d='="
aspirant ['/Csp;,r:mt I strebsam
~piration ~pJ'reII,,"] Streben. Ambitionen
audience [':J:diJns] Publikum; hier: Leserschaft
benelitlrom sth.!'bcmfn (rDm] von etw. profitieren ---
chlck lil ['t{lk Ili] !fml. Unterhaltungslileraiuri'Or--

~

competltion ],kompJ't:~~II>n) ==~_:ju~"~ge wettbewerb Frau'!'''''--__
convenienl [bn'vi:niJnt] geeignet. zweckdienlich
decrepit [di'krcpul ---heruntergekommen --
distribution networ( Vertriebsnetl
[,dlstrt'bju:J>n ,nelw3:k] :;;;;;;:=
drive slh.(drtllvl hiCf: etw. anhelle~-;;
escape II'skclpl hier: Ausweg, Entrinnen
expect!ng [tk'spekllllJ lIier: schwanger --
tOfeeast slh. I 'h:ku:stl etw. prognostizieren
found slh. [faund] etw. grOnden
fragmenled Ifr~g'mCnlld~;:===='~"'~~litlef'l
ha..!dback; in -['ho:dba:kl al5 gebundenes Buch
hislorieal and suspense titles hie!": IIlstorische Romane-
[hl,slnrlk· 1 ~n s3'spens ,Iall·lz] und Thriller
launch 5 1h. lb:n!J]----- etw. auf den Markt bringen

in rhe world. New distributjon nerworks and increasing

numbers of major bookstore chains are a lso responsi-

ble for the expansion.

"Ar the moment, the marker is probably about five

million people," said Anantha Padmanabha n, Pen-

guin's direcror of sales in In dia. " T har is lli ro increase

d ramatically .• ,

India has ahistory of producing intern arionally suc-

cessful prize-winning authors who have enjoyed huge

popula riry ar horne. Arundhati Roy's The Cod of Small

Things in 1997 was a breakthrough, according to Pad-

manabhan. Since then, there have been two mo re Indi-

an winners of the Man Booker Prize. \Vhat is o n The

New York Times bestseller list will be a hit in India, too,

Padmanabhan said.

However, the real popular success is inde-

pendent of the taste of int e rn a t ional readers. In a re-

cent ~ by rhe news magazine Tellelka, rhe four

mOSt popular books in India were all by e heran Bha-

gar, a former invesrment banke r w ho has had sal es

[maIlinG more than three millio n in rhe la sr five years

and w hose mOst recent work, Two States, sold a mil-

lio n copies in under fo ur momhs.

Writing abom the lives o r India's aspjrant middle-cl ass

young, Bhagar has "pan-Indian, pan-age gro up" ~,

said Kapish Mehra, the ma!HIGinG djrecror of Bhagat's

makmanaging e da wilh di,eclOf Slh.I",n "";;";;':;',';d~';';;;:;;I;;;:=g

mamarkture e15[m3'tJu31 th. ['mu;)all ~~~~i~~~

merge wffii"SbJslh.l'm3:d3" "C==~

myslefy wriler] 'ml~lri ,rall3i

network '

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lotal sth. l'I;)lI!'I]

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