- 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 .-_
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audience [':J:diJns] Publikum; hier: Leserschaft
benelitlrom sth.!'bcmfn (rDm] von etw. profitieren ---
chlck lil ['t{lk Ili] !fml. Unterhaltungslileraiuri'Or--
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competltion ],kompJ't:~~II>n) ==~_:ju~"~ge wettbewerb Frau'!'''''--__
convenienl [bn'vi:niJnt] geeignet. zweckdienlich
decrepit [di'krcpul ---heruntergekommen --
distribution networ( Vertriebsnetl
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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
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