Editor’s note: This explainer was commissioned by subscriber Tresa Fernandez. We always encourage our subscribers to write in and ask for Big Stories on subjects of their choice. So be sure to reach out talktous@splainer.in. 

Researched by: Sara Varghese & Nivedita Bobal

The big picture in numbers

We make a lot of assumptions about Indian publishing based on what we read—i.e.  fiction or nonfiction. But the numbers reveal a different reality:

Market size: Book publishing in India is slated to become a Rs 800 billion (Rs 80,000 crore) industry by 2024. India is the second-largest publisher of English language books in the world—and the sixth largest publisher of books overall. Almost 250 books are published every day. On an average, Indians read around 2.1 books a week.

All about textbooks: The primary market is not recreational readers but close to 300 million students in school and higher education—making it a bigger sector than print media or even digital media (social media, apps, online streaming, music, and games). And the market size has doubled between 2015 and 2019 due to increasing educational opportunities. Academic and educational books account for 95% of all publishing. 

Print is good: No, print is not on its way out—and, in fact, accounts for 90% of the market. Digital formats account for a very small share or 8-10%—although audio and ebook formats are growing. 

Language breakup: In terms of sales, 55% are English language books, 35% are Hindi, and the rest are other regional languages. Of the books in English, 65% of the sales come from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

Trade books: i.e. fiction and non-fiction, only account for 5% of all books. Of these, non-fiction dominates with 65% of the market—followed by children’s books (20%) and fiction (15%). In comparison, trade is the biggest segment in the US—accounting for more than 60% of the market.

Point to note: Publishing industry data is highly fragmented and hard to capture due to a huge informal sector—which sells pirated books through pavement stalls.

Now for the bad news: 90% of all books published in India sell less than 2,000 copies a year. A mere 9% sell between 2-10,000 copies and less than 1% sell more than 10,000. A “bestseller” in English sells between 5-10,000 copies. In Hindi, that number is 2,000. Only 60 million people in the country purchase any books in a year.

The big takeaway: The publishing industry is thriving and growing in India—but trade remains small and has stalled out. So that’s the category we will focus on from here on out.

The problem of distraction 

The smartphone revolution has been a disaster for leisure reading in India. We have way too many entertaining things to do on our screen—and it holds true for every language category:

“That whole genre of commercial best-sellers—Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Dutta—are just not working anymore. Chetan Bhagat created new markets. People who never bought books might have read a Chetan Bhagat book. But that reader is now hooked to YouTube.”

This big shift in the entertainment landscape has hit fiction the hardest—especially mass market fiction. Bhagat’s ‘One Arranged Murder’ made it to #6 in the bestselling list in 2020—and then slipped to #16 in 2021. Also doing poorly, mythological fiction popularised by Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi—both of whom were Westland authors. 

But, but, but: Interestingly, literary fiction—more serious novels etc—remains mostly unaffected, perhaps because its buyers are die-hard bookworms. And there is still a thriving market for non-fiction, children’s books, self-help, vernacular and translated books. The rise of streaming has also opened up a new market for trade books—which are often snapped up by hungry OTT platforms looking for the next good story.

Quote to note: As Meghna Pant tells The Hindu, thanks to the online revolution, “it’s easy to get published but difficult to sell. Authors are fighting for the reader’s attention not only with other authors, but also with Pokémon and Taylor Swift and WhatsApp. We are questioning whether people are even reading any more.”

The problem of discovery 

We have more books than ever—easily bought with just one click—yet people are struggling to find a good one to read. So we tend to gravitate towards what is familiar and safe—a tendency reinforced by online algorithms that offer you more of what you already like. This means a new author has to work even harder to get a readership, as Anish Chandy notes in Hindu Business Line: 

“Filtering one’s reading world through the sieve of algorithm-based recommendations means randomness gets thrown out of the window. As we shift from a time-rich and cash-poor economy to a cash-rich and time-poor one, most people don’t want to risk spending time reading a book they may not like. A book is now purchased like one would buy a washing machine—not on a whim, but after careful consideration.”

Also an ‘online’ problem: Bookstores encourage us to browse and stumble upon unfamiliar books and authors. Their numbers have been declining in recent years—and were pushed even further down by the pandemic. Today, brick-and-mortar shops are only 25% of their numbers. People bought more books than ever during the multiple lockdowns—but stuck to back-listed [older] books were already well-established. New and recent releases took a big hit. Pan McMillan executive Vijay Sharma tells Scroll:

“We are now a back-list market, contributing 85% of sales. Front-listed titles are more challenging to sell, because there is no special exposure for these books when selling online. The worst part of all this is that great literature is not being exposed to the right set of target readers. Online platforms get behind what sells fast and makes the most money.”

About those airport stores: Almost everyone who catches a flight wanders through a Relay or WH Smith store—which makes them a retail powerhouse in publishing. But they have a clear corporate incentive to stock books that sell fast—and space is limited:

“This means a fight for greater space, and greater monetisation of racks and shelves. It means selling of books at airports will be more expensive. Thousands of books are released every month, but airport retail stores only buy about 20 titles. It will remain the publisher’s decision to choose which titles go to airports, but one cannot deny that it is a key captive audience area. It will only grow as the situation normalises.”

As for Hindi books: Trade sales remain wedded to a select number of authors–and limited to a tight-knit community of readers:

“What the community needs is a new and younger customer base that is not part of this closed circuit. It is through the burst of such new readership that the industry will grow organically…It is only the established names whose books still sell. The idea of discoverability is yet to be seized on by Hindi publishing.”

About that pandemic effect

The initial shock: The pandemic served as a mixed blessing for trade publishing—and not all its woes can be blamed on the virus. Initially—during the first big lockdown—books were declared non-essentials. No online deliveries or offline stores. This meant there were close to zero sales for three months for all publishers.

The recovery: As publishers pivoted to digital marketing and events, sales recovered—and HarperCollins India CEO Ananth Padmanabhan claimed his 2020 sales  grew “at higher double digit rates over 2019, both by value and volume.” But book distributors were left in the lurch, Prakash Books Gaurav Sabharwal notes:

“Earlier too, distributors were not distributing books for both online and offline sales, but over the last couple of years, publishers have gone directly to the online space. That part of the business has gone away from us. As distributors, we now work primarily in the offline space, which, due to Covid-19, is down to 20% of overall sales.”

Bookstores have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels—and may never do so, says Sabharwal:

“But I don’t see the revival going back to pre-Covid levels, because a lot of customers have migrated to the online platform, where they are quite comfortable. So, the main challenge remains how to sustain the business with a lower volume.”

An unexpected downside: The arrival of Amazon and Flipkart in 2011/12 delivered a huge boost to Hindi language publishing—as books became more easily available to a larger audience. The pandemic forced publishers to do more online than just sell. And they started holding virtual readings, discussions, poetry recitations, theatre festivals etc. Oddly enough, all that “community engagement” had an opposite effect on sales:

“[T]he spate of live sessions on social media platforms caused a dip in demand for books due to overexposure—something that has been unheard of in the Hindi literary world. With more and more authors available for engagement on social media, fewer people wanted the books.”

Point to note: As The Signal notes, at least 10 Hindi publishers went out of business over the past two years due to the pandemic—but not one of them triggered the anguish caused by Westland’s demise. OTOH, leading Malayalam publisher DC Books grew leaps and bounds thanks to a clever partnership with Swiggy to home-deliver books during the lockdown.

But, but, but: The pandemic also pushed Hindi readers toward a variety of digital formats. Audiobook consumption went up by seven hours per week during 2020—and more than 50% of readers had started consuming books online.

Also an upside: We may all lament the death of bookstores, but the shift to online buying has been a huge boon for indie publishers like Juggernaut Books and Yoda Press:

“The biggest problem earlier was how you could get your books to readers. It was always a fight to get retail book stores to stock indie publishers’ books visibly and to get dailies and newsmagazines to review our books. Both these problems have been mitigated today because of the digital media and online selling of books…We are not beholden to the whims and caprices of distributors and booksellers (the bigger they were the more they talked about the price of real estate rather than the value of books to us).”

The bottomline: In our next instalment, we look at the other big question: Why is it hard to make money selling books?

Reading list

Scroll has two very good pieces: A roundtable conversation with leading figures in the English language publishing industry; a detailed report on how Hindi language sellers are dealing with the pandemic. This older Hindu Business Line feature takes a hard-nosed look at the evolution of the publishing industry—outside of the clamour over the pandemic. Also worth your time: This Hindu interview with Meghna Pant, author of ‘How To Get Published In India’. For the latest industry data, check out this EY-Parthenon report.