D igital reading marks a milestone this year, with the Kindle turning 10. The last decade has been rife with predictions of the printed book turning dinosaur; instead, it has been sharing space quite successfully with e-books. The sale of printed books grew in 2016 (albeit thanks to the demand of adult colouring books). But with PricewaterhouseCoopers predicting e-book sales will outpace print by 2018, we ask writer-publisher Karthika V.K to weigh in.
Having recently left HarperCollins after a nine-year stint that saw her working with some of the best authors in India — from Aravind Adiga, Anita Nair and Manu Joseph to S. Hussain Zaidi and Anuja Chauhan — Karthika feels that it is too early to predict the end of physical books, especially in India. “In my years at HarperCollins, we noticed that Indians continue to prefer physical books. While e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle are gradually making an impact, e-book sales only make up a small fraction of the book sales in the country — roughly 10 per cent,” she says, adding, “In India, e-book readership is still restricted to some urban pockets. But as online connectivity improves and e-book readers begin to make their presence felt in rural areas, and more content in regional languages becomes available on platforms such as the Kindle, the numbers are bound to go up. Presently, most people pick up the international e-versions of physical books, since they are not easily available here.”
Things are not vastly different outside our borders and Karthika believes that in the West, especially in the Americas, e-book readership seems to have plateaued — on account of people getting over the novelty of e-readers. “In Europe, on the other hand, physical books have always been very popular and e-books have never caught the public fancy,” she says. While Karthika feels that people who have read physical books all their lives will continue to pick them up, she admits that the trend may change as millennials are growing up in an era of on-screen reading. “The ability to toggle between fonts and lighting options also makes an e-book reader a go-to option for older people,” she shares.
Karthika herself enjoys the convenience of an e-reader. “I am very old school. However, I am slowly appreciating the utility of the Kindle. I used to carry about six books with me whenever I travelled. Now I can travel light with the e-reader and read manuscripts on the go.”
Audio books is one of the fastest growing segments in the publishing industry in the West. With companies in India roping in celebrities and authors to lend their voices for audio books, will they change the reading experience? “It is very early to predict, since audio books are only gradually making a mark here. I think that some books make the transition very easily, like the children’s books genre. I love listening to horror stories and children’s books in the audio format,” says Karthika, sharing, “One of Salman Rushdie’s masterpieces, Haroun and the Sea of Stories , is my personal favourite in the audio format. The story is narrated by Rushdie himself.”
Listen up, young writers
Chiki Sarkar of Juggernaut on what it takes to ink that deal
• Make your submission email short and concise. You don’t need to tell your life story. It’s the story that you want to publish that matters. Also, format your submission properly. No fancy fonts or single spacing.
• Write original stories. Don’t repeat the western narratives. Surprise your readers. Show us new worlds and cultures.
• Make the first page count. It’ll make all the difference in getting the reader to give you a chance.
• Limit your exposition. If the world of your story is thoughtfully built, it should come through naturally in scene and dialogue, not through pages of explanations.
• Don’t have a young-to-middle-aged, straight, able-bodied male protagonist as default. We want stories about all kinds of people.
• Don’t be dejected by a refusal. ‘No’ from a publisher is not the last word. Keep reading and keep writing.
