‘Believe in global with local flavour’
As publishers around the world digitise their products, Andrew Phillips, COO, Dorling Kindersley, tailors the books according to the format

By Jyotsna Singh
The global economy is in the throes of crisis. After maddening rise in crude oil prices, the financial crisis ripped apart many sectors of the industry. Publishing business has also been feeling the heat. As it is, the cost of paper had been skyrocketing, and now, recession would mean reduced spends on a ‘luxury’ called book. But in midst of economic meltdown, we have reasons to cheer as technology is growing at its own pace and is all set to make our lives more livable. Andrew Phillips, COO, Dorling Kindersley, was in India recently, and shared his optimism about publishing industry and other aspects of economy in an interview with Management compass. Excerpts:

Has global financial meltdown affected the publishing industry?
It’s too early to say anything. Our business has not been affected by the crisis at all in these 11 months of the year… This year has been one of the best for us. But media is reporting that people are visiting the stores less. Maybe now we will also feel the heat, especially in the US and the UK markets. Though there are hardly any reports of job losses in publishing industry, downsizing in other sectors effects us too. If people are fired in huge numbers world over, then there are less customers for books and hence, effect on publishers and authors. Even those who have not lost their jobs feel less secure and plan to lower their expenditure. In the international book fair at Frankfurt this year, I noticed a lot of books on how to save money. So, it indicates the mood of the people.

We have a separate brand of travel books, in 32 languages. Maybe we will face the delayed reactions in some time as people will travel less. But the good news is travel books are read by even those who are not frequent travelers as they like to read about various places and know tourist destinations. When flood took place in New Orleans a few years back, our travel books on that place went out of stock. Definitely no one was visiting New Orleans that time.
The big names in the publishing industry are not affected by the financial meltdown. From my experiences in the UK from where companies like Penguin, DK and HarperCollins operate, I can say that we do not have to worry so far. But as far as independent smaller publishers go, there are some worries. I will suggest that retail should be looked after

Can you please give details of DK and its operations in India?
We have been operating in India for 10 years. We came here 10 years ago for outsourcing for our creative team. The way DK makes books is very labour-intensive. We have 300 people sitting in the UK doing books. It’s not like Penguin where author sits at home and writes the book. Our work is about bringing together an art director and an editorial person and building double page spread on a particular subject. You find pictures and write-ups on these pages. They are visually very appealing. The font style and size differs for different information and write-ups. It depends on the design, graphic design and educational value of the given piece.  A long write-up as well as a caption conveys something significant. It requires involvement of many people sitting together and building these pages. We thought we could use editorial expertise and local designs from India. It gave us extra profit. We now have a team of 140 people in India. They generally build travel books or e-books.

There are other opportunities too for our company here. We are doing many things. One is building products to sell locally. We have launched a series called ‘Monuments in India’. Each book is about a particular site and is16 pages long and it will be sold at the site itself. We will prepare them for international market as well. As a market, India offers a lot of opportunities. We have asked the editorial team here to build the books specifically for the local markets. Another is that we just launched a series of books in Hindi language. These are business books which will be translated in Hindi. The books are about presentations and work life. The team here will also help us build our digital archive. As a publisher we are moving ahead. In addition to printing we are going for digital format — e-books and mobile books. We sell the books globally, in airlines, in educational sector where white boards are used.  There are opportunities in India as well in all these sectors.

DK and Penguin have come together for some publications. What are the points of synergy between the two?
Penguin is typically known for fiction, publishing novels etc. But there are parts of Penguin which are into illustrated non-fiction, like DK. For example Penguin is known for publishing cookery books in the UK. Penguin has a travel brand called Rough Guides and DK has Eyewitness Travel. Penguin is also a family purchase. DK is also into such books. DK’s catalogue generally is family reference and illustrated non-fiction. DK’s travel books comprise 20-25 per cent of its total sales. So, there are points of synergy as there are some categories common to both and broadly speaking, I think what is important is that both are family purchases.

Many books are available in developing countries at lower rates than the original prices. What are the mechanisms to price a book at a lower rate?
There are a couple of ways to do it. One is that the publisher decides to make less of money out of a publication. This is not a great idea. But one can use money made through a book to reduce cost of the other. The other way is to reprint a book to reduce the cost for local market. This is done by reducing the quality of paper. But DK cannot do that. Our books have illustrations and have strong visuals. Low quality paper restricts us to some extent. Other problem we face by providing a book on special price is that those books are sold out of India also and corrupt the market outside. If the same book is found in UK at prices fixed for India it’s not good. One more way is to publish a book in local language. When I came to India two years back I realised that our publication in other languages was completely missing. We did a bilingual Hindi-English dictionary. It was a success. We now plan to have dictionaries for Gujarati and Punjabi also. In local languages, we are looking at translations, not really original writings. But the translator has to edit the text to maintain visual effects.

Industry is talking a lot about local vs global these days. When you talk about books in regional languages, what is your take on that?
Most of the publishers are regional in nature. They have offices in different countries which look after the local publishing and engage local authors. Contrary to this DK is a global publisher. People from the head office travel around the world. We publish in subjects which have global appeal, eg volcanoes. Though we do not publish textbooks, these are supplementary readings. We sell one million copies every six months in Korea. We also publish books suiting local needs, but the concepts are global in nature, eg our books on medicine and cookery, where the treatments and recipes are from all over the world but they are refined according to the local needs and tastes. We engage a local author to write the foreword. So, we believe in global with local flavour.

What genre of books is sold the most in the world market today? 
Fiction. Story books and novels are read the most. In fiction there is a possibility of a hit. You can have a hit movie and an okay movie. Similarly, you can also have a bestseller novel and a not too popular novel. Other books do not become popular in the same fashion. There is no reason why everyone would suddenly want to read about volcanoes! But the advantage is that they sell over a long period and remain relevant for an extended period. Other than fiction, travel books are read a lot as opportunities to visit places globally has increased in last few decades.  

The latest in media is digital media. Is it affecting print media adversely? What are the technical aspects of having books in different formats?
If we let digital media take over print media, then we will be killing ourselves. DK is in the process of publishing internet books, mobile books and e-books. We want to use these modes to increase sales of our printed books. In any case, different modes of providing information have different nuances and usages. I will give an example. We print a book on a famous tourist place. A traveler visiting the site will require directions to reach on mobile, which we can provide through satellite navigation. Showing a part of the book on TV inside a flight might arouse interest of a child in buying the book. So, the same information is used differently depending on the purpose and mode. A publisher like DK will originate a lot of information and put different sections in different media. The age group and cultural background of the reader also comes into play. The target audience is different and hence, print and digital are complementary and not at conflict with each other. Even if people read more on digital, it does not harm the ultimate aim of providing information because a library can buy printed material or digitized e-books. It will depend on pricing too.

As far as technical aspects go, you need to think of various formats. You have to tailor your product according to the platform. Use as many features of the platform as possible to make the product compelling. You can use connectivity, global satellite navigation etc on a mobile phone. You can use the facility of playing video and audio on a computer and make it an interactive e-book. What is important is that our books should be tagged such that they are exportable in different formats. The packing is called XML. That’s the technical way of tagging a page so that it can be transferred in a database, taken out of it…In short it is a format that will make it work on a web page, or on a mobile phone, or in any other format. A team of 30 in India helped us forming a base in XML. We’ll try to sell the digital books in India as well.

What are the steps involved for an author to get a book published?
For a work of fiction you need to have an agency or an agent who can work for you and contact publishers and work out a publishing deal for you. For other subjects like earthquakes and marine flora and fauna, publishers generally approach an expert to write. Otherwise someone can approach the publisher and say ‘I have a great idea. See if you can publish it.’ Now-a-days you can also put write-ups on internet and if you get noticed you might be given a chance by some publishing house. 

The four essentials for selling a book are PR skills, more and more online marketing, working with the retailers and ensuring that your book is in catalogue of booksellers. Presence in market is crucial. In London, books of many new authors are available in underground stations and bus stops. This is a form of advertising.

This reminds me, all products, including countries, are advertised on TV. Why aren’t books marketed through TV?
It’s because books are low price commodities.