One of the biggest names in English-language publishing in India, Ravi Singh is well-known for his association both with Penguin Books, where he spearheaded the expansion of and variety in the list of books published, as well as at the Aleph Book Company, where his touch was evident in the immaculately edited and produced titles that he published with co-founder David Davidar.
After resigning from Aleph following the controversy over the temporary withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism, Singh set up his own publishing company, in partnership with book trade veteran Manas Saikia. The new company, Speaking Tiger, will publish its first titles in February 2015, a bare six months after it was set up.
Excerpts from an interview with Singh.
Q: From the biggest English-language trade publisher Penguin to the boutique Aleph, you've operated at both ends of the spectrum. Where will Speaking Tiger be placed in this continuum?
A: Speaking Tiger will be somewhere in between the two. Not too small, certainly, because then you don’t have the resources or adequate visibility in the market to do the best for your books and authors.
Q: Who are the people behind Speaking Tiger? Who's on your team?
A: Manas Saikia, who was till recently head of Cambridge University Press India, chose me as his partner to start a new trade list. It was just the two of us for a couple of months. Now the team comprises Renuka Chatterjee, consulting editor, who was associate editor with Penguin India and chief editor with HarperCollins, Roli and Westland; Usha Jha, head of sales, who was head of customer service at Penguin; Anurag Basnet, senior editor, who worked with Katha, Penguin and Rupa-Aleph before this; Kausalya Saptharishi, who was a commissioning editor with Rupa; and Puja Ahuja, head of design, who has worked with Outlook and with Penguin, where she was part of the fantastic team led by Bena Sareen.
I’m also excited about three young colleagues who’ve joined us recently: G. Janani as editorial assistant, and Shailza Rai and Vivek Surendran as marketing and publicity executives. Janani and Shailza trained at Seagull and Vivek brings online marketing experience from his time with HT.
Q: What are your targets in terms of the number of books you'll publish in the first three years? And whom have you signed on already?
A: We’ll publish 35 books this year, 50 in 2016 and grow to about 80 by our third year. How much we grow beyond that will depend entirely on whether we find enough good books to publish.
Among the authors we’ll publish in 2015-16 are Ruskin Bond, Jerry Pinto, Mahesh Bhatt, Omair Ahmad, Harsh Mander, Chetan Raj Shrestha, Nayantara Sahgal, Gurcharan Das, Wendy Doniger, Alka Pande, Anubha Bhonsle, Nandita Haksar, Ranjit Hoskote, Pepita Seth, Malvika Rajkotia, Edna Fernandes, Madhu Jain, Nirupama Dutt, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Susmita Dasgupta, Shyam Bhatia, Ashwin Parulkar, Ranjana Sengupta and Ruchira Gupta.
Translations will be an important part of the Speaking Tiger list, and among our first titles are translations of Daya Pawar’s Marathi classic Baluta (translated by Jerry Pinto) and Syed Mujtaba Ali’s brilliant travel book Deshe Bideshe (translated by Nazes Afroz). Later in the year we’ll publish translations of Tagore (by Arunava Sinha) and Indra Bahadur Rai (by Prawin Adhikari).
Q: How will Speaking Tiger differentiate itself? Do you plan to build a distinct brand position?
A: I think a good publishing list is one that accommodates diversity, a variety of voices. My colleagues and I don’t worry too much about being distinct; exclusivity is often another name for self-indulgence. Niche is all right, but Speaking Tiger is a trade publisher, so we’ll publish across genres. What we will ensure is that no book we publish, whether literary or commercial, is badly written or plain boring. And there’ll be many new voices.
Q. What segments are you looking to publish in? Will it be one imprint or several?
A: In all segments, except the strictly academic. We have no plans for different imprints yet. We may, at some point, have a separate division for books in Indian languages other than English.
Q. What are the biggest challenges for publishers today in general and for Speaking Tiger in particular?
A: Rising trade discounts and piracy are old challenges. And the book market here continues to be price sensitive. A recent development that isn’t good for books and reading is the manner in which a handful of authors are beginning to monopolise the resources – money, time, energy – of the industry. That’s bad news for new writers, for different kinds of writing, for quality writing. I think publishers are as much to blame for this.
A particular challenge for independent Indian publishers like Speaking Tiger is that we don’t have the benefit of an international list coming to us from the larger group – no Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, Paulo Coelho or Khaled Hosseini. We also don’t have the parent company or sister companies to pool resources with when a large advance needs to be paid for a major author. But these aren’t insurmountable challenges.
Q: Are you going to be a Profit & Loss-account-led publisher, or will you operate on the principle that good books will do well?
A: No, we won’t be entirely P&L-led, but we certainly do want to be profitable. Our authors would want that too. Most of the time good, accessible books will indeed do well. But not every book can be a best-seller. If we get the mix right and pay attention to the marketing and distribution of our books we should be okay.
Q: Will you bid at book auctions? Are you looking at buying established high-profile authors, or will you mostly build from scratch?
A: For the first few years at least won’t get into auction situations. It won’t always be possible, of course, so we’ll just be intelligent about it. It’s possible to build a good list without paying large sums of money. High-profile authors don’t always demand huge advances. New authors or established names - they usually want a committed, imaginative publisher.
Q: Being a new publisher, you don’t have a backlist. What are the positives and negatives of that?
A: There are no negatives to having a backlist, so we’ll be looking to build one from the start.
Q: Does the increasing shift to e-commerce and the corresponding drop in the number of bookshops impact a new publisher like yourself positively or adversely?
A: At this time I don’t think there’s an adverse impact. In the future, there may be. Any monopolistic trend would be bad for publishers, and not just for smaller or independent publishers. But I’m confident that bookshops will survive in the long run. It’s important for us to work with all available sales channels to ensure they’re all available to us and they all flourish.
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After resigning from Aleph following the controversy over the temporary withdrawal of Wendy Doniger’s On Hinduism, Singh set up his own publishing company, in partnership with book trade veteran Manas Saikia. The new company, Speaking Tiger, will publish its first titles in February 2015, a bare six months after it was set up.
Excerpts from an interview with Singh.
Q: From the biggest English-language trade publisher Penguin to the boutique Aleph, you've operated at both ends of the spectrum. Where will Speaking Tiger be placed in this continuum?
A: Speaking Tiger will be somewhere in between the two. Not too small, certainly, because then you don’t have the resources or adequate visibility in the market to do the best for your books and authors.
Q: Who are the people behind Speaking Tiger? Who's on your team?
A: Manas Saikia, who was till recently head of Cambridge University Press India, chose me as his partner to start a new trade list. It was just the two of us for a couple of months. Now the team comprises Renuka Chatterjee, consulting editor, who was associate editor with Penguin India and chief editor with HarperCollins, Roli and Westland; Usha Jha, head of sales, who was head of customer service at Penguin; Anurag Basnet, senior editor, who worked with Katha, Penguin and Rupa-Aleph before this; Kausalya Saptharishi, who was a commissioning editor with Rupa; and Puja Ahuja, head of design, who has worked with Outlook and with Penguin, where she was part of the fantastic team led by Bena Sareen.
I’m also excited about three young colleagues who’ve joined us recently: G. Janani as editorial assistant, and Shailza Rai and Vivek Surendran as marketing and publicity executives. Janani and Shailza trained at Seagull and Vivek brings online marketing experience from his time with HT.
Q: What are your targets in terms of the number of books you'll publish in the first three years? And whom have you signed on already?
A: We’ll publish 35 books this year, 50 in 2016 and grow to about 80 by our third year. How much we grow beyond that will depend entirely on whether we find enough good books to publish.
Among the authors we’ll publish in 2015-16 are Ruskin Bond, Jerry Pinto, Mahesh Bhatt, Omair Ahmad, Harsh Mander, Chetan Raj Shrestha, Nayantara Sahgal, Gurcharan Das, Wendy Doniger, Alka Pande, Anubha Bhonsle, Nandita Haksar, Ranjit Hoskote, Pepita Seth, Malvika Rajkotia, Edna Fernandes, Madhu Jain, Nirupama Dutt, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, Susmita Dasgupta, Shyam Bhatia, Ashwin Parulkar, Ranjana Sengupta and Ruchira Gupta.
Translations will be an important part of the Speaking Tiger list, and among our first titles are translations of Daya Pawar’s Marathi classic Baluta (translated by Jerry Pinto) and Syed Mujtaba Ali’s brilliant travel book Deshe Bideshe (translated by Nazes Afroz). Later in the year we’ll publish translations of Tagore (by Arunava Sinha) and Indra Bahadur Rai (by Prawin Adhikari).
Q: How will Speaking Tiger differentiate itself? Do you plan to build a distinct brand position?
A: I think a good publishing list is one that accommodates diversity, a variety of voices. My colleagues and I don’t worry too much about being distinct; exclusivity is often another name for self-indulgence. Niche is all right, but Speaking Tiger is a trade publisher, so we’ll publish across genres. What we will ensure is that no book we publish, whether literary or commercial, is badly written or plain boring. And there’ll be many new voices.
Q. What segments are you looking to publish in? Will it be one imprint or several?
A: In all segments, except the strictly academic. We have no plans for different imprints yet. We may, at some point, have a separate division for books in Indian languages other than English.
Q. What are the biggest challenges for publishers today in general and for Speaking Tiger in particular?
A: Rising trade discounts and piracy are old challenges. And the book market here continues to be price sensitive. A recent development that isn’t good for books and reading is the manner in which a handful of authors are beginning to monopolise the resources – money, time, energy – of the industry. That’s bad news for new writers, for different kinds of writing, for quality writing. I think publishers are as much to blame for this.
A particular challenge for independent Indian publishers like Speaking Tiger is that we don’t have the benefit of an international list coming to us from the larger group – no Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, Paulo Coelho or Khaled Hosseini. We also don’t have the parent company or sister companies to pool resources with when a large advance needs to be paid for a major author. But these aren’t insurmountable challenges.
Q: Are you going to be a Profit & Loss-account-led publisher, or will you operate on the principle that good books will do well?
A: No, we won’t be entirely P&L-led, but we certainly do want to be profitable. Our authors would want that too. Most of the time good, accessible books will indeed do well. But not every book can be a best-seller. If we get the mix right and pay attention to the marketing and distribution of our books we should be okay.
Q: Will you bid at book auctions? Are you looking at buying established high-profile authors, or will you mostly build from scratch?
A: For the first few years at least won’t get into auction situations. It won’t always be possible, of course, so we’ll just be intelligent about it. It’s possible to build a good list without paying large sums of money. High-profile authors don’t always demand huge advances. New authors or established names - they usually want a committed, imaginative publisher.
Q: Being a new publisher, you don’t have a backlist. What are the positives and negatives of that?
A: There are no negatives to having a backlist, so we’ll be looking to build one from the start.
Q: Does the increasing shift to e-commerce and the corresponding drop in the number of bookshops impact a new publisher like yourself positively or adversely?
A: At this time I don’t think there’s an adverse impact. In the future, there may be. Any monopolistic trend would be bad for publishers, and not just for smaller or independent publishers. But I’m confident that bookshops will survive in the long run. It’s important for us to work with all available sales channels to ensure they’re all available to us and they all flourish.