Collaboration, not competition the new mantra for publishers
Dipankar Mukherjee of independent publishing house Readomania said the size of their publishing house was a double-edged sword as on one end they could react faster but cash flow came under pressure sooner than the bigger houses. Written by Ruchika Goswamy | Pune | December 14, 2020 12:13:01 am
Alexandra Pringle of Bloomsbury UK said although the pandemic did not mess with publishing as they expected, many bookshops closed and a lot of publishers pooled their publications.
A leaner retail and distribution system, and distribution shifting online will define publishing post Covid, according to leading publishing houses and independent publishers. They were speaking at a session on the third day of the 8th Pune International Literature Festival themed, ‘Publishing in Post Covid Times’. The panel said that agility, innovativeness and better planning will be required in the post
“The classic instance is that of the migrant workers’ situation. For middle-class India, these are people they have associated with on a day-to-day basis, like domestic workers, vendors and factory workers…when suddenly the lockdown happened, these people…started their long trudge back to the villages they had come from. The entire nation’s imagination was seized with the realisation that these fellow citizens of ours were suffering…but their suffering was a reminder to us of our shared obligations to them. It is the response of many that shows that there is a capacity to experience and feel sorrow within the parameters of our national Indian Identity,” said Tharoor.