Penguin India’s CEO & president, Mike Bryan, has some clear-cut plans to expand the company’s publishing business.
There are many landmarks in this list. Penguin, the world’s leading publisher and a part of Pearson Plc, completes its 75 years of existence this year. Penguin India CEO & President Mike Bryan, one of the world’s richest collectors of fountain pen, completes his 30th year on the company’s rolls. And he will soon travel back to his home in England to celebrate his father’s 90th birthday. Last, but not the least, Penguin India this month will launch its first branded store in Bangalore called “Penguin Pageturners”.
The store will have 80 per cent Penguin books and the rest will be a mix from other publishers. Bryan is in talks with franchisee in Kerala for the next branded store there. The roadmap ahead will depend on how these two stores do. “It was only by chance that we hit upon this idea. We will now look at the response at the two stores and then take a call on it,” says Bryan.
Bryan is a busy man these days. Coming a long way from running a bookshop in downtown Liverpool, England, before joining Penguin International and turning pages after pages for the publishing company in Singapore, Spain and Italy, Bryan is now firmly set on rolling out Penguin India’s new initiatives. From print to web and mobile — Bryan has set his strategy clear.
“India has grown as a market for strategic publishing. A dozen business books every year, children’s books and limited editions are going to be the mainstay for Penguin in India,” says Bryan. Business, given the rise in prosperity, is a growing genre. For Penguin, Bryan feels his bestsellers have been books by Subroto Bagchi, Nandan Nilekani and N R Narayan Murthy. Later this year Penguin will launch Nanovation — Focus on Tata. “It will be a book on Tata as a brand, moving from philanthropy to the corporation,” says Bryan. Others too have felt the growing demand for business books. HarperCollins, for instance, has come out with two bestsellers: The Maruti Story and Capt Gopinath’s autobiography (Simply Fly: A Deccan Odyssey).
Penguin is dead serious too. Readers of business book are discerning readers. They demand good quality editing and production. This is where Indian publishing has made rapid strides. “Ten years ago, you could tell the difference… now books printed in India are as good as anywhere in the world,” says Bryan. His wife, whom he had met at the Liverpool bookshop before marriage, is the business books editor at Penguin India.
More From This Section
Children’s books are another area that Bryan is excited about. He feels the Indian parents are always aspirational about their children doing well in life. And, therefore, children’s books are in big demand. “We are increasingly looking at publishing books on English, word books, on Maths and books that children like to read,” says Bryan. He adds that Penguin will soon bring out Ash & Tara, an Indian adventure styled on Harry Potter. Some of the other authors who Bryan feels are a success with today’s Indian kids are JK Rowling (Harry Potter), Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl) and Rik Riordan.
He, however, rues the fact that India does not have organised data on the business of books, which could have helped him grow further. “We are, in fact, talking to Nielsen Bookscan, the book market research arm of Nielsen, to roll out some kind of a data on the business,” says Bryan.
Spreading wings
But that hasn’t kept Penguin from spreading its wings. With 10 to 20 per cent estimated growth in the digital medium, Bryan is banking heavily on the “add-on business of web and mobile” to drive up revenues. Bryan is thus running a pilot on SMS-based book service for authors like Khushwant Singh, Shobhaa De and Sachin Tendulkar. For this, he has tied up with all the major telecommunication service providers. He promises the mobile service to be more sophisticated by the next year and a subscription-based downloadable model in place. “We are talking to the leading mobile operators and service providers to streamline an advanced-technology based book service model.”
Bryan, of course, is not entirely against mass-market books. Incidentally, Penguin India has launched Shobhaa De imprints for the market. He says books on lifestyle, Bollywood and Page Three surrounding a lot of personalities are yet another strategy of Penguin to penetrate the Indian market.
But if anyone thought Penguin in India was all about English, with an impeccably mannered British gentleman of the kind of Bryan at its helm, one should think again. Penguin is fast ramping up its business of Hindi books in the country. “The business of Hindi books is good and growing. It only suffers because of the unorganised retail market for books in India,” says Bryan. Malayalam is another language in which Penguin is concentrating, with a co-publishing contract with the Manorama group in Kerala well in place.
But what will differentiate Penguin from others, Bryan believes, is its thrust on spotting Indian authors. “We have an expert team of 12 commissioning editors who are constantly exploring new authors from wherever the written word is,” says Bryan. He feels Jimmy the Terrorist by Omair Ahmed, an Indian author, stands a good chance to win the next Booker Prize.