Look who's taking big steps!

In 2010 when I assisted in curating the literature segment of the Kalaghoda Arts Festival in the city I got to observe independent publishers up close Big publishers had large teams on the ground while independents like Blaft came dragging their big suitcase of books and did all the work themselves Radhika Menon of Tulika escorted her authors and interacted with the crowd The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction and English translations of Surender Mohan Pathakrsquos books both Indie titles were my best purchases that yearBy definition independentindie publishers are independent of the major conglomerates that dominate the book publishing industry as Asad Zaidi of Three Essays Collective puts it ldquoHistorically all publishing was by default independent publishing Big bad capital developed an interest in it only in 19th century after the considerable expansion of readership and emergence of a large public sphererdquoIn addition to Kali Tulika Zubaan Tara and Ravi Dayal the recent years have seen a spate of new indie houses publishing in English Sayoni Basu and Anushka Ravishankar stalwarts in childrenrsquos publishing started Duckbill Basu says ldquoAnushka and I were very clear about the kinds of books we thought should be in existence and which we would love to publish And we talked about this for many years before we signed an MOU with an investor in May 2012 our first books were published in October 2012rdquo Arpita Das was working with Oxford University Press India as commissioning editor History PhilosophyReligion when she decided to start her firm Yoda PressZafar Anjum founded Kitaab in 2005 as a platform to track and celebrate Asian writing in English now Kitaab has ventured into publishing of formats short stories that mainstream publishers show little interest in Asad Zaidi started Three Essays Collective in 2002 ldquoI realised I would soon turn 50 and there was this great Muktibodhian question before me lsquoAb tak kya kiya Jivan kya jiyarsquo rdquoPassion among pagesThe indie lists are a reflection of the ownerpublisherrsquos interests and passion the editorial and production values of some books are almost works of art Translations from regional literature strong feminist voices LGBT literature travelogues memoirs cookbooks short stories and essays on a multitude of social issues and more mdash indie publishers have developed enviable content Impressively four of the five childrenrsquos titles at the Crossword Book Award Shortlist for 2015 were from indie publishers three from Duckbill and one from SWPBUnfortunately most indie published titles never receive prominence mdash on bookshelves in online stores as recommendations or even in media As Anjum puts it ldquoThe drawbacks of being an independent publisher are the drawbacks of being a startup no financial back up distribution issues and hardly any budgets to market your booksrdquo Das rues ldquoThe issue is to stay afloat after paying massive discounts to distributorsrdquoNot having deep pockets translates into smaller lean teams that handle everything from editorial to printing and distribution It also means fewer resources to invest in PR and marketing of books and authors Big corporate houses have the financial muscle and as Zaidi states ldquoMedia coverage has to be begged people shamelessly courted indirectly bought Independents canrsquot afford all this without getting into useless compromisesrdquoIndependent all the wayIndie publishers may publish a diverse set of books but they all have one thing in common mdash tremendous passion and a sense of having made a difference Das recalls ldquoMy heart burst with pride when in 2014 the landmark Supreme Court judgment recognising transgenders in India cited four Yoda Press titlesrdquoBasu sums it up ldquoThe character of Philip Henslowe in the film Shakespeare in Love says repeatedly lsquoI donrsquot know It is a mysteryrsquo I donrsquot know what will sell as an independent publisher each small success is seen as vindication of our choices mdash though we do not feel the need for vindication except on dark saleless days but it is a nice word to userdquo