In their first interview after joining hands with Pratilipi, the team of the just-resurrected publishing house Westland Books say they are learning to unlearn traditional publishing so that their titles travel in different formats to their readers
Karthika VK, publisher, Westland Books, says the team is still in the process of signing fresh contracts with the authors. While the backlist titles will be out by July end, the new titles will be announced in August. Pic/NishadAlam
There's a sense of relief now, combined with a renewed sense of purpose,” shares Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO of Westland Books, when we connect with him over a Zoom call. The last few months has seen his publishing house wade through periods of shock, gloom and uncertainty after Amazon on February 1 announced the “difficult decision” of shutting down Westland, which it had acquired from the Tatas in 2017. With that, a five-year association abruptly came to an end, putting a pause on the hundreds of books that had emerged out of Westland’s stable. “To actually be in a situation where one is talking about winding down business was unique. It was not a great place to be in. [At the time] we were worried about what the future held for us. What we didn’t anticipate was the groundswell of support. In a way, that gave us hope and motivated us to even think of continuing and restarting Westland,” says Padmanabhan. Among the first people to reach out, he recalls, was Ranjeet Pratap Singh, CEO and co-founder of Bengaluru-based storytelling platform Pratilipi. “He wanted to explore the possibility of working with us.”
Last month, the two companies officially sealed the deal, with Westland Books joining Singh’s team.
Westland was launched in 1994 as a joint venture between East West Books—started in 1962 by Padmanabhan’s family—and Landmark. Pratilipi’s online literature product has over six million stories; it also houses India’s largest online comics product (Pratilipi Comics), largest fullstack podcasting studio (IVM Podcasts), audio book platform (Pratilipi FM) and the fastest growing creator merchandising company (Grow91). Singh says publishing had always been on his mind. “In our mind though, that was a conversation for three to four years from now,” he says. “But when the news [of Westland shutting down] broke out, we wanted to see if there was anything potentially possible. We had conversations with Amazon, as well as Gautam and Karthika VK [publisher, Westland]. We liked them enough, and fortunately, they liked us too.”
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Gautam Padmanabhan and Ranjeet Pratap Singh
The new partnership won’t mean a major shift, says Singh. Editorial freedom will be given utmost priority. “Our thought process at Pratilipi is to let teams operate independently. I don’t know when I last pinged Gautam or Karthika about something. What we do is to find the best way for a story to travel to as many people as possible. So if we have a great story on hand, we will try and leverage that in as many formats as possible. So that instead of just 10,000 people reading a book, we can get three million to. That’s the only thing that will really change.” Would that mean that Pratilipi writers also get right of entry into Westland? “Essentially, if a story seems to be doing very well on Pratilipi, we will share that work with the editor concerned at Westland.” But the decision will be theirs alone, he says. “The same applies for Westland. If they think a book can have a life as an audio book, they can approach Pratilipi FM or the IVM team.”
Karthika calls the learnings from the transition incredible. “There were so many writers, booksellers and readers, who came out in support... we discovered that the work we did was important, at least to some people beyond our circle. And to be able to continue and extend that was a really
good feeling.”
Several writers, says Karthika, will continue to work with Westland. Barring a few, including leading names like Chetan Bhagat, Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi, who made up their most popular roster and formed the cream of bestseller lists. “I think we didn’t even hope or anticipate that as many authors, who stayed would stay with us. Because, it was clearly a time of confusion... they had no real way of knowing that we would have a future,” says Karthika. “We had the solidly supportive writers of course, who said they were not going anywhere, and waiting to see what would happen. Some waited till the rights reverted to them [on March 31]. There were many who immediately got swarmed by offers from other publishing houses, and got deals that were too good to refuse. I guess each one responded to the situation as they saw best.”
The team is still in the process of signing fresh contracts with the authors. The plan, he says, is to retain all the imprints, which include Tranquebar, Context, Eka, Red Panda, Westland Non-Fiction, Westland Sport and Westland Business. The backlist, says Karthika, should be out by July end. “We’ve literally started sending books to press in the last few days. We will continue to bring out titles that are running short in stores, and need quick resupplying. So, we will start with those.” The new catalogue will be announced in August, and out in September. “Most of them are already in print or editing stage.” Karthika says that the space Westland finds itself in is really interesting. “We are having very exciting and challenging conversations, which we feel we could have had before, with people producing content in other forms. I remember Gautam and I would constantly talk about how we should be pitching book rights for audio and video, or podcast or so on. It was a little dream in our heads. But we didn’t have the energy or access. Now, we have all these colleagues around us, who have the experience, and know how to do it. We know how to publish books, but now we are learning what more we can do with them, and how we can reinvent them.”
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