Hyderabad Literary Festival ends, Literally!

Last week's Th Hindu carried a cover story on the Jaipur Literary Festival - making it out to be the biggest in Asia-Pacific of its kind. I was contented enough to just be at Hyderabad Literary Festival just for a day. The setting was impressive and Taramati Baradari was the perfect venue - quite and picturesque with vast spaces full of greenery and hillocks and tombs to comb. What was missing? Probably the buzz and the energy levels. JLF sees a galaxy of star writers and super-star agents but HLF is just beginning and you dont expect first year to be a tour de force. And in Hyderabad - you don't expect book-hungry loves to turn up like eager-beaver birds and hunt for autographs  or surround a much-published author giving tips on overcoming the writer's block. I was lucky to spend a few meaningful moments with long-time friends and better-published writers than me. We chatted up on books galore and publishing trends across the world in that brief session over a mild coffee. I figured out that most of those who turned out as audiences were retired teachers, literature students and academicians. Writers of reckoning were few to be spotted - the ones who came and went were Indraganti Mohana Krishna (director of "Ashta Chemma"- quite a reader and a sensible film-maker ), Saed Mirza, Vidya Rao, Gulzar Sahib and Pavan K Verma ("The Great Indian Middle Class"). I met an interesting lady who is a big gun at  one of the leading publishing houses of an MNC in India. We discussed the best books to read in 2011 and seemed to agree on the increasing trend of seeing Indians writing more about stuff that Indians love to read. We hit off a common note on quite a few trends shaping the Rs.10,000 crore big Indian Publishing Industry. My  acquaintance gave some dope on what are the new themes to work on in Indian Publishing. I mentioned that I anticipated this trend five years back - like in MTV, Indians want to see more of Indians. No wonder, you have more Indians writing on everything from business biographies, health mattes, spirituality, fiction and other matters of nonfiction that have a general appeal. Out of 80,000 titles published in India, the trend is still not reached a stage where Indian books outnumber foreign books - but it is desirably on the upswing. I was nevertheless happy to interact with some friends and new contacts to discuss bibliophilia - amongst other things why and where a mafia works in some capitals of the country, why Ayn Rand still sells more books than any living author today, how to write e-books that can be sold as downloads for the 50 million Amazon Kindle users worldwide. HLF, was not that bad and if only the venue was in the heart of the city, the turnout would have been impressive. I hope this is just the right beginning that will get Hyderabad literal, literally!

Flipkart

Flipkart was the person of the year for book-lovers in 2011 and they are doing great service by delivering books at your doorstep and even offer cash on delivery for those who dont use internet or wary of netbanking. But how long will they bleed? Two things are going against them. A tirade against them by the publishers and a backout by Amazon - the big boys of books. Second thing first, Amazon ha...s now categorically denied any interest in buying flipkart or infibeam in India - they will enter on their own. This means, flipkart will now have to manage on their own despite a One Billion dollar valuation. They have hired their own courier, outsourced cash on delivery, and branched out into mofussil and non-metro locations in the scramble to get volumes that will interest buyers. Lastly, to talk about the tirade by publishers - a few weeks back, all the publishers from Hachette and Random House to Rupa etc. have summoned the owners of flipkart to stop bleeding them and retailers by giving discounts upto 35 per cent. In some cases, the publishers are giving 35 pc discount to Flipkart while they in turn pass on 40 pc discount. Nobody is complaining because the book-buyers are benefiting. But there has to be a sustainable model - and book distribution is not such a lucrative business. While there is boom on one side, there is gloom at the retail side - which I will address separately. Thats a little update on flipkart. In Hyderabad, they do now average 2500 deliveries a day. But sustainability and cash flows will sooner or later be called into question. Thats the point any PE Investor or Suitor will ask. As far as I know, close to Rs.4000 crores of receivables is getting stuck in Educational Institutions who order books but dont have money to pay - I am talking about the Engineering/Technical Institutions who are seeing a massive payment crisis which is actually a scam in disguise. Those who wish to know can PM'me...