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OFFSHORE
PUBLISHING
Budgeting WordsAre
book professionals seeing a boom? Or a bubble?
By Ashok
Malik
 Macaulay's
children have a new job option. For the past few weeks, there has been a
strange buzz among the copy editorial classes of Delhi's highly incestuous
publishing and media industry. Be careful about being spotted in the
environs of the Dorling-Kindersley (DK) office, it cautions, if they see
you, they'll hire you.
It's probably the sort of story the anyway voluble Bikram Grewal would
tell with gusto. The managing director (MD) of DK (India) -- local arm of
the London-based education and entertainment publisher -- Grewal is also
the man masterminding what would seem to be a manic recruitment spree.
"If a person's good, he has to work for us," he announces,
adding with glee that he's offered salary raises of "between 40 and
100 per cent", giving "kids fresh from the National Institute of
Design even Rs 20,000-25,000". Shekhar Bhatia has left the Asian Age
editor's office to become DK's publishing director; in April, having
retired from Penguin, Zamir Ansari becomes DK's marketing chief.
| DK(INDIA) |
BRITANNICA |
Claims
to have saved its parent company -- 5 million in 1999-2000.
Has hired 100 editors, designers and plans
to have over 300 people on board by the year-end.
Despite DK's woes, Grewal is upbeat. |
Reckons
print content in India costs 25 per cent what it would in the US.
Web content costs half.
45 copy editors in Delhi run the
global Britannica Internet guide.
Wadhwa has online and offline plans.
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Grewal's business principle is simple -- India's English language and
related skills are a comparative advantage and save costs: "A typical
DK page would cost -- 1,200-1,500 (Rs 84,000-1,05,000) to produce in the
UK. Here we do it for -- 300-600." Next comes the delicious
afterthought, "If the rupee becomes stronger, I'm out of
business." Some of the "40-odd" books Grewal's produced are
aimed entirely at an overseas market, "such as our book on baseball
or GSCE workbooks for British schoolchildren".
It sounds perfect, you'd say. It would if it wasn't for the fact that
Grewal's parent company is floundering. DK (International) is up for sale
-- publisher W.H. Smith and Internet access provider Freeserve are said to
be prime suitors -- after incurring a pre-tax loss of -- 25 million for
the half-year ended December 31, 1999.
The larger mess puts question marks on DK's future in India. Whoever the
new owners may be, Grewal is certain the Indian operations will only
strengthen. "Due to cost cutting in London," he says, "the
pressure is on me to expand even further."
Others are not so sure. A rival publisher says, "When there's new
management, business plans change. Indian editorial costs may be lower but
so are quality standards. You may not be happy in the long run."
Aalok Wadhwa, md, Encyclopaedia Britannica (India), hopes not. The
Chicago-based Britannica has hired 50 editors -- and a network of 600
freelances -- to revise the south Asia section of the encyclopaedia's next
edition, due in 2002. The backroom work for the Britannica Internet Guide,
the online recommendation of 150,000 web sites, is Delhi-based. From
editing copy to monitoring web content, there's an emerging market for the
Indian mind.
The nascence of "offshore publishing" in India would suggest
this. Tentative analogies are being drawn with the "offshore
printing" boom in the presses of Hong Kong, Singapore and the Far
East in the '70s and later in China.
Since every silver lining must come accompanied by a dark cloud, there are
two caveats to enter here. First, the success or otherwise of DK, its
search for quality editors -- not exactly an abundant species -- will
determine whether others set up shop here.
Second, when somebody like David Davidar, CEO of Penguin, says, "Not
one editor has left me for dk. We offer them a well-rounded long-term
career," he is probably making an oblique reference to the nature of
work at dk. One employee calls herself the "highest paid sub-editor
in the country", muttering that her job is only to fit words into a
London-crafted template. Ask Grewal about this and he says, "We have
a successful lexigraphic (words and pictures) formula. So why reinvent the
wheel?" Others carp about "virtual wage slavery". Wherever
he is, Macaulay must be smirking.
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