Anish Chandyโ€™s Post

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Literary Agent & Founder at Labyrinth Literary Agency

๐ˆ๐ง๐๐ข๐š ๐๐จ๐จ๐ค/๐’๐ญ๐จ๐ซ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ž๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ข๐ง๐  ๐ˆ๐ง๐๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ๐ซ๐ฒ ๐“๐ซ๐ž๐ง๐๐ฌ - 2022/2023 This was an action packed year with lots of changes. 1. Most major publishers enjoyed their highest ever print book sales in a year 2. Books by online influencers pushing hustle culture really took off, this created a hype bubble, and now sales are beginning to flatten. 3. General Indian fiction and short stories struggled. Some imported fiction (Coleen Hoover) did massive numbers. 4. Book to screen adaptation deals are being planned better by producers instead of the random mass buying like previous years. 5. Book piracy moved from street corners to Instagram. 6. There was significant growth in Indian language audio content sales. 7. Quite a few NFT and Blockchain ideas were pitched. Mostly targeted at a fund raise rather than a revenue model. 8. Podcasters continue to search for monetization models outside of barter & exposure deals. 9. Paper prices have hit cyclical record highs due to various global factors (Ukraine, China), this made publishing of small interesting books unviable. 10. The movie industry got a post-Covid reality check with all stars failing to deliver the numbers. Cross-geography hits like Kantara might be the rule rather than the exception going forward. There are more trends but I've decided to stop at 10, otherwise it'll get too long. #books #publishing #storytelling

Kinjal Parekh

Kotak Securities | NMIMS Global | Bookish Santa

1y

Interesting and insightful! Thanks for sharing! To add on to your 3rd point, imported fictions are promoted very rigourously thoughout media platforms (pushed by the publishers themselves), whereas they shy away when it comes to Indian literature in general (donโ€™t know why - maybe there is some monetary angle here?) As far as I know, readers want to read& explore more of Indian literature but are hardly exposed to the upcoming/new ones.

Thanks for the insights. Your point #1 : are you referring to worldwide market or Indian? Could you throw some light on which genres did well in Indian publishing market.

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Natarajan Nagarajan

Sr Manager (Operations) Examinations Division at Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd., Examination Division

1y

After having spent more than thirty years in this filed, also made a failed attempt to be like you way back in 1990s when for the first time India was talking about IPR, i was saddened to see supply of books in particular particular school and college textbooks faced huge setback. Post covid the trend shared by you was like whiff in the air.ย  During my long stint, i have written and spoken about the need to give book publishers an Industry status to get financial support from financial institutions. If film makers, many of whom are churning trash can be financed why Book makers. One hope in near future publishing getting industry status would find a place.

Aman Arora

General Manager Communications and Marketing

1y

Book piracy moved from street corners to Instagram. - tell me more about this please.

Shalin Tejpal Jain

Springzo ๐Ÿš€ Leverage content marketing to build organic traffic and increase sales

1y

Hey Anish. Thanks for sharing this. I feel podcasting in India will gradually take the route of point 7. Essentially, people launching their podcasts as a branding and relationship-building tool (a leg up from cold emails). What do you think?

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Akanksha Jain

Creative Writer-content creator| Co-founder @Masaalaa Maami, a premium range of pickles

1y

Point no. 2...how are they getting publishers when there is no real content

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Bernard D'sa

Founder & CEO at Raindrops | Building a cutting-edge digital publishing solution powered by blockchain technology | 7x Author | ex-Fortune 500 | Web3 Publishing

1y

Books as NFTs have yet to evolve to it's full capacity, right now it's just the beginning of the love story of books & NFTs on blockchain. The romantic saga will continue, an era of old age of book publishing will still continue to excite people as technology takes over. Raindrops Books Private Limited takes books publishing as a medium to go beyond paperbacks, ebooks/digital books into the world of NFTs.

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Ambi Parameswaran

Independent Brand Strategist - Brand - CEO Coach - Start-Up Mentor - Best-Selling Author - #TEDx Speaker - Podcaster

1y

Thanks for your perspective. I think travel has also boosted book purchases in Airports!

Sahil Gupta

An Entrepreneur & Innovative core Book Publishing Professional with over 10 years experience as Director V&S Publishers

1y

Anish Chandy perfect recap to the year. It truly encapsulates some of the major points of our industry... A point that could be added to this is about book distribution and selling via traditional channels which has only gone downhill as far as my observation goes. Sales may have increased but challenges in selling books especially in smaller cities have only gone up especially with regard to issues like payments and returns.

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