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Macmillan's India chief says that IT tools are a boon to the book business
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EARLY LESSONS: Rajiv Beri: `Most Indians have grown up reading our books in schools' Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy
Macmillan has a finger in every slice of the huge publishing pie. The 162-year-old publishing house and its subsidiary operations work out of 70 countries and bring out books in every conceivable genre — from literary classics to business management and from children's books to best sellers.
In its presence in India since 1892, Macmillan has published several Indian authors, be it Rabindranath Tagore or regional authors in translation. But it's as a publisher of educational books that the publishing house is best known to an average Indian.
"We are happy with the branding," beams Rajiv Beri, Managing Director, Macmillan India. "After all, most Indians have grown up reading our books in schools." In fact, Macmillan plans to stay more strongly focused on it than ever before considering the reforms in the educational sector. The new trend, Beri hopes, would ensure a more prominent role for private publishers. "The critical need of the country is education." He believes that a private publisher such as Macmillan, with its enormous experience in the field, can play a big role in the process of "uplifting education". They soon plan to come up with innovative educational ideas, including using IT tools for long-distance learning. "This could completely transform the traditional idea of a correspondence course."
Big opportunity
Macmillan, in fact, has been double quick in sighting a big opportunity in the IT boom. It has been a pioneer in providing IT-enabled services to other publishers. It's interesting that this service in India was inaugurated in Bangalore by former English Prime Minister Harold Macmillan way back in 1979. Since then Macmillan has been providing a whole range of "back office services" to other publishers. It has updated this service a great deal since those early years, and many U.S. companies have lapped up this outsourcing option now.
Beri is quick to add, though, that all this does not mean that Macmillan is moving away from the business of publishing its own books. "It's a dual challenge," he says. "Our own book publishing wing stays stable." Books will never lose their prime position in our knowledge system, he believes, though "we should use the support value of Internet and multimedia".
Does Macmillan have plans at all of moving in to the regional language market or publishing more serious fiction books? It is already doing educational books in some regional languages, though not in Karnataka "where there is less openness to private publishers". But a greater focus on serious fiction is unlikely. "Serious fiction has limited appeal," says Beri. "We have a different business model, based on high unit sales."
BAGESHREE S.
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