Jaipur (PTI): Looking for new opportunities in a new land, a group of six young and enterprising publishers, who have made a mark by breaking new ground in the British industry and promoting budding writers and concepts, hope to extend their innovation in India.

Part of a 12-day tour to the country facilitated by the British Council in India to enable these publishers and talent-scouters to find more about the publishing scene in an emerging economy, the young entrepreneurs are busy looking for exciting ventures here.

"It is a very interesting time to be in the publishing industry. With a lot of competition in the UK, they are looking for people to diversify ways of entertaining people. This is something we are passionate about," said Peter Collingridge, who founded the Apt Studio in Britain, a consultancy that specialises in planning and producing innovative and commercially focused new media projects.

Collingridge, whose consultancy has popularised the concept of putting books online, has also created animated films featuring over a thousand books to celebrate the 25 years of 4th Estate publishing.

"We have also initiated a process of socialising reading by posting books online and creating a community that comments and discusses them," he said.

On their itinerary is New Delhi, where the group will meet a whole range of publishing houses, and Kolkata, where they will attend the book festival.

"India is exciting for us because it has a huge English-speaking population plus a large market of regional languages and hence translations," said Pablo Rossello, British Council consultant who has helped put together the trip.

The six people who were chosen for the trip are the finalists of the UK Young Publishing Entrepreneur Awards and were given the opportunity to find out more about the publishing industry in an emerging economy, Rossello said.

On the list of entrepreneurs visiting the Jaipur Literature Festival is Davy Nougarede, Director of Heavy Entertainment, UK's largest producer of audiobooks.

"Britain has a tradition of listening to BBC radio and book readings. We decided to cash in on that tradition and people's paucity of time to create a market for audiobooks," Nougarede said.

While a paperback bestseller sells millions of copies, a similar audiobooks sells not more than 8,000 copies. "However, given the low cost of production, it turns out to be a profitable job," he said.

"So while we work on converting a written book into an audio book, we make sure the production is good, lest it fails to convey what the author actually wants to," Nougarede added.

Meanwhile, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, from Manchestor-based publishing house Flipped Eye, specialises in reducing costs of production to make books available to a large number of people.

"By printing books without lamination we realised we could reduce their costs by an amount that will allow 40 per cent more number of people to buy it and this is only one way of optimising costs," he said.