Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Jul 15, 2006
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Jul 15, 2006 |
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Marketing
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Strategy Variety - Children & Parenting Manoj Prakashan forays into children's books Sravanthi Challapalli
Chennai , July 14 There's another new entrant in the world of children's books, and one that's taking a different route to marketing itself. The Chennai-based Manoj Prakashan is launching the Book Monster Club for children in the 1-14 years age group. The books will be sold only to club members and will not retail through stores, at least for the first six months of their launch. Speaking to Business Line, Ms Pooja Sharma, Managing Director, Pages for Ages (a division within Manoj Prakashan set up so that the publisher could go beyond textbooks for children), said the club was the company's `edutainment' initiative. The club aims to create a community of readers and offer a unique interactive reading experience. The club has already managed to enrol 40,000 school children as members across the four metros, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Kochi. Members get a discount of 20 per cent on the cover price of the books available through the Book Monster Club. Audio books are also available. A lot of events are being planned through the club, beginning with Bangalore and Mumbai. It will even be advertised on Cartoon Network and Pogo from August, said Ms Sharma.
Tie-ups with publishers
Pages for Ages has tied up with 15 publishers, foreign and Indian, to publish books for children (and even adults) in various categories - encyclopaedias, folk tales, travelogues, comics and stories. The club also offers a buy-back scheme for books where members can return old books for credit points redeemable against future purchases. The books returned will be given to underprivileged children. The company is tying up with NGOs for this project, Ms Sharma said. To attract more members, Pages for Ages will set up temporary kiosks at retail outlets where children can enrol themselves. Manoj Prakashan made it to the Limca Book of Records last year for its Discovery series of textbooks, a concept it came up with in the year 2000. These are term-wise textbooks, which combine different subjects in one cover so that the child's burden of a heavy schoolbag becomes lighter. The concept has been quick to catch on, with other publishers following suit.
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