The Hindu Business Line : Ink positive

Whoever heard of writers earning handsome royalties, that too for Tamil non-fiction? Or a fledgling enterprise breaking century-old traditions and actually handing out advance royalty cheques as soon as a book hits the stands?

All this and more is what Kizhakku Pathippagam of Mylapore, Chennai, has delivered in less than two years of existence and 85 titles. Its standards of rigour are a revelation to authors unused to having facts checked, spellings of names standardised across the book, text edited to add verisimilitude or cut away flab. Its production values and inventory management are refreshingly different in an industry notorious for slap-dash, often tasteless ways.

Launched in February 2004, two of the people at New Horizon Media or Kizhakku Pathippagam — Badri Seshadri and K. Sathyanarayanan — were also behind the success of Cricinfo, a comprehensive cricket Web site. While Sathya continues to work at Cricinfo, Badri quit in April 2005 to become chief executive officer of the publishing house.

When the dotcom bubble burst, Badri and Sathya began looking for a new project.

It helped that they had just turned bloggers and created Tamil user groups, newsgroups and blogs. They got in touch with many Tamil authors and began understanding the Tamil publishing landscape.

The Kizhakku promoters also attended the February 2004 Chennai book fair. People, including editor Pa Raghavan and his team, were hired and assured a year of support. Within that period, 51 titles were brought out and Kizhakku was an important presence in the 2005 Chennai book fair. The customer response was impressive. Many appreciated the quality of the books and the range of topics covered.

The company treats authors with respect. The author is paid a royalty immediately after the first print run. Further royalties are paid at the end of the year.

A professional relationship is struck with the author as soon as the publishing decision is made. "We sit with the author," says Badri, an IIT-Madras alumnus and a PhD from Cornell University, "discuss the structure of the book, and arrive at the ideal size for the book."

Pricing is again a well-thought out exercise. "A biography is priced either Rs 50 or Rs 60, unless it is a religious biography, which is priced Rs 70 or Rs 80, as the readership is a more committed, motivated lot. To achieve the right pricing, we sometimes have to reduce the number of pages, which involves some tight editing."

Equal attention is paid to the quality of content as well. "If the subject of a biography is portrayed in the first draft as a hero with no flaws, we make sure he is presented more realistically, warts and all. When we published the Dhirubhai Ambani story, the first edition glorified him somewhat, but in the second, we corrected that. We do not pass judgement on a person's character but present facts — good or bad. We may change the language with the author's consent, or have the text rewritten, or made concise.

"We lay much emphasis on the title. Alla allap panam (loosely translates as `Tons of Money') is preferred to `A Guide to the Stock Market'; Dollar Desam to `Americavin arasial varalaru' (America's political history)."

Kizhakku has positioned itself somewhere between the current mainstream (for instance, Vanathi, Kannadasan, Narmada) and highbrow publishers like Kalachuvadu or Uyirmai. "We are not particular that the writing should be literary. We may bring out biographies of Chaplin, Khushwant Singh, Virender Sehwag and Narayana Murthy or books on art. We treat all our efforts as knowledge-driven. The result should be more titles and more copies of each title selling."

The general focus has been on non-fiction. "We have not yet done anything on fine arts, children's books, or current affairs and politics. We hope to cover all that by becoming a larger entity, hiring more people. Our roadmap for the next few years is to build a strong sales network in Tamil Nadu and then replicate it in other states."

One of Kizhakku's strengths is good inventory management. Each print run is kept low at 500-600 or 1,000-1,200, even if the book sells rapidly. Multiple print runs are handled comfortably.

The group is also entering retail book sales by floating a separate entity to set up a chain of bookstores. It aims to spread countrywide and, at the same time, retain the neighbourhood-store flavour. It would harness the power of IT to manage multiple locations effectively. It also plans publication in multiple languages, so that the regional outlets would cater predominantly to the local populace.

Kizhakku Pathippagam has proved that quality books can sell and make profits.

Picture by Bijoy Ghosh

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