When two become one

The big merger is done. The important question now that Random House and Penguin are one is this: what happens to the competing imprints? Of course, since the publishing company is now part of the extremely corporatised Bertlesmann — versus the more ‘literary’ Pearson — all decisions will probably be taken at the global headquarters. (A minor cause for alarm: on Sunday, April 6, the Bertlesmann website listed 1745 Broadway, New York, as the world headquarters of Pengiun Random House.) But here in India, publisher Chiki Sarkar and editorial director Meru Gokhale will have to grapple with the problem of resolving the obvious conflicts between Hamish Hamilton (contributed by the erstwhile Penguin) and Vintage (from the former Random House), since they both focus on literary fiction and non-fiction. Will existing authors be kept with their respective imprints? What of new authors and new books being signed up?

Likewise, when it comes to commercial fiction, editorial director Milee Aishwarya will have to work out a balance between Penguin’s Metro Reads and Random House’s Ebury. There is also the matter of choosing between Viking and Penguin Classics for, well, classics. Will the Bertlesmann factor — the conglomerate bought Random House in 1998 — make the Random House imprints prevail over Penguin’s?

Interestingly, although Penguin India was much larger than Random House India in terms of sales and profits, it is mostly the RHI people who are in the senior-most positions. Penguin Random House CEO Gaurav Shrinagesh was the CEO of RHI, for instance, and both Gokhale and Aishwarya were with RHI too, running the literary and commercial imprints, respectively. And Sarkar herself was the editorial head at RHI till she joined Penguin India as publisher. Along with Sarkar, the other Penguin India representatives in the top leadership are the new head of children’s books, Hemali Sodhi — who was earlier head of marketing — and head of sales Ananth Padmanabhan. As Gokhale relocates to India from London, the answers should be evident soon.

Changes are afoot elsewhere too — physically close to the new Penguin Random House office in Gurgaon. Also in Gurgaon, Hachette is seeing off Nandita Aggarwal, who has been its editorial director since the inception of the company. Aggarwal’s place will be taken by Poulomi Chatterjee, who has also been with Hachette India since the beginning. The switchover will come into effect from August 1. Chatterjee has a formidable task ahead, competing not just with the combined strength of the cross-Gurgaon rivals but also with signing up blockbuster local authors, an area where Hachette has not had as much success as others.

Publishers are unusually happy with election season. If book-buyers represented voting choices, the Aam Aadmi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal would be a runaway sooner. His political credo, Swaraj — originally published in Hindi by Harper-Collins — has reportedly crossed one lakh in sales. Collectively, the half-a-dozen or so books on Narendra Modi — mostly lionising him, though a few are critical — may have sold more, of course. Harper-Collins also has a success on its hands with Hindol Sengupta’s 100 Things To Know And Debate Before You Vote . All of which also substantiates the publishing credo that non-fiction outsells fiction by a mile or two in India.

There’s a serious new player in the self-publishing pool, and the people behind it are sure they can make a success of it. Meet Authors Upfront, backed by publishing veterans like Arpita Das — of Yoda Press and the indie bookstore Yodakin, which, sadly, had to close down — Manas Saikia and Manish Purohit. The idea is to enable authors to publish their own books with editorial, packaging, design, distribution and marketing services from the company. Unlike fly-by-night operators in the same game, Authors Upfront, currently four titles old, could probably give some competition to Partridge, which is Penguin Random House’s self-publishing business. Its latest publication, Gas Wars — Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis , by journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta et al, may well become a talking point in today’s political climate.

What’s the biggest change that the editors at Penguin Random House and at HarperCollins — which has also moved into a new office, though just across the road from its old one in Noida, in the National Capital Region — will face? The fact that they will work on the same floor with their colleagues from marketing and sales. As the metaphorical walls crumble, will this mean that the different departments of the companies will find it easier to be on the same page?

Arunava Sinha translates classic and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English. Follow Arunava on Twitter >@arunava

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