J.K. Rowling’s new book, The Casual Vacancy , was released worldwide on September 27 at precise embargoed times. But, there was nothing casual about the printing of the book by Hachette India. In fact, the publisher went to great lengths to keep the printing of the book at ManipalTech, in the education hub near the temple town of Udupi, under wraps.

As Nagendra Rao, Vice-President (Marketing), ManipalTech, says, in this project, secrecy was of utmost importance to make sure that no copy of the book, printed in August, went out.

While earlier releases of books such as those in the Harry Potter series or Dan Brown were also done under the cloak of secrecy, they were always imported books. Thomas Abraham, Managing Director, Hachette India, says for the first time a high-profile, high-security print job of a book was done in India.

It all began when a team from Little, Brown, the publishers of the book, flew into India with disks containing the text and covers of the book. Abraham flew down to Manipal (the content was not to be transferred online at any time) with the disks and oversaw the making of the plates for printing and secured the disks, after which Hachette's production director Priya Singh took over with virtually a 24x7 print management operation planned to the minute.

Rao says the printing operations were then completely sealed with all areas under cameras. All staff, says Abraham, was given zone-coloured IDs and they could only move in restricted zones, not beyond. The jackets were printed in advance and put away with only a handful of people in the loop.

Once hardcover binding was done, a team of over 100 people manually jacketed the books and the operation to print 80,000 copies on FSC paper (which meets international environment-friendly specifications) was completed in eight days.

The books were then moved to a secure warehouse, whose lock was sealed and signed across by Abraham. It was kept under lock and key for three weeks till the book’s release. Secured containers were sent by logistics company Safexpress to different locations around the country. A day before the launch, they were moved into smaller vehicles to reach the stores. Online retailers such as Flipkart got the books earlier for individual buyer packing but again delivered to secure locations.

Now that the book’s out, how’s it doing? Abraham says the 73,000-copy subscription (on-release sales orders) is a new record for adult hardback fiction (remember Rowling's Harry Potter holds the record across all categories) but it will take a couple of weeks to gauge the full response to this offering.

> Vinay.kamath@thehindu.co.in

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