Some of my learning with Kannada Publishing space over the last 15 months:
1> Demand for good Kannada books exist and it exists in a big way than most people think. Writers who are social media savvy and have a direct engagement with their readers have found good success.
1> Demand for good Kannada books exist and it exists in a big way than most people think. Writers who are social media savvy and have a direct engagement with their readers have found good success.
2> Government's support for Kannada books through procuring for government libraries has a perverse incentive to push crappy content and keeps many frivolous publishers in the business. This has also made most publishers complacent.
3> Most publishers are risk averse and are happy with the status quo of recovering print cost using library route and then selling remaining copies in a trickle down fashion. Net loser: Writer
4> Most publishers are not interested to publish new writers who may have an excellent story to tell. Most talented new comers exit after publishing a couple of books losing some money.
5> Distribution chain for Kannada books is broken. We have hardly 62 book stores across the state in comparison to over 18k wine shops in the state! The demand for books reflects in annual sahitya sammelana book sales where in 3 days, typically 5-10 crores worth of sale happens.
6> Most publishers had an aversion towards going digital. They feared digital as something that always comes for free and thought going digital will cannibalize their print business with no protection for their IP.
7> Cheaper smart phones, cheaper data rate and the wide reach for UPI based payments have sort of created a ripe ground for entry of digital publishing ventures like MyLang. Vividlipi, Aalisiri are other 2 ventures in this space.
8> In 5 months of going live, MyLang has an app install base of 45,000 users, 300+ titles (ebooks/audiobooks) by 100+ authors. 80% of users are in the age group of 15-40 yrs thus breaking a myth that only people with gray hairs read Kannada books.
9> Corona lockdown has also led people to rediscover the joy of reading and the habit formation of digital books is picking up quite well. Publishers are also realising that digital is the future and are slowly turning to digital.
10> In 5 years from now, I anticipate at least 8-10 players in the digital publishing space for Kannada (which might include big names like Amazon Kindle too). Digital books may constitute 15-20% of the over pie (of around 150 crores).
