Bhupesh Trivedi on the upcoming Indian Magazine Congress

I received this morning as an intro to the Indian Media Observer email newsletter number 53 (http://www.indianmediaobserver.com/):
"IMO Commentary: A time to shake up
I hope the forthcoming Indian Magazine Congress deliberates on this: While the overall readership in India has grown by 15 per cent, the number of print titles has grown by over 200 per cent. Please let me stretch it further - while advertising spend in print publications has grown by 12 per cent, the number of print titles has grown by over 200 per cent. It is a great feeling to be a part of Indian media when there is euphoria all around, when the salaries of business managers and journalists are growing by 100%, when millions of foreign currency is queuing up to enter India, when it appears that print publishing is a sunshine industry, when the entire universe of print publishers knocks on the doors of the top 10 publishing houses for joint venture or licensing relationships. My apologies at the outset if I sound like a doomsayer, but an eery fact is that publishers could cut each others' throats in the marketplace while vying for their share of the ad pie. Readership has got fragmented, and so has advertising revenues. Just because the number of print titles has gone up by 200 per cent, advertisers are not upping their ad spends by 200 per cent. One does not need a comprehensive research or study to understand this phenomenon. There are two examples that I frequently quote at all international fora - the number of auto and women's magazines in India has grown from about 3 titles to almost 12-15 titles. Another dimension is of the rise in the number of English language titles in comparison with non-English language titles. If one were to look at the number of newer English language titles in India, s/he would probably feel that this country has overnight forgotten all its native languages. Has there been a corresponding rise in readership or advertising spends, to sustain these publications? And, with the Indian economy showing some signs of slowing down, its impact on ad spends by major advertisers will certainly be felt. For the experienced publishing professional, no guru is needed to tell her/him that the first business to take a hit in a slowing economy is advertising. The Indian media, more acutely the print publishing sector, has a series of challenges to deal with: 1. Major investments were made in licensing or joint venture deals or even in newer, owned titles during the euphoric days. Cost of operations, notably salaries, have gone up significantly. How to sustain? 2. Ad spends have got fragmented. In slowing economy, ad budgets will shrink. 3. Quality of content has taken a beating, while journalists with not-much experience take on the mantle of editors of publications. 4. B2B publishers have indeed got lured by B2C opportunities(?). Focus has shifted from B2B publishing to outsourcing and B2C. What happens to B2B publishing and what happens to B2C publishing? What happened to the age-old management mantra of sticking to one's core-competence? 5. Established magazine publishers now see a huge opportunity in custom (contract) publishing. Do we really acknowledge the fact that custom publishing suceeds at the cost of mainstream publishing? 6. There are just a couple of publishers who have really made sense of non-English language publishing. And, now, there does seem to be a change in how English-thinking media buyers and publishing CEOs have started perceiving the non-English reading audience. I hope every single publisher in the country does not make a beeline get into this. Another aspect is of home-grown titles. While most new home-grown titles are in non-Enlish languages, most of the newer English titles are licensed publications. 7. Another thing that I frequently talk about is how non-publishing companies like Google have become media giants of the world. There are several examples. Even internationally, there is no traditional publishing company which can boast of a world no. 1 idea in online or mobile publishing. Where traditional publishers are failing, everybody else is writing her/his success story. Indian publishers do not seem to have yet acknowledged the importance of technology as a medium. If they have, I assume it is a conscious decision to stay away. My apologies again, but I do say that most of the print publishers are "technologically-challenged". 8. Everybody acknowledges that India has almost 3000 towns, but major print distribution happens upto the top 20 towns. This is not only a challenge, but also a huge business opportunity to create a deep nation-wise press distribution business. 9. A comprehensive research, not just statistical, is the need of the hour. If one were to just study the top 200 magazines comprehensively, it could cost about Rs 25 lakh (about US $ 60,000). Can the Association of Indian Magazines (AIM) initiate such a study? - Bhupesh Trivedipublisher (at) chronosphere (dot) biz(To speak at ABM/FIPP conference in New York, Sept 7-9, 2008 and at Distripress Congress, Istanbul, October 27-30, 2008. Wanna meet?) "

Publishing and cross media in Asia

Publishing in Asia is dominated by its traditional forms, magazines, newspapers and books. Scholarly publishing which is an important part of this context, fabric, or culture is not exactly missing in large countries like India but deficient. While newspapers and magazines are booming, scholarly publishing is languishing. While newspapers and magazines are growing in the non-English languages and scripts, scholarly and academic publishing in Indian languages is totally missing. In fact although India aspires to be known as a knowledge society and contains excellent science, engineering, and management institutions, its academic publishing culture is anaemic. The famous IIT's have not engendered a local publishing culture among their faculty and researchers, and instead publish in scientific and technical journals abroad. On the other hand, the Indian Institute of Management in Ahemedabad has seen publishing as an important function and activity right from the start. Notably, China and Japan are exceptions in Asia with a great number of scientific and research articles published in Chinese and Japanese.

The irony is that a great number of academic and scientific journals are typeset in India and these pages are exported over the Internet to publishers all over the world. STM (Science, Technology, and Math) typesetting is a huge industry. While the government did not allow publishing of foreign owned journals in the country until the beginning of this century, it is now possible for foreign publishers to have 100% ownership of scientific, engineering, technical and niche journals. The only restrictions are on news journals and magazines where foreign ownership is restricted to 26%.

In the last five years many international titles have begun publishing in the country but they are mostly niche products like Marie Claire, Vogue, or Geo. Popular Science is also being launched by one of the magazine publishing groups in the next couple of months.

Perhaps some of the English language technical and scientific journals that are under tremendous cost pressures in the West will think of publishing and fullfilment from India and other Asian countries. The Internet may give rise to scholarly publishing in Asian languages. This will have its own challenges as far as refereeing and the temptation of altering articles once published, but these can be surmounted if one sees the advantages that this medium has for what are expensive and low circulation products. It may even give rise to scholarly journals in print. Hopefully will improve our universities and institutes and the teaching of science in languages other than English.