Indo-Aus joint collaboration for publishing of books

Kolkata, Feb 04: Even as uncertainty was looming large over the 23rd Kolkata Book Fair, a couple of enterprising Indian and Australian publishers have decided to come closer and join hands for the first time in terms of publishing each others books on various topics.

To begin with and under a well thought-out pilot project, a city-based publisher had recently brought out a translation of selected poems of ten leading Australian poets like Ron Pretty, Kevin Brophy, Lizz Murphy, Margo Lnagon, Bruce Bennett and Brook Emery, while at the same time a Sydney-based publisher also released a similar compilation of english translation of poems of a few leading Bengali poets including Joy Goswami, Subhankar Banerjee and Dhruba Sengupta for Australian readers Though both the books were to be formally released in the 23rd Kolkata Book Fair, it could not be done becuase of prevailing uncertainty about the future of the fair, usually visited by about two to three million book lovers every year.

Meanwhile, participating in an interactive session here last evening leading Australian publisher and writer Thomas Keneally, who had come to the city to participate in the Kokata Book Fair at the inivitation of the its organiser Publishers and Booksellers Guild, underlined the importance of more and more such 'collaborative efforts' between leading Indian and Australian publishing houses not only to popularise the leading writers, novelists and poets and further widening their readers profle, but also to increase the sales of their books and novels by manifold and bring more revenues.

"It is very unfortunate that despite the presence of a large number of English-speaking people in India, the knowledge about Australian literature in India was almost razor thin and vice versa," Mr Keneally regretted and stressed the need for initiating more and more direct contacts between the publishers of both the countries to explore the huge opportunity.

In this connection the renowned Australian poet turned publisher took a dig at the British and American publishers for allegedly monopolising the foreign publication rights in India and did not allow any other English speaking countries like Australia and New Zealand to have any stake in the "direct publication" of English literature in India.

Moreover, till recently there was no sincere effort by any Australian or Kiwi publishing house to make forays into Indian literature through collaborative venture,Mr Keneally,flanked by two other Australian writers and poets Bruce Bennett and Ron Pretty,said and called for a new beginning from the 'City of Joy' itself.

New Australian Trade Commissioner in India Michael Carter, who was also present on the occasion, provided a detailed overview of the 1.6 billion dollars publishing industry in the Lone Continent and said about 8,500 books and more than 120,000 titles hit the stands every year catering to over 20 million readers in his country.

In terms of number of publishing houses in Australia, the Trade Commissioner said they numbered around 23,000, including the bigwigs like the Penguin publishers and the Macmillan.

Till last year books of Australian authors, valued at about 191 million dollars,were annually exported mainly to the USA, UK and New Zealand on the basis of their common language.

Asked about the volume of books being exported to India every year from Australia, Mr Carter describing the figure as 'unsubstantial', said this was mainly because of the non-availability of import rights to most of the Indian publishers. "However,we are trying to address the problem at the senior level," he said without elaborating further.

Incidentally, Australia was to be one of the largest foreign participants in the 23rd Kolkata Book Fair, which was to begin in Maidan from January 31, with more than 50 top publishing houses from the country likely to taking part in the 12 day event.

A large number of litterateurs from that country, who had arrived in the city as per schedule, described the present situation as "unfortunate", but hoped it would soon be sorted out keeping in mind the interest of millions of book lovers in the cultural capital of India.

UNI