It enriches one’s language and gives you a perspective of another culture. It is
generally a profitable experience for the reader but is it so for the retailer
of the book? How are the bookstores in Goa faring? Are they under pressure to
shut operations? How are outlets that focus on promoting local talent faring?
It is a tough business, this one. Keeping
a track of changing tastes in a market that is small and not really capable of
sustaining a business solely targeted at the native audience. Leonard
Fernandes’s CinnamonTeal Publishing, one of India’s largest self-publishing
houses that is based in Goa is frank when he says, “We publish very few Goan
authors. Our business model is very different. It all depends on the author as
to what their budget is. They pay us to print for them. There have been
exceptions of course. We have had the pleasure of printing the translations of
Damodar Mauzo’s works for the Goan and the Indian markets. We have published
around 10-11 books and published many more in the self-publishing route.”
Since the market is very small and those
who read Goan authors even more focussed, it is important to organise events to
generate a buzz. Leonard says, “It is very important to have an event because
it will guarantee sales. So at the event, we keep stock of the book being
launched and push it aggressively. A book reading is a very good occasion when
copies are sold. We have to generate sales in the first three months of the
launch after which it just peters out. If there is an occasion that guarantees
a collection of people in large numbers, we have to consider it as an
opportunity to sell our books.” Book readings, he says, take place in
bookstores in Panjim and Margao but the effort put in is way too much and the
returns generally do not justify it. Another issue is the price of the books.
Goan consumers, he feels, are not prepared to pay more than Rs 350, which gives
everyone the scale of the problem faced by publishers.
The Goa market, he believes, is not open to poetry but very
interested in history, memoirs and books that focus on the environment. Fiction
has a very small market in the state. The fact there are not many bookshops
does not help matters on the ground. The fact that most of the bookshops are
based on the coastline in the tourist belt does not make life easy. Sales to
libraries certainly help because they purchase books in decent numbers. This,
he says, usually generates some sales in other outlets with some readers
deciding to keep a personal copy at home. The established rule in Goa is that
printers usually have a print run of 500 copies. Leonard however agrees that
more books are coming out of Goa and he hopes that books focusing on children
will hit the stands.
Frederick Noronha of Goa 1556 is candid when he says that a lack
of awareness (about new books), lack of a reading movement, few libraries in
the state, and the lack of a local book distribution network are placing limits
on growth. There can be potential if these issues are addressed. He is of the
opinion that bodies like the Directorate of Art and Culture and Central Library
can help take Goa-authored books to wider audiences nationwide. There is hardly
any Goa participation in book fairs because publishing is still a small or
cottage industry here. When asked if Goans buy books in general, he smiles and
says that it is not in comparable proportions to say Malayalees or even
Bengalis. “We do not have the benefit of a decades old readers’ movement, nor
sufficient libraries.” When asked if Goans buy books for their children, he says,
“My experience is they will read if they find good books. Children can be
easily built into readers. But the entire ecosystem of children’s books
authors, children’s books publishers, libraries, and schools/teachers who
recognise the importance of reading needs to be built first. There are no
short-cuts here.”
With
regard to genres popular in Goa, he says its books in English on History in
addition to creative writing in multiple languages. He confirms that poetry
does not have a market though many find it enticing to express themselves in
this genre. He points out that books published in English (a lot of
non-fiction) and Konkani-Marathi (much of creative writing) tend to different
readers. He however says with regard to children’s books that there are quite a
few in Konkani, especially in Devanagri because of state support.
