What sells?

Some publishers and booksellers want to be both up-market and down-market at the same time. But can it work at a time sub-specialization is the name of the game? What do these terms, up-market and down-market, mean in the Indian context? Does the attempt to cater to all segments of the market result in a loss of identity, which, sooner or later, reflects on sales and profits? And how does this dichotomy reflect on publishing in India?

First, the definitions. Up-market refers to books and services that are relatively expensive and of superior quality in language, style, content and presentation. Down-market is its opposite ? books that appeal to a large number of people and are cheaper; almost everything is dumbed down. Between these two there is a grey area where publishers and booksellers, to use a cricketing metaphor, pitch the ball to cater to a wide cross-section of the market.

Specifically, down-market means mass-market paperbacks dealing with sex, glitz, romance; up-market are classics or high-brow monographs and graduate-level texts, reference books, and now CDs. The mass market provides the cash flow but low margins of profit; up-market books have slow but steady sales with relatively higher margins.

Publishers and booksellers would like the best of both worlds, but invariably they fall between two stools.

First, the attempt to cater to all segments means the lack of focus. Publishers and booksellers specialize because it identifies them with a certain line of books. For instance, Indian publishers don?t publish or handle STM (science, technology and medicine) and general fiction, or the social sciences and humanities. It is either one or the other. At a time when ?anything goes?, this identification is needed because it helps the potential author come to the publisher on his own as it does booksellers, for their requirements.

Second, specialization is necessary to build the infrastructure of publishing, production and distribution. That is, the kind of editors required, authors commissioned, the quality of production, the printing presses which would deliver at competitive rates and finally, the booksellers who would be able to handle the kind of books published. Unlike in the West, where publishing can be a huge activity with several divisions and sub-divisions, each with its own production and marketing teams, in India a lot depends on personal touch or ?contacts?. This can only come with concentrated efforts in a niche market.

Third is an ?internal? factor: the lack of physical space, within publishing houses and the distribution trade, that compels the choice, up or down. Warehouses cost money, and bookshops are cramped with little room for display, without which the buyer simply moves on. So, there is just so much you can do and no more.

Quite apart from these three factors, the choice of up or down gives some order to the chaos in Indian publishing. And this helps authors, publishers and distributors.