Publishers often claim that it is the smallness of the market and the circumstances of distribution that provide an automatic brake on further expansion. But they seldom say what they mean by the ‘market’ or the structures of the distribution networks that hinder growth.

Does the ‘market’ mean numbers or an individual’s capacity to buy beyond a price range? Does it refer to a mental block against books, which are often considered non-essential items? Has it something to do with money— under capitalization, lack of liquidity, and cost of shelf space — or are there other hidden factors as well? Any market research that gathers information about consumers’ needs and tastes first looks into the numbers that inhabit a defined territory for a certain product. It is much the same for the book world with one qualification: the market is divided into at least two clean divisions: the educational market that includes the professional market, and the general market which includes fiction, non-fiction, entertainment and so on. All these are further sub-divided into several other categories but the numbers for each are not precisely calibrated; publishers go more by a hunch and experience rather than by statistics.

Of the different categories, it is the educational market that provides the bread-and-butter line for publishers. This is divided into the school and tertiary segments that take in post-university requirements like reference works in English-language learning, engineering, accountancy and so on.

Whichever segment you look at, both at the national and regional level, the market is huge if you look at numbers alone. In the schools’ sector, the final sales figures are close to the student population because textbooks are compulsory and, in many states, they are subsidized by the governments.

But this is not the case when you move further up into universities. Of course, some subjects attract more students than others, but even in the more specialized areas, where the numbers are large enough to justify a viable printing, the final sales figures often are not even 5 per cent of the student population. Why? Price is a factor, but only just. There are two others: the declining standards of language and the structure of the trade. The drop in standards of language means that many school-leaving students are functionally illiterate; they find the reading and understanding of a compound sentence a chore.

Apart from simplifying language structures, there isn’t much publishers can do about declining standards. Which brings us to what the trade can do. Prima facie, the solution looks simple: just get the books that are relevant— that could be anything from textbooks to entertainment— and useful. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen because many booksellers do not know what books to order and how they ‘connect’ with the market. All they seem to be interested in are prices, discounts and credit terms from the publishers.

There are two lessons to be drawn from this scenario. First, in any assessment of the market potential of the tertiary and the general market, it isn’t enough to go by the numbers alone. Second, the retail trade requires a much higher dose of intellectual capital than it is endowed with at present.