It’s a new iPad app that researcher Asha Titus finds amazingly useful. Called iAnnotate, it lets her highlight or write notes while she’s reading or accessing large numbers of books online. Says Titus: “The zoom-in feature is invaluable and I can read in bed with the lights off!”

Welcome to India’s fast-growing digital world, where e-reading is suddenly taking off. And no, we aren’t talking about pirated versions of your favourite books that swamp the Internet. Today, e-reading is all about reading cool, interactive content and a host of titles — without necessarily burning a hole in your pocket.

Fast-growing numbers of globetrotting, tech-savvy Indians are already hooked to their personal, digital libraries and bookstores. And Indian publishers and e-reader manufacturers are pulling out all stops to grab a share of this market. Take publisher Rupa & Co which will soon release 300 of its most popular titles as e-books. Or, look at ACK Media (the publisher of the Amar Chitra Katha series and Tinkle), which already has made available over 200 titles at the Kindle and Apple stores at prices between $1.99 and $2.99.

Other publishers too are jumping in. Says Gautam Padmanabhan, CEO, Westland: “We believe that 2012 is the year when the e-book will make a serious entry into the Indian market.” The publisher is in the process of converting all its titles into e-books.

Then there’s Infibeam, a major player involved in e-publishing, e-bookstores and e-reading devices. Says Sachin Oswal, COO, Infibeam: “This year will be very big for e-books since many Indian and international publishers are opening up their content for digital delivery in India. We’re working to digitise their content and manage rights and online distribution.”

(From top) The Infibeam Pi2, Amazon Kindle and Wink X Lite

Penguin, the giant of the publishing industry, is also bringing out its back list in batches in the e-book format from next month. From June it will simultaneously bring out physical books and e-books. Says Anantha Padmanabhan, vice president, sales at Penguin India: “The e-books business in India is very small, but it will definitely grow. A major advantage now is that a lot of books that aren’t available in the physical format, are now available as digital versions.” Penguin’s e-books will be available across platforms like Kindle, Apple and Nook in the EPUB format and with all major online e-book retailers.

Tablet manufacturers too are making their products attractive to readers moving to e-reading. So on a Blackberry Playbook, for example, you can read books in HTML, PDF and EPUB formats. And a host of books are available as apps in Blackberry AppWorld. Says Advait Vaidya, head of products and technology, RIM India: “We’re also working closely with our partners to offer more choices to our customers, including more local content.”

Strategic pricing is important, as India is tremendously price- and e-retail-sensitive. Publishers like Penguin, ACK Media or Rupa say their e-books will be competitively priced, and probably lower than their hard copy versions.

But Ravi Deecee, managing director, EC Media International — one of India’s pioneers in the digital reading space — insists that price is only one of the factors behind the popularity of e-books. “Other factors are ‘read anywhere-anytime’ convenience, increasing use of convergence devices and increasing consumption of digital content. E-books make up a little above 10 per cent of the global book market and this percentage is growing every year.”

The publishing game

India’s publishers are upbeat about the growing popularity of e-books. Most believe that e-books and printed books have the potential to exist together.

So there’s Blaft Publications, which publishes avant-garde graphic novels, Indian crime fiction et al, and has launched some of its titles as e-books in EPUB and Kindle formats. The list includes four novels by author Ibne Safi translated from Urdu into English, a book of Tamil folktales by Ki. Rajanarayanan and an e-chapbook (a short story sold on its own) — Eating Sugar, Telling Lies — which is not available in print. These can be bought at Kindle and Nook e-bookstores for around Rs 250 and nearly Rs 50 respectively.

Also, publishers are hoping to reach readers around the world with their online books. Rupa, for instance, is launching its first set of e-books next month across all platforms, including Kindle and Kobo and hoping to reach out to more people, especially NRIs. Says Kapish Mehra, managing director of Rupa: “We’re starting off with regular e-books and working on models for enhanced and exclusive e-books.”

ACK Media is looking forward to taking its content to readers beyond India too. In fact, their present batch of comics has received very good feedback, especially from people living outside India.

But the publishers are primarily aiming at the home market. “Contrary to earlier times, when people wouldn’t think of paying for digital content, things are changing in India today, following major international trends,” says Subhadeep Bhattacharya, business head, digital, ACK.

Penguin plans to sell physical books with its e-books to market the product. But most publishers are relying on online marketing, targeting those who’re already e-savvy.

ACK Media has recently launched the Amar Chitra Katha Facebook page, which is constantly reaching out to potential e-retail customers. “All marketing and product promotions will be done online via various advertising networks and online channels,” says Bhattacharya. Rupa too is treading the online-campaign path, as it plans to advertise through social media, blogs, various websites and online ads.

Grow and learn

Major players in the children’s books and young readers segments are creating colourful and enhanced e-books — with intelligent, interactive content. So Tulika, one of India’s popular children’s books publishers, is bringing out two illustrated e-books for the iPad with audio in dual languages. Another book can be downloaded as an Apple app.

“We’re dealing with an age group that will increasingly turn to e-books as they grow up. So as publishers we need to provide digital content as well,” says Radhika Menon, managing editor, Tulika.

Mango, the children’s imprint in English under DC Books, too has moved swiftly into e-books. It has scores of titles available at the Wink Store, and other e-bookstores.

Under the parent brand’s publishing programme, Mango will soon be launching 150 e-titles across various platforms. Moreover, in time, every book that they publish will be simultaneously ready for e-reading as well.

According to Saraswathy Rajagopalan, executive editor, Mango, e-books are a major part of their expansion project. She says, “Children love gadgets and we’re hoping that our e-books will attract more children to inculcate the habit of reading.”

ACK Media, known for producing value-laden content, is converting its iconic comics into e-books, developed on their own platform. Expect a lot of audio and video content in their e-books. Their latest app for the the iPad — the Anant Pai comic — has features like hyperlinks instead of footnotes, or Google Maps to pinpoint places mentioned in the story.

Moreover, all the ACK comics on Apple can be navigated panel-by-panel, to ease reading. Soon, ACK will be launching a storefront app, which will contain all its titles under one application, along with the Tinkle e-magazine.

The academic market is also an extremely important part of the e-book scenario. Apple has its iBooks 2, that features iBooks textbooks, supporting features like fullscreen books, interactive 3D objects, diagrams, videos and photos.

DC Books has also pioneered education projects like Wink Classics and WinkLets with EC Media for Wink. Wink Classics is a collection of 60 literature classics for students — think The Portrait of a Lady, Crime and Punishment, The Invisible Man and more — priced at a modest Rs 49.95. WinkLets straddle academia and journalism. The latter is quite similar in format to Kindle Singles, so you’ll find interesting material by luminaries like Ramachandra Guha, tagged at Rs 30 each.

Self help

The arrival of e-book has also given a boost to sites where authors ‘self-publish’. Says Jaya Jha, co-founder of Pothi.com, the self-publishing site: “We recommend that e-book prices should be less than the print book prices — anywhere between zero and Rs 50.” Pothi has tie-ups with Infibeam and the Wink Store to publish its e-books, and they’re also in the process of coming up with an e-book creation app.

For aspiring authors, Apple recently launched the iBooks Author app for the iPad, which you can download for free. With its in-built templates, it allows you to create a vibrant e-book and publish it for free in the Apple iBookstore. This is an interactive app, so you can easily add photos, movies and even 3D objects.

Infibeam and EC Media International are also working on self-publishing initiatives. Says Deecee: “EC Media’s Wink Publish program is aimed at rekindling classics, promoting promising authors and creating expert perspectives on topical content.”

Oswal believes that e-publishing allows budding authors to get their books out to readers to test the market. “Through our digital publishing platform, InDigi, we’ve partnered with many Indian authors and publishers,” he adds.

Teching right

Today, a host of e-readers and tablets are now available on the market. Kindle tops the list, with some of its e-readers available for the Indian market (at prices starting from around Rs 5,500), on Amazon. There are more than a million English-language books available in the Kindle e-bookstore for Indian readers, along with a host of newspapers and magazines. Prices start from zero and go up to more than $6,000 for their e-books. Tablets like the Blackberry Playbook, iPad and the Sony Tablet P too are e-book friendly, with a bunch of apps available to enable e-reading.

A handful of local players are also making their presence felt. Infibeam’s e-reader, Pi2, is available for about Rs 10,000 on their website. Enabled with a touchscreen and WiFi, this e-reader supports several Indian languages and common e-book formats. A new model is slotted for launch later this year. You can download books at prices starting from Rs 30 from Infibeam’s e-bookstore that has 5 lakh titles currently. And that’s not all. Infibeam has tie-ups with all kinds of Indian publishers ranging from ICFAI to ACK Media, Ganesha Speaks, Popular, New Age and Rajkamal.

EC Media too, has tie-ups with many regional and international publishers like Westland, Permanent Black, Pratham Books, Pearson Education, Wildside Press and Bancroft Press. Its e-reader, Wink, is available in two models and is WiFi-enabled as well. You can download titles from the Wink Store, which has over two lakh titles, available in 15 languages for the reader. In fact, the e-bookstore even has a whole bunch of books that can be downloaded for free, along with children’s books and close to 150 Indian magazines, which can also be downloaded on an iPad and through Android.