Vom 4. bis 19. Oktober 2008 besuchen 16 Fellows auf Einladung der Frankfurter Buchmesse die Verlagsbranche in Frankfurt, München und Berlin. buchmarkt.de stellt Ihnen täglich einen der Teilnehmer vor.
Deepthi Talwar ist Lektorin bei Westland Ltd und Tranquebar Press in New Delhi www.westlandbooks.in. Sie erhofft sich vom Fellowship-Programm u.a. neue Einblicke und Kontakte für das Lizenzgeschäft.
buchmarkt.de: Bitte erzählen Sie uns von Westland Ltd …
Westland Ltd started as a general books distributor, but has rapidly developed a strong presence in trade publishing in India. Early in 2007 an editorial office in Delhi was set up and a literary imprint, Tranquebar Press, was launched. We bring out trade fiction and non-fiction under Westland — business books, health books, cookery, self-help, etc. — but we also want to encourage more experimental forms and a wider range of genres.
Our Tranquebar Press list includes writers as varied as the poet Jeet Thayil, fantasy and SF author Samit Basu, graphic novelist Sarnath Banerjee and the award-winning Malayalam writer M.S. Sethu.
Landmark Bookstores and Westland Ltd are currently owned by the Tatas, one of India’s oldest and most respected business houses.
Mit welchen Schwierigkeiten haben Sie auf dem indischen Buchmarkt zu tun?
One of the difficulties we face is that publishing is not deemed an industry yet by the government, which means that we have no statistics — what the market size is, the turnover, who reads and how much. Another problem we face, in this price-sensitive market, is piracy.
Welche Erwartungen haben Sie an das Fellowship-Programm und die Frankfurter Buchmesse 2008?
Rights buying and selling is an intrinsic part of publishing today, and literature is no longer restricted to being read in the country it originated from. I believe that the Frankfurt Book Fair Fellowship Programme facilitates the process by which indigenous publishing houses can truly take their books to a global level.
It would help create and establish personal relations with the people I will be talking to when handling foreign rights. Besides, it would offer an environment that would allow me to get acquainted with the German publishing industry, and the books that originate there, on a more intimate level.
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, I would like to talk to agents and publishers about the company I work with and the kind of publishing we do. Meeting people from the global publishing industry and establishing relations will helps us become part of the publishing community, so rights buying and selling becomes an easier process.
Das Fellowship Programm wurde anlässlich des 50. Jubiläums der Frankfurter Buchmesse 1998 ins Leben gerufen. In den vergangenen zehn Jahren hat sich ein enges Netz innerhalb der internationalen Verlagsbranche gebildet. Über 165 Teilnehmer aus 45 Ländern konnten bereits von diesem Programm profitieren. In diesem Jahr wird es von Martina Stemann von der Frankfurter Buchmesse organisiert und vom ehemaligen Fellow Laurenz Bolliger vom Berlin Verlag begleitet.
