Simon & Schuster gears up to set sail to Indian shores

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On a tranquil Friday afternoon, the erstwhile Rave Media office at New Delhi’s Siddhartha Extension is abuzz with activity. It is the place where the global publishing giant Simon & Schuster, five years after testing Indian waters, is gearing up to set sail. As the big-ticket publisher starts its operations in India in earnest from mid-August, it is all set to shift to the Corenthum in Noida.

Rahul Srivastava, director of sales & marketing, who has been the sales agent of the company in the Indian subcontinent and is now heading its India operations, betrays little signs of a man at the forefront of world’s best-known publishing house’s stint in India. Simon & Schuster is one of the Fantastic Four international biggies, along with Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins. Add Hachette and Pan Macmillan, who have opened shops here earlier and are now set for expansion, and you have the Big Six in the race to woo the growing tribe of English language readers in India.
A division of the CBS Corporation, Simon & Schuster Inc has been in the business for more than nine decades. Today, according to the Wikepedia, its 35 imprints across the globe, including the US, UK, Australia and Canada, publish approximately 2, 000 titles a year. Among its bestselling books in recent times is Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (Atria Books) which sold 7 million copies in print worldwide by the end of 2007.
Srivastava comes across as a man in total control. His room, where we meet, is bristling with an eclectic range of books: Fiction, non-fiction, self-help and children’s books. Steven Levy rubs covers with Rachel Hawkins, Dan Brown with Paul Davies. As Srivastava shares his immediate and long-term marketing and distribution strategy, backup operations and logistics over a cup of tea, he speaks in a low, measured voice.
There is a measure of confident conviction that marks his tone. As the moving spirit behind Rave Media, which has been distributing titles by major publishing houses, Srivastava has his finger on the market pulse. He has his focus clear: Since self-help, business and children’s titles sell well, a major part of Simon & Schuster’s import titles, besides a strong line of fiction and non-fiction, will be books in these genres. For example, children will have their dose of Smurfs and Sesame Street and self-help lovers the likes of Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends And Influence People In The Digital Age).
Srivastava says that while the growth of e-books has brought down the sales of physical books, content continues to be “the king”. This will perhaps govern the company’s selection of distributing titles from the UK catalogue.
The four titles that the publishing house commences its operations with — Irshad Manji’s Allah, Liberty and Love, Brendon Burchard’s Millionaire Messenger, Stephen R. Covey’s The Third Alternative and Tom Rob Smith’s Agent 6 — only reflect the “content is king” line of reasoning.
With the content taken care of, the other two chief considerations for Simon & Schuster, says Srivastava, will involve pricing and packaging. So, the key words will be: Re-formatting, re-packaging and re-pricing.
Talking about the competition, Srivastava says: “It all depends on how well you adapt to the situation.”
Simon & Schuster’s India chapter will be overseen by Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, Inc and Ian Chapman, MD and CEO of Simon & Schuster UK.