DC Books has shown how publishing and bookselling remained alive in Kerala during the lockdown

A first person account of how the company did it, and how Kerala’s history of literacy and love for literature contributed.

The story so far

Nestled in the south of India, Kerala, thanks to its early trade history, has always been exposed to education and a good quality of life. Missionaries from abroad, instead of propagating Christianity, invested in nurturing the Malayalam language and education across Malabar, Kochi and Travancore. It was a Christian missionary from England, Benjamin Bailey, who set up the first printing press in Kerala in 1821, and founded CMS College, one of the oldest higher education institutions in India.

The first book that the CMS Press published was the Malayalam translation of a children’s book in 1824. Herman Gundert, grandfather of Herman Hesse, was a German missionary who came to Malabar and ended up becoming a Malayalam lexicographer, grammarian and linguistic specialist. The rulers of Travancore too were instrumental in setting up printing presses to promote education and encouraging various sects to start educational institutions across the region.

In the second half of the 19th century, commercial Malayalam publishing flourished owing to the excellent services of a few non-Malayalees: a Tamilian, a Telugu, a Gujarati and an Englishman. They were Kalahastappa Mudaliar of Vidyavilasam Press in Manjeri, ST Reddiar of Vidyabhivardhini Press in Kollam, Devji Bheemji of Keralamitram Press in Kochi, and Paul Melvin Walker of Western Star, Kochi.

In the early years after the formation of Kerala as a state, close to 50 percent of the budget was spent on education, and there were funds to nurture local libraries. Even today a special library fund cess is levied along with property tax to support local libraries and reading rooms.

In 1945, Kerala Granthalasala Sangam, an initiative under the leadership of late PN Panikker, was able to mobilise the setting up of libraries in every nook and corner of the state. More than 8,000 libraries were opened across Kerala, an act that has contributed significantly in encouraging reading. The Sahitya Pravarthaka Cooperative Society, founded by MP Paul and others, became functional in the early 1950s – DC Kizhakemuri, the founder of DC Books, was one of its founding members.

As many as ten thousand copies of the novel Chemmeen by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai was published by SPCS at a price of Re 1 per copy in the mid-1950s, and this was instrumental in sparking a paperback revolution. It was at the insistence of DC Kizhakemuri that the Travancore Kochi government abolished sales tax for books in Kerala. Later, a law was passed to exempt all books in India from sales tax.

Kottayam is the centre of publishing in south India; home to Malayala Manorama, DC Books, SPCS, Mangalam, Deepika and many others. A campaign conceptualised by DC Kizhakemuri to make Kottayam 100 percent literate in 100 days made it the first fully literate city in India. This was followed by a mass movement campaign by the government of Kerala to educate everyone. In 1991 Kerala became the first 100 percent literate state in India.

Cut to the present

On April 9, 2020, with the lockdown still in place, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced in his daily press conference, that bookstores across Kerala would open twice a week. My colleagues in the Kerala division of Confederation of Indian Industries were surprised and thrilled by this announcement. It was part of series of suggestions that had been made by 14 expert members of the CII via a web conference with Vijayan that morning, and no one had expected such a quick decision from the government.

The next day the government issued an order citing that bookstores could stay open on Tuesdays and Fridays from 10 am till 5 pm. When instructed by the central government to reverse its decision to open bookshops, hair salons and restaurants during the lockdown, the government of Kerala decided to close salons and restaurants, but not bookstores.

This initiative set the trend for opening bookshops across India – however, even though the central and various state governments decided to open bookshops after continuous requests from the publishing fraternity, only those selling schoolbooks were allowed to open (which, in reality, includes a majority of, if not all, bookshops). The Kerala government’s decision to treat books as an integral part of life during the lockdown might just save the book industry and the livelihoods of writers in the state.

The DC Books story

Our company, DC Books has been in existence for 45 years. It is considered among the top ten literary publishing houses of India, and owns the largest chain of bookstores in South India. We publish more than 500 new books a year, including fiction, poetry, children’s literature, reference.

Like for most businesses, the pandemic and the restrictions arising from the lockdown have caused the book industry to suffer huge losses too. Thousands of people working in publishing and allied businesses – booksellers, printers, distributors and also designers, marketing consultants, freelance editors, translators and typesetters – have had to suffer.

Owing to the early spread of Covid-19 in Kerala, from the end of January, we reduced our new releases in print by 70 percent in February, and 50 percent in March. In mid-April we started releasing our new titles as eBooks. However, we hope, by the end of May, to have 10 new titles out in print.

Our editorial team has been fully active during the lockdown, acquiring new books and working with authors. A decent sum of royalties and advances due to our authors was also released during the pandemic to assure them that they are integral stakeholders of our ecosystem, that we stand together in solidarity during uncertain times.

We switched to a new publishing software to ensure that if the lockdown is extended, my colleagues in editorial will be well-equipped to work remotely. With enough time in hand, a lot of our existing projects are being speeded up. We will be soon launching an important 2000-page, three-volume literary work. However, the last few months have seen an all time low in retail, orders from large institutions have been cancelled, and we cannot deny that our financial losses will be immense.

The best thing for us to do in a situation like this was to explore new avenues to promote our books and keep the DC Books brand alive. We approached Zomato, the food delivery service, to explore the possibility of delivering books through their channel. Their team was excited about the possibilities and within 18 hours we had hundreds of our books listed on the Zomato App.

But just as we were ready to roll out, their legal team at their corporate office got cold feet owing to the restrictions imposed by the central government and so the proposal had to be kept on hold for a few days while we convinced the central authorities of the necessity to include books as part of essential goods and services.

Meanwhile, we approached a hypermarket which uses Zomato’s services, and asked that they list our books. They agreed and through the hypermarket we started delivering the books through Zomato to our readers. Eventually restrictions were removed on the categories of goods that could be delivered, and currently we are supplying books directly through Zomato in all the major towns of Kerala. Zomato has evolved a new business model for delivery of other items as well. We have partnered with them for both the models.

All these efforts have helped our readers access books when restrictions limited them from commuting within the city and to other places. Since we were allowed to open two days a week as early as mid-April, our team started preparing, realising that while gaining traction would take time, even selling a few books could be the trigger to improved sales in the coming weeks.

Switching gears

We used the lockdown to experiment with some of our digital platforms to maintain visibility and also generate income; in the post pandemic world, such platforms could become the mainstay of publishing houses. DC Books is perhaps the only publisher in India with its own e-book portal and digital rights management system in place.

Most of us in the book industry have already been using Amazon Kindle, Kobo and other platforms to showcase and sell our e-books. In early March, once it became clear that the COVID-19 outbreak was getting out of control and restricting the mobility of people, a team sprang into action to make all our bestselling titles available on our e-book platform.

We used our social media collaterals and brick and mortar stores to promote these e-titles. On March 19, when the Prime Minister announced a one-day lock down, we got into swift action and announced free downloads of our e-books for one day on March 22. Nearly 100,000 free e-books were downloaded that day.

We added over 75,000 new e-book subscribers in the first 30 days of lockdown. Usually e-books have the same price as their print versions, but it occurred to us that during the lockdown these prices would inevitably lead to rampant piracy. So we slashed the prices by 50 percent for all our e-books and came up with daily offers and combo schemes.

We also began to share piracy awareness videos, made promotional posters, and posted audio clips. We approached the law enforcement agencies, asking them to file cases against those who refused to remove pirated PDFs and audio books even after warnings. Slowly, even our readers who were die-hard fans of the printed book began to view the e-book as the safest form of delivery, embraced the technology, and started buying in good numbers to make their lockdown more enriching.

While we are sure to see a major shift in reading and buying habits, one thing is for certain: the book will remain a necessity, and the publisher will have to deliver it in affordable and easily accessible formats. Technology needs to be exploited for better reach, and to keep books alive in the minds of the public in general. This way, those who miss out on the print edition will at least have a chance to read their favourite authors and books on their smartphone or tablet.

Malayalam audio books are gaining traction as well. DC Books has tied up with Storytel India to have our books available in audio format. Though our revenue flow has been lower than usual, my team is happy with the kind of reader involvement we have seen, and also with the increase in our e-book readership.

With the borders now opened for the diaspora and Keralites starting to return from abroad, Covid-19 cases in the state are once again on the rise. As we get used to this new normal, we continue with our efforts to move forward and survive in this new world.

Ravi Deecee is Managing Partner at DC Books.

This series of articles on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on publishing is curated by Kanishka Gupta.