India: the next big writing market

[Brian G Turner]

Thought this was interesting:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17990766

India is on course to become the world's most lucrative market for English books, but it's no longer the traditional English authors whose work is flying off the shelves. So what is the secret to writing a bestseller there?
The Indian market for English books is booming.
Third only to the USA and Britain, it's set to become the biggest in the world as India's middle class continues to expand rapidly over the next 10 years.

 

[Tristann_Good]

You see that trend in all kinds of entertainment, be it books or film or even music. I have no idea what the secret to breaking through there would be but I would imagine that identifying cultural and historical similarities that could be played upon would help. Also with their space program being quite strong maybe a space opera that includes specific Indian cultural elements would go down well? Their space program website even looks a little sci-fi!

 

[Bowler1]

My current WIP has a space colony populated by people from India being people smuggled there, so I have a nice mix of cultures going on. Is this enough to break this market, doubtful but it might interest publishers a little more. Thank you I Brian, I was losing steam on this WIP but this post will help me along for a bit more. No forward planning done by me at all I just liked my idea!

 

[Vizhakat]

India happens to have a glorious history of SF within its mythological scriptures. There are vivid references to space ships, weapons of mass destruction, life in exotic planets (Loks) etc. There is even a separate scripture providing graphic details on building aircraft (Vimans)

The key for initial success for SF in India may be to attempt impart plausible modern context to some of the fantastic events described in Indian mythology.

 

[J-WO]

Interesting stuff. Anyone know of any Indian SF zines willing to accept fiction in English (or Gujarati at a push; I've lots of pals who could maybe translate for me)?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just to dig this up again - I remembered this report, and thought I'd visit Amazon India, expecting to find the books section filled with reviews.

However, the place looks very quiet - there were no reviews on any David Gemmell book I looked at, and even Game of Thrones had only 39 reviews. Compared to 2,619 on Amazon UK.

Presumably this means that Amazon India is not a major source of books for readers in India? Or that the BBC report was very wrong?

@Jayaprakash Satyamurthy - any comment on this? Where do you get most of your science fiction and fantasy books?

 

[AnyaKimlin]

India is the only place I ever got anything published but as I don't want it being connected to the work I do here I can't give any more details. It's firmly under a pen name and the money I got would have gone further if I lived in India.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

From my experience it hasn't been a good market at all. A few months back I had half a dozen of my books purchased there on Amazon India and returned a few hours later. The next day they were all listed on an Indian pirate site. I wish I could say this was the only time that's happened there.

Cheers, Greg.