This is the second part in the HP Publishing series looking at Publishing Super Powers, exploring and discussing a wide range of trends and dynamics that are driving changes and transformations within the industry.  

Porter Anderson, joining us for the second time in the series, is our Moderator for this second part of our Publishing Super Powers podcast. Formerly with CNN. CNN.com and CNN International, as well as the Village Voice, The Dallas Times Herald, The Bookseller, and other news media outlets. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, founded and operated by the Frankfurt Book Fair in New York. Porter asks each of our guests to give us their point of view on where the markets they're in stand at this point, what challenges they are facing and where the successes are. 

We have with us Laura Prinsloo from Jakarta. We have Karine Pansa from Brazil, and we have Ananth Padmanabhan from India 

“Gramedia bookstore, the biggest bookstore chain in Indonesia have reported this drop of sales, net sales, from 2019 to 2020. When we started the lockdown in March that's when we see a huge decrease in net sales. And then it sort of picked up again the moment the government already a bit relaxed with the lockdown and bookstores were operating again. In terms of new titles, yes, I think everyone is experiencing less productivity. Everyone is postponing to launch new titles. Working from home is also quite challenging considering that not everyone have the same facility at home, good internet connection, good... Or a working office or things like that. Or they get preoccupied with the domestic requirements when they're at home. So, new titles, yup, it's dropped if we compare it to 2019 by about 50%.” Laura Prinsloo

Karine Pansa has just become the Vice President of the International Publishers Association and shares her experience on the Brazilian book market.

“I think that our biggest challenge during this period was our... As you may understand we have a big country and it was distribution. So many publishers, they had to adapt to a new distributing reality in a very short period of time otherwise they would stay without any income and without any sales. Our market was not adapted to such a dramatic change on this distributing model as you might expect. So, we have reached I think in a short period results that should have been taken like five years or more. Not only distribution but also in education models and indication like Zoom and Google Meet and other platforms. So we have developed a lot during this short period. But just as Mexico, we have a really difficult time on doing that. So these are our biggest struggles at the moment.” Karine Pansa

Ananth Padmanabhan, from New Delhi, speaks to us about the Indian market.

“So Indian book market is a seven billion dollar industry that includes both consumer publishing and education. Why education is more than 95% of the market we have over 250 million kids in schools. And if I add everybody else who is going through some form of education, that's 400 million people going through some form of formal education and need a textbook. 

The government when we went into the first lockdown declared books as nonessentials. That meant that not only did bookstores shut you couldn't even order anything online to be delivered home and there was a list of essentials that people could buy. Books are nonessential and it's literally like a lot of us have said. It made you sit back and think about everything you've taken for granted. The way we published, the supply chain, the fact that so many dozen books went into a distributor and then into a bookshop and then people went to markets to buy them. A lot had to change overnight and dramatically.“ Ananth Padmanabhan