Life Changing Books in Hindi – A Reality Check

There is an explosion of Life Changing Books. Books-stores and exhibitions appear like spring time, flowers everywhere! What about the fragrance? Are many people changing due to ‘aroma’ arising out of those books; or the flowers are fake, devoid of any fragrance? Finally, the moot question- “Has Publishing changed any?”

A few years back, I decided to use of my free time to create future opportunities. I translated a chapter from a book on Time Management and offered to publishers that I could arrange rights for the Hindi translation. Back came an offer from a publisher to translate a book on Time Management. The project ran some two months I got my name printed in black ink on editorial page. Since then I have done some 5 projects and currently doing my sixth.

Recently the agent sent me parts of unfinished books which were abandoned by translators. I asked to see the language only to understand what treatment I should plan. To my horror, the language of earlier translator was totally alienating. Probably translator was not satisfied doing that work. The bigger horror is they used that horrible (part) translation and have printed those books. My only consolation apart from a small income is that my name isn’t there on the editorial page as translator.

Recently, I did four in-house training workshops for salespeople.  I found participants wanting in many areas. I found no one was reading any books. My suggestion was taken by client and they asked me to select some 20/25 books for an internal library. I went to a book store to browse and was in for a bigger shock. Most of the available titles weren’t able to connect. The type of Hindi language used has become a barrier between the content and the reader. I am not surprised that people don’t read those books. Consequently I had trouble choosing 20 titles.

My focus then shifted to last 4/5 encounters with agent and publishers of Life Changing Books in Hindi. I found that original books in English Language have sold hundreds of thousand copies, sometime a million copies. And the Hindi version fails to reach even a modest five figure number in copies sold. The talk with publishers reveals the smelling rat. They don’t believe their efforts will yield Change in Lives of Readers. They seem to be short sighted. Their own management styles resemble that of business owners in License Raj Era. Translators and content providers are ‘workers’ in their factories and they believe whatever small number they produce this way will be ultimately pushed into some library by touts at their disposal.

Don’t you see another type of NON PERFORMING ASSETS being endlessly built by a few ignorant yet powerful forces in Publishing?

What’s the remedy?

Please express here, what you think is one good remedy in this instance.