Earning Greenbacks From Paperbacks

PARTNERS: KAPIL AND PERVIN MALHOTRA

In 1929, Rajpal, a leading publisher, was assassinated in Lahore for publishing a fundamentalist book. But his son Vishwanath Malhotra kept the family tradition alive by establishing Rajpal & Sons. This tradition continues with Kapil Malhotra, who with his wife Pervin, set up Vision Books. Today, their publishing house has a list of over 1,000 titles and a turnover of Rs 8 crore.

Pervin: We first met while staging Ayn Rands The Night of January 16. In 1972, IIM Ahmedabad had few women so some of us from Xaviers acted in their play. Kapil was my father in the production.

Kapil: How terrible!

Pervin: We met again in the auditorium, but this time in the audience. It was their convocation, so Kapils entire class was on stage. But he refused to take his IIM degree because he felt they had taught him less than promised.

Kapil: I moved to Mumbai and joined Tata Exports. A year later, Pervin came to Mumbai and worked as a copywriter with ARMS. Then one day, a friend set me thinking. That evening, I told Pervin she had till 6 am to decide if she wanted to marry me.

Pervin: At 6 am, he bundled me into his Buick, which stalled two days in a week, because it never had enough gasoline...

Kapil: This time it didnt; so I got her to Juhu beach in record time. We stood in the water and exchanged pebbles.

Pervin: We then lived in Kapils one-room Peddar Road flat.

Kapil: Meanwhile, Tata Exports had two openings in Paris and Canada. This was when the family publishing business split. My father got Rajpal & Sons and Orient Paperbacks while my uncle, D N Malhotra, Hind Pocketbooks. I had grown up with books and felt this urge to become a publisher.

Pervin: By now I was creative director in ARMS and got an offer to set up the agency in Delhi. So we decided to shift base.

Kapil: In 1976, I started the Vision Books imprint to bring out current affairs and political books. This was Emergency time so with great difficulty we published D R Mankekars Decline and Fall of Indira Gandhi. Its moderate success was followed by titles such as L K Advanis The People Betrayed and Jagjivan Rams Caste Challenge in India. We still have a few bestselling books on Kashmir, but the mid-80s was the golden era of political publishing.

Pervin: Kapils publishing programme is driven by his eclectic interests. He accompanied the Kumaon Regiment through avalanche, landslide and blizzard to co-author and publish Kamet East Kamet West.

Kapil: In 1984, I zeroed in on business, taxation and stock market books. By 1987, Pervin had been in advertising long enough to tire of it, so she joined us that year.

Pervin: I started collecting career-related information as we agreed that there was a huge need for these books. It took seven years to consolidate the database, conceive the books and do some inhouse. Today, Caring Books has over 25 titles and a projected turnover of over Rs 3 crore. We have broken new ground with a free hotline service, talks in institutes and career guidance.

Kapil: Two years ago, we tied up with Pepsi. Since our target audience is the same they help create awareness for the Caring project; we use their logo on all our titles.

Pervin: A newspaper profile of Caring generated over a 1,000 inquiries. I agreed to do columns for a number of newspapers and magazines because students really need authentic career information. We plan to take our list of 25 titles to a 100 and create TV modules. Our tie-up with the Career Press, USA gives us access to information on education abroad.

Kapil: Though there is a slump in the stockmarket which impacts adversely on the books that are our bread and butter, our Caring management and taxation series helped bolster our bottomline. We also bring out a newsletter called the Professional Investor which has a print run of nearly 20,000; it is our best direct marketing tool.

Pervin: In 1993, Kapil entered into a tie-up with Probus for business books. He followed this up at the Frankfurt Book Fair by making similar arrangements with Irwin, the American Society of Quality Control, Dearborn Financial American publisher Glenlake.

Kapil: These tie-ups are necessary, but we concentrate on India-centric material. We are still driven by what we think is interesting. There may not be a lot of money in Indian writing in English, but we will continue to publish every new book by Raja Rao.

Pervin: We would never publish a kunji. We are in publishing because we love books. Kapil is the implementer and has a head for figures. I enjoy throwing up new ideas and my advertising background gives me a sense for colour and design.