SAGE India has launched its Indian language publishing program in which it will roll out translated works in Hindi and Marathi this year and plans to publish original content in the regional languages from 2016-17.
"SAGE Bhasha is a natural extension of our English language publishing program. Our core focus is social science publishing and in business and management and we plan to extend this vision and focus into the regional language program," says Vivek Mehra, Managing Director and CEO of SAGE India.
The content will be developed to fulfil the aspirations of universities and academia in Indian languages and the primary focus is to target libraries, students and the discerning reader in each of the Indian languages it will publish.
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The house had first ventured into Indian language publishing in 2008 under a co-publishing model with regional language publishers.
"The co-publishing model though moderately successful didn't give authors the value they deserved. We therefore decided to have a separate Indian language publishing program and SAGE Bhasha was born," Mehra told PTI.
Some of the titles that are being translated to Hindi this year include "Hindi Easy Money, Volume 1" by Vivek Kaul; "Challenge and Strategy: Re-thinking India's Foreign Policy" by Rajiv Sikri; "Lost Years of RSS" by Sanjeev Kelkar; and "Buddhism In India" by Gail Omvedt.
"Public Administration in a Globalizing World" by Bidyut Chakraborty; "The Winning Manager" by Walter Viera; and "Body Language: A Guide For Professionals" by Hedwig Lewis are some of the Marathi titles.
In 2008, SAGE India released the first set in Marathi under a co-publishing arrangement with Diamond Publications of Pune.
"We found that where our products were available the market reacted favourably but there were too many segments that were not receiving the content. In addition our co-publishing partners had different strengths and target markets, the result was intermittent deployment of content. There lacked a regularity in the process, in some years we published many books and in others there was a complete void.
"The arrangement with them was of SAGE providing the content and Diamond was to take care of the translations, printing, sales and marketing. SAGE Bhasha is the reverse of this arrangement. It will own every segment of the publishing pipeline," Mehra says.
