The Indian publishing industry has grown rapidly with the world’s attention converging on it: creating a meaningful B2B platform for publishers was thus essential and the Jaipur BookMark was conceived to run parallel to the Jaipur Literature Festival. In the 7 years since its inception, JBM has fast emerged as a nerve centre for the South Asian publishing industry and is indeed a focal point where books mean business.
Jaipur BookMark (JBM) brings together stakeholders of the book trade from across the world – publishers, literary agents, writers, translators, translation agencies and booksellers. It gives them an opportunity not just to ‘’talk business” through relevant sessions and focused roundtables but also provides the right and fruitful atmosphere to inspire conversations and space for one-on-one meetings and networking. This intimacy forges relationships and allows the occasional contract to be signed too.
JBM is the ultimate South Asian book conclave which provides an “edge” of opportunities to those in the publishing industry on the lookout for new ideas and collaborations.
Translations, we believe, transform the publishing and literary ecosystem into a democratic space, and we have made a concerted effort towards galvanising the translations landscape in India and thus aim to bring Indian writing into the international space.
Aditi Maheshwari Goyal heads the Department of Copyrights and Translation at Vani Prakashan and is the Managing Trustee at Vani Foundation. She is the Festival Director of Hindi Mahotsav and Secretariat Manager of Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award.
Namita Gokhale is an award-winning writer, publisher and festival director. She has written 20 books, including 11 works of fiction. Her recent novel, Jaipur Journals, was released in January 2020. Betrayed By Hope, a play on the tragic life of the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, was published in December 2020. A co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Gokhale is keenly involved in curating intra-literary dialogues across languages and cultures.
Naveen Kishore established Seagull Books in 1982 as a publishing programme in the arts and media focusing on drama, film, art and culture studies. Today, it also publishes literature, including poetry and serious fiction and owns the worldwide English-language publishing rights for books by Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Bernhard, Imre Kertész, Yves Bonnefoy, Mo Yan, Mahasweta Devi, Peter Handke, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, among others. He is also a recipient of the Goethe Medal and the Chevalier Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Neeta Gupta is the publisher at Yatra Books and a literary consultant with a special emphasis on translations. Neeta Gupta is also the chief editor of Bhartiya Anuvad Parishad’s quarterly journal on translation, Anuvad. She has been working towards creating publishing connectivities across different languages and cultures. She has edited a volume of essays on translating from and into Indian languages titled, Translating Bharat, Reading India
Urvashi Butalia is a feminist writer and publisher. She co-founded Kali for Women, India's first feminist publishing house and, when Kali closed down in 2003, she set up Zubaan, a feminist publishing house of which she is now Director. She has a long involvement in the women's movement in India and writes and publishes widely on issues related to women and gender. Her best known published work is the award-winning history of Partition titled The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. She is currently completing a new non fiction work on the life of a transwoman.
Sanjoy K. Roy, an entrepreneur of the arts, is the Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, which produces over 33 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across 40 cities across the world. He is a founder trustee of Salaam Baalak Trust, providing support services for street and working children in Delhi. Roy works closely with various industry bodies and the government on policy issues in the cultural sector in India, and has lectured and collaborated with international universities such as University of Chicago, Harvard, MIT Media lab and the London School of Economics.
The invaluable sharing of experiences garnered at our literary festivals as platforms that promote, preserve and spread awareness of literature and diverse cultures was very rewarding.
I love JBM and its intimacy and look forward to it next year.
I enjoyed listening, sharing and being a part of the panel discussions and agents round table…One is proud to see how JBM is going from strength to strength.
It was a pleasure to participate in the festival directors’ roundtable. Networking and keeping each other informed about our activities is immensely important.