'There is a growing interest in stories from South Asia': Bloomsbury's Vafa Payman

Vafa Payman, managing director, Bloomsbury China, and head of acquisitions and corporate development.

As Bloomsbury India, an arm of the global publishing company, turns 10, it is turning its attention to acquiring and publishing more writing from India and Asia.

“There is a huge international market, and there is a growing interest for stories from South Asia. We are consciously looking into this gap,” said Vafa Payman, managing director, Bloomsbury China, and head of acquisitions and corporate development, in response to a question.

Payman was in New Delhi recently for the 10th anniversary dinner, and media meet-ups.

South Asian writers on the roster

The publishing company with many international draws in its line up - from J.K. Rowling to Madeline Miller, Sarah J. Maas, George Saunders, and Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah and Kamila Shamsie, whose latest book, Best of Friends, launched earlier this week - has been taking a "closer look at the many possibilities on the literary scene in South Asia, given how the market and reader interest is growing", according to Payman.

“It has taken definitely some time for writing from the region to be talked about and feted, but we believe in diversity and representation," Payman added. "We have been mindfully looking for authentic voices and have a few names getting added to our earlier names from the region.”

He added that the last few years has had publishers across the board and literary juries begin to look at writing from the region.

Regional language literature

Acknowledging that Bloomsbury India has been mostly publishing Indian writing in English, Rajiv Beri, managing director of Bloomsbury India, said that the entry of literary agents has made it possible to get connected to diverse writing across languages.

“It is thanks to literary agencies that we are now able to tap into literary writing from India and across its many languages,” Beri said, adding that the publishing house has already acquired the translation rights for works originally written in Tamil, Telugu, Prakrit, Pali, and an anthology translated from Sanskrit.

Indian readers

Payman said that while Covid affected book sales and publishing for a while, there is now sizeable growth in terms of the number of books being published and sold in India by Bloomsbury.

Asked what the most popular categories worldwide, Payman said: “For sure it is the more commercial writing that sells more and there is a huge investment in audio books for the same in the US and the UK.”

As for India, Beri said: “Non fiction has always sold more than the fiction Indian titles if we are talking of numbers.” Beri added that Bloomsbury India is looking at audio book tie-ups for its book lists across genres with a likely possibility for translations from English to Indian languages.