Back in 2004, when Arpita Das had just started Yoda Press with her friend and colleague, Parul Nayyar, she still had doubts. Four days short of Yoda’s 10th anniversary celebration, I ask her if any dregs of these doubts are left. “None,” she says.
Ten years can do that. While she was busy fighting the minor crises and major battles, celebrating the little victories and the big coups, Yoda Press convinced Arpita that its existence was mandatory. “Today, I can’t imagine life without it.” Her shelves lined with books the independent publishing house has so lovingly produced, her table covered with papers and laptops with details of the upcoming celebrations, Arpita’s home speaks of Yoda’s success, and more importantly, its resilience.
It’s tough to survive as an independent publishing house today, and even more difficult to insist on this independence. What started, as Arpita remembers, in a lovingly decorated, almost Dickension office room in CP has grown into an important milestone on the country’s publishing map. Its list of authors is impressive, and cherished too.
Today, Yoda runs from Arpita’s home. The team includes her editor Nishtha Vadehra, an intern and Dharmender Kandwal, the office assistant. They publish nine to ten books a year, a mix of academic and popular non-fiction titles. Each book reinforces what the Press set out to do — initiating and furthering dialogues around topics like popular culture, cotemporary art, new historical perspectives, sexuality and the body, gender and cinema. Over the years, Yoda has managed to both make a mark in the niche it set out to create and dominate it.
It wasn’t easy. Starting from scratch was difficult. Raising the capital was a challenge, and publishing books independently meant taking on the big players in a game they had invented. Back when Yoda Press started, Arpita remembers “a very Daryaganj-based trade”.
“We had a couple of foreign publishers. Of course, Penguin had been there forever, and a couple of years before, Harper Collins had come in, in collaboration with Rupa. Picador had also started. But that was it. Even in the academic sphere, Oxford Univerity Press had been around, and then there was Cambridge University Press, but they dealt more with textbooks.” She remembers a field wide open and under-populated. It was a time of no dearth of new ideas and opportunities to do exciting, interesting, imaginative things.
Today, it’s difficult to count the exact number of independent publishing houses, or the number of gaps in the market that are recognised and instantly filled. There is fierce competition, and numerous similar lists, and Arpita’s competition comes not just from other small publishers, but the big ones too. “When we started, the big publishers were very dismissive, but while I can’t support it with numbers, I will say today big brands are much more respectful of the difference indie publishers are bringing to the trade,” says Arpita.
. Her biggest challenge, perhaps, came with the decision to open Yodakin. Shortly after her partner decided to go her own way and in one swing, Yoda Press lost a founder and its beautiful office space, Arpita considered starting a bookstore to exclusively stock independent publishers. “I somehow raised the money and made the down payment, and then sent an email to all the independent publishers, authors and friends. I said I wanted to start a store that would just stock indie publishers and it needed a lot of work. I asked for their support.”
A month after she had made her down payment on the Hauz Khas village property, Arpita’s daughter had a terrible accident on Diwali. “It was a hellish eight months of recovery, where she couldn’t walk. There was nothing we could do. The store had to be opened, we’d put in so much money.” So on December 1, 2009, Yodakin opened for customers. “Initially, I managed the store, but later, hired people to manage it.”
It is while recounting the history of Yodakin that the support and goodwill Arpita has gathered becomes most obvious. She remembers the Hauz Khas village community rallying around her and her daughter. “They were incredible, and they really took care of us.” She also remembers that before the store opened, she ran out of approximately a lakh of rupees in cash. Next she knew, two cheques for USD 5000 each from her authors Thomas R. Trautmann and Nighat Majid were waiting in the mail. “And though I had no retail experience, fellow indie publishers let me stock their books on credit.”
Yodakin grew into a meeting point of ideas, debates and discussions. “We stocked each publisher’s books with their branding, and soon, people came to the store to ask for books by Blaft, books by Yoda, etc. There was a constant refrain of how they couldn’t find the entire list anywhere except Yodakin.” Arpita had created a space to display books that got lost is other, bigger stores. The carefully curated stock was flying off the shelves. Never before had Yoda Press sold as well as it did during the Yodakin years.
But rents increase. Soon, this expense set the Press back on other payments. Despite fund raising campaigns, Yodakin shut down in 2012. The blow, Arpita says, was more than just emotional. For the next year, the Press suffered, losing a space that would display its entire list. “We do have stores that stock us. Fact and Fiction has always stocked us, as have Bahrisons and Oxford Bookstore. But no one carries every title. Some places like Crossword will sometimes only keep a single title.”
What does help, though, Arpita maintains, is the move towards digital and online retail. “I always say that this is a blessing in disguise for small publishers. It levels the playing field.” Today, she says, that the move to online sales has ensured that with the correct metadata and searchability, Yoda Press’s books are as visible as a big publishing house’s. A recent lightening source tie-up with Ingram Content Group ensures that Arpita can promise her authors that their books can be made available anywhere in the world. “I think today there are very few reasons why an author shouldn’t come to an Indie publishing house.”
And they do. . Today Arpita laughs as she says that she is a sucker for turning authors into friends. “And now and then, friends into authors.”
These relationships she has cultivated have become pillars of that her publishing house stands on, with authors like Chowra Makaremi scheduling her India trip with Yoda’s anniversary dates in mind, just so she can be part of the celebrations, and Trautmann giving Yoda the South Asia rights to all his books, “no questions asked”.
“I feel a sense of shared parenting with so many people. In the case of our LGBTQ list, it couldn’t have happened without Gautam Bhan, who is a real parent to that list.”
Ten years down the line, there is not much Arpita would change, but she accepts that the one mistake she made did make was not handling her finances well. “I tried to do everything myself. I was very disorganised, and only got someone to help with the accounts later. Having a good business model is important, and you need to get an accountant from day one.”
Despite the mistakes and stumbles along the way, Yoda Press has already published outstanding books, creating new dialogues and spaces. Its future looks bright too, and the Press is all set to revive Orijit Sen’s “River of Stories” next year, complete with a new prologue and an epilogue that features the artist’s Narmada series.
