Jaipur BookMark 2025: Exploring the Future of Publishing from AI to Women’s Empowerment
Jaipur, February 2, 2025 — The 4th day of Jaipur BookMark 2025, India’s premier publishing conclave held alongside the Jaipur Literature Festival, featured a series of engaging and insightful sessions....
Jaipur, February 2, 2025 — The 4th day of Jaipur BookMark 2025, India’s premier publishing conclave held alongside the Jaipur Literature Festival, featured a series of engaging and insightful sessions. Topics ranged from new media and passion projects to a workshop focused on AI, as well as exploring the evolving relationship between authors and editors. This year’s focus on Tamil publishing was highlighted in a dedicated session, and the day culminated with a Publisher’s Roundtable, which brought together publishers from different Indian states to discuss the future of the industry.
The 3rd day of BookMark’s sessions had wrapped up with an Editors’ Roundtable led by Arunava Sinha featuring professionals from the Indian publishing industry. Amrita Talwar, Chiragh Thakkar, Elizabeth Kuruvilla, Karthika VK, Manoj Satti, Moutushi Mukherjee, Rahul Dixit, and Sushant Jha shared their perspectives on the state of publishing in India and around the world. For Mukherjee, watching Indian authors gain international popularity and accolades has been a highlight of the past few years. VK expressed excitement about the growing appreciation for publishing novels in multiple Indian languages. The conversation veered into more serious topics, with Dixit bemoaning the difficulty of selling novels from new authors. The speakers agreed that the rising cost of producing books has made selling new novels a riskier venture, as well. The conversation turned more positive, as they seemed optimistic about the future of literature in India and globally. They mentioned that the increasing interest in literature festivals can benefit the publishing industry, too, by providing more spaces to promote new authors.
Day 4 of Jaipur BookMark’s sessions started with a lively conversation with Anand Gandhi and Vinay Shulka, moderated by Hemali Sodhi. The duo reflected on their process for film and game development, and some of the peculiar perspectives that shaped ‘Shasn,’ one of India’s most popular board games. Gandhi reflected on how he broke into film writing, through his mother's love for pop culture. Shukla offered a humorous perspective on his start in the film industry, calling himself “mediocre at everything” until he managed to win a short film competition that Anand Gandhi was a judge for. The pair explained that ‘Shasn’ is an extension of their 2016 film An Insignificant Man, and their goal was to encourage the players to reexamine the way they view political engagement.
