One of the fondest memories I retained from my childhood is me, sitting with my cousins in a huddle, hands on knees eyes wide open ears wide open, listening to my grandmother tell us wondrous tales. These were tales of adventure, of heroic deeds, of monsters and villains, and some of them were of ordinary people as well.
Days of summer would pass with my head filled with stories of my grandmother. Once I got back to school after vacation, I would share these stories with my friends and they would share stories they heard during the summer break as well. One thing always stood out – none of the stories were similar, and all of them retained their different regional roots.
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A Goldmine
The reason why I share this cherished memory is that I feel the potential for publishing ebooks in regional Indian languages is an untapped goldmine. I will go one-step further and say that the next bestseller may very well be an ebook written in one of our many regional languages.
English has enjoyed rock star status in our literary circles. Writers who publish their stories in the Queen’s language are more popular and placed on a slightly higher pedestal. With the proliferation of ebooks and mobile reading devices, the tide is turning towards regional languages.
E-Retailers Leading The Way
A quick glance through major e retailers such as Flipkart, Amazon, and Google Play will reveal ebooks available in multiple Indian languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, and Tamil to name a few. With competition immense among these players, they are trying every trick in the book to distinguish themselves from the competition by offering a wide variety of titles to appease their client base. Regional titles and authors stand to benefit with increasing interest in acquiring their books and titles, albeit in a digital format.
Step Out Of The Shadows And Tell Your Story
If you are a writer who tells his or her story in your native tongue, now is the time to step out confidently and present your story to the digital world. Multiple avenues are available for regional writers to get their stories and their books across to a wider audience. At the World Book Fair held in Delhi last year there was a separate enclosure for ebook publishers who displayed a variety of titles, including regional books.
Apps too have jumped on to the bandwagon of regional books. Rockstand, an app for ebooks and e-magazines, has a regional ebook collection for their readers. NewsHunt, a news app as its title suggests, has forayed into regional eBooks offering readers titles in Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, and Tamil.
With sites, such as Flipkart, simplifying the publishing process, the regional Indian ebook is the next big thing just waiting to happen.
The stories we heard and shared as kids were in our native tongue. If a reader were to get a similar opportunity in today’s digital age, I am sure they will grab it with both hands.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/img-109061105-0001.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Anand Changali is a compulsive writer whose first love is cinema. He has written scripts for animation shows, and animation films, in addition to blogs and articles for the digital domain. His book, The Princess in Black – An Unheard Story of the Mughals, has been picked up by Srishti Publishers. [/author_info] [/author]