Madras HC stays CBSE bar on private publishers’ books

The Madras high court has stayed the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) decision to restrain affiliated schools from books by private publishers and make NCERT textbooks mandatory. The National Council of Educational Research and Training or NCERT is a government agency tasked with, among other things, “preparing and publishing model textbooks.”

In an interim order issued on 26 July 2017, the court slammed the CBSE’s U-turn — which came after a fresh session had begun — from its earlier stand allowing the use of private publishers' books. The board was also censured for previously allowing schools to buy private publishers’ books without a quality check.

The HC order came on a petition filed by an association comprising managements of around 287 private CBSE-affiliated schools, which had challenged the CBSE’s circular on the matter dated 6 April. In the circular, the CBSE said, “...It is once again reiterated that the principal/head of institution must pay personal attention towards implementation of usage of NCERT books in their school.”

According to an earlier circular, issued on 6 February 2014, the CBSE said schools should use “textbooks published by NCERT/CBSE for the middle classes as far as practicable or exercise extreme care while selecting books of private publishers.”

Anil Swarup, secretary, school education, ministry of human resource development, had earlier made it clear that the government had no intention of making NCERT books mandatory. (The Times of India)

At 1 million-plus, PM’s book for young set for highest print record

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's book for youth is slated to be one of the largest published non-academic books in India with an initial print order estimated to be more than a million. This is much more than the highest initial print run in India of some of the bestselling fiction writers, say publishing industry sources.

Even former president late APJ Abdul Kalam, a huge favourite with young readers, had a far lower print run. Turning Point, among the more popular books written a few years before his death, had a first print run of one lakh. Shashi Tharoor, another popular politician, also had a lower initial print run of his book, An Era of Darkness. Internationally, books like the Harry Potter series have had the biggest initial print runs.

The book, title for which is not decided yet, is being published with Penguin Random House. It is meant for youngsters to help them beat exam stress. Sources said that the book is also likely to be given to students in schools as a supplementary reading.

Even as Penguin refused to confirm the number of books being published, they did confirm that it is a “very big order”. (DNA)

18-year-old launches India's first print newspaper and magazine aggregator, Paperboy

Bengaluru-based Jonna Venkata Karthik Raja the 18-year-old founder of Paperboy is ecstatic as his 15 months of toil has finally come to fruition.

Paperboy is a mobile app that features the widest range of Indian newspapers and magazines that is uploaded on real time on to its platform. Paperboy is a language agnostic platform and will hence feature vernacular publications which is a crucial part of Indian news consumption habits. Paperboy aims to appeal to the global readership base of newspapers and envisions to becoming the ultimate platform to browse, buy and read each one's local news on the go.

Paperboy currently lists over 400 newspapers and magazines nationally and is live on the google Playstore.

Karthik Raja conceptualised this idea as he was finishing school, when he found that he was missing his daily routine newspaper whenever he was travelling. It wasn't too late before his entrepreneurial instincts kicked in and he went about developing a blue print for the platform. He then went about enlisting the support of his parents who were very encouraging and supportive of his venture.

Originally launched with just two team members, Paperboy has now grown into a team of 50 young, energetic and enterprising individuals. With their primary focus on Tier II and III cities, which represents almost 31.16% of India's population, Paperboy has already aggregated the widest variety of regional newspapers on their platform.

With a clean and simple interface, the app contains no pop up ads or interferences and lets one access their news both in online and offline mode; thus, making it easy to for people to read their favorite newspapers at their convenience.

Inspired by the increased adoption of digital content all over the world, Paperboy now brings the daily newspaper tailored to your device, be it Android, iOS or the web. It provides the same experience of reading one's favorite newspaper but on a screen which is the in-vogue format of choice today. (ANI)

Will Booksellers, publishers pass on the GST burden to the reader?

Writes Aditi Maheshwari Goyal of Vani Prakashan in Scroll.in:

The government has placed books in the zero-tax category under the new Goods and Servicex Tax (GST). However, despite this relaxation, the cost of book-making will go up by 10%-28% (excluding the overheads) and this will have to be paid directly by the publisher unless it is passed on to the reader, because there is no provision to claim Input Tax Credits (ITC) – taxes paid by suppliers – like in the erstwhile Value Added Tax (VAT). While the decision may be with the idea of making educational material easily accessible, the subtext, for non-English language publishers, for instance, has been largely unnoticed. ...

There will be 12%-18% GST on all services and service providers who contribute towards making a book. In addition, there is a flat GST of 18% charged on the royalties paid to the authors, versus 10%-12% TDS earlier. ... Will the reader benefit in this situation? The books that are currently sold at Rs 75-99 will now be priced at Rs 150-175. Can a middle-class reader accept this deep price hike in pursuit of leisure-reading in India?

Apart from the cost of production, the operations cost of GST management in the workflow of a publishing house is also set to increase. There will be 36 annual filings, three each month, in addition to the annual Income Tax submissions every year. (Scroll.in)

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