Bloomsbury, the publisher of the Harry Potter series, is set to launch its India business with Rajiv Beri,former Managing Director of MacMillan India, at the helm. The company will be looking to develop publishing programs and Indian authorship. Following this move, Bloomsbury India will become the wholly owned subsidiary of the company. The company will be based in Delhi and will be functional by May 2012. It will initially focus on sales, publicity and marketing while the editors will be appointed at later stages. Bloomsbury will be discussing the marketing and distribution strategies with Penguin and Palgrave Macmillan. The company has had a marketing and distribution arrangement with Penguin in India for 25 years. Apart from offline production of books, it would be interesting to see what Bloomsbury does on the digital front, especially when it has already shown intent in curating digital content with the launch of Wisden India. Last year, Bloomsbury owned Wisden, a cricket content brand, was launched in India after a licensing agreement with FidelisWorld, to offer content properties across digital, tv and print, featuring news, views, and entertainment based on cricket while the Wisden India digital portfolio was to include the Wisden India web portal, games and mobile apps. Bloomsbury publishes books in fiction and non-fiction category. In fiction, it also publishes audiobooks for children while sub-categories in non-fiction include academic,professional, adult, children and informatory books such as The Encarta World English Dictionary, The English Language Teaching Database and The Macmillan English Dictionary.The company claims its e-book sales grew at 38%…
