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The motive, obviously, is not altruistic. 8216;8216;Ten successful school or college textbooks are enough to keep a medium-sized company afloat,8217;8217; says Aloke Roy Chowdhury, who retired as director, education division, at Oxford University Press in 2000 to set up Chronicle Books, an affiliate of The Asian Age. And such is the size of the market, enthuse industry insiders, that all comers are welcome.

According to industry sources, if the Big Three 8212; OUP, Macmillan and Orient Longman 8212; command 30-40 per cent of the school textbook market, the rest is incredibly fragmented. The Mumbai-based Navneet Prakashan see box is one of the largest, most profitable players, with 55-58 per cent marketshare in Gujarat and Maharashtra. But the other players are small-time publishing units. A large chunk of their market is the hugely profitable guide-book sector, which continues to be the preserve of small publishers.

Now things are changing. 8216;8216;For us, it was a matter of natural progression,8217;8217; says Thomas Abraham, GM, Marketing, Penguin India. 8216;8216;We have loads of titles and copyrights at our disposal. We are only looking at exploiting a market we can tap legitimately.8217;8217;

By virtue of its in-house fiction lists, series like Penguin Classics and tie-ups with companies like Faber, Penguin India commands a vast reservoir of standard English titles. Not surprisingly, its focus in the educational books market is directed sharply toward literature. About 70 to 80 per cent of the Penguin Study Edition 8212; to be launched in April 2004, in time for the June college rush 8212; will be for literature students; the rest will be made up by history, sociology and medicine titles.

If the Penguin Study Edition will be a near-facsimile of the Penguin Students Edition available in the UK, Britannica is venturing into largely unfamiliar territory with its package deal of lessons and workbooks. 8216;8216;The content was developed in Australia for our web venture, which died with the dotcom bust. But it has been adapted to the Indian situation, and there8217;s scope for further modification,8217;8217; says Aalok Wadhwa, MD, Encyclopaedia Britannica India.

Brightly coloured, with high production values, the sets for classes VI to X hit the market in December 2002. The launch time wasn8217;t right, admits Wadhwa, but they intend to get it right with the next set, for classes I-IV.

The market potential is huge. 8216;8216;At any given time there are 600 million kids going to school or college,8217;8217; estimates Roy Chowdhury. 8216;8216;If 15 to 20 per cent of them get a private education, and each spends Rs 500 on books in a year8230; well, that gives an idea of the stakes.8217;8217;

For both Chronicle and Britannica, the focus will be on classes I to VIII. While Wadhwa is clear his first shot is at the supplementary market 8212; 8216;8216;vitamins for the student8217;8217; 8212; Roy Chowdhury has begun a cautious foray into the core textbook sector. 8216;8216;We are not looking at returns,8217;8217; they chorus. Elaborates Roy Chowdhury, 8216;8216;Textbook publishing has a long gestation period, at least two to five years, it would be foolish to expect to break even before that.8217;8217;

At one level, textbook marketing is similar to the FMCG trade. If school books call for personal interaction with principals and teachers, the gatekeepers at the college level are the students themselves. This one factor makes the college market that much more difficult to capture with new titles. But one bull8217;s eye hit 8212; especially in the professional studies category 8212; is usually good enough for a five-year run, at least.

The gold standard here is A C Dutta8217;s Botany for Degree Students. Published in 1979 by OUP, it still sells around 10,000 copies a year by industry estimates. Multiply that by Rs 250, the paperback price, and you8217;ll see why textbook publishers bear no grudges towards their glamourous cousins 8212; the fiction and coffeetable-book publishers and, of late, the non-fiction imprints 8212; at being denied the limelight. They8217;re too busy making money.