DURING 2000, there was scuffle between technology and content and the fight still continues as of this

date. With the advancement of the technology, one question always strikes so as to whether e-readers would one day replace print books entirely. E-publishing is very broad and encompasses a variety of publishing patterns, such as eBooks, print-on-demand, email publishing, web publishing services, etc. The Indian typesetting industry is in its nascent stage and is only a few decades old. In India, typesetting activity commenced as providing data-conversion services to some foreign publishers. To this date, the Indian typesetting industry is poised to provide almost complete prepress services to various global publishers. India continues to be a favoured outsourcing address, followed by the United States, Philippines, China and the United Kingdom. The industry is facing challenges in terms of global recession, the appreciating rupee and the emergence of new media. The publishers' expectations are increasing in terms of consistent quantity and quality, reduced pricing, multiple and complex deliverables and need to deal with fewer suppliers. Publishing has to encompass a gamut of services under one roof. For full-service jobs to be managed in-house, end-to-end services are the need of the hour for a typesetter/vendor in India. Indias high-quality, cost-efficient services and huge competent human resources have transformed it to a spellbound address for global publishers. Fast turnaround times and the capability to provide roundthe-clock services facilitate India as the most favoured terminus for typesetting. Office politics, fear of stagnation, stressful work schedule, and having to work night shifts are among the few primary concerns of Indian employees. Over the past few months, we all professionals have been a part and parcel of some kind of cost-cutting measures adopted by our respective employers; the various major approaches being: going digital, reducing print publishing, cutting different overhead costs, cutting salaries, bonus cuts, retrenchments, forced leaves, to name a few. In spite of confronting the challenges of rupee values, talent crunch and growth of newer media, Indian e-publishing industry is estimated to spring up by 35 per cent and provide a 1.46 billion dollar outsourcing chance by the end of 2010. To this day, India is also known world-wide as a major book-publishing country. Having more than around 17,000 publishing entities

producing content in more than 29 regional languages, India is a huge market for ePublishing. After the IT boom, the conventional publishers in India have moved their business orientation into the ePublishing sector with diverse products. Till date, some among the Indian publishers have brought forth a large amount of ePublications catering to both Indian and foreign readers. In the Indian context, the most substantial and satisfying potentiality is within the operations field, followed by editorial services. India is all set to come out as an impregnable and strong editorial and ePublishing base in the near future. Moreover, there have been acquisitions of companies in both the unorganised and organised sectors. The publishing industry has been witnessing a paradigm shift from print to digital publishing. Starting with increasing costs of production and print, the industry is making a strenuous effort to deal with the digital content demand as opposed to print. These days, service providers have also joined the eBook trend by actively offering eBook production. Technology is a great entry point into the publishing outsourcing sphere. Moreover, a great deal of peripheral IT and ITES companies has started working on it. Companies that conform to this profile will find digital publishing (digital) as a market they can easily adjust to. There has been an increasing trend in the transition from hard copies to soft copies. Publishers have already started plunging to tap the device market (ereaders, computers, smart mobile phones and handhelds, etc). But the major issue is that eBooks are prone to piracy over the Internet. On the other hand, print is somewhat hard to pirate as against the digital sector as some one has to reprint them. As the cost of developing an eBook is importantly less, so does its price per copy. This way one can well-imagine the voluminous growth aspects of eBooks due to lesser pricing. This might motivate employers to downsise their operations in the future. Although eBooks are cheaper than print in terms of production, the revenue generated from prints is much higher than that of eBooks, eBooks can be offered as parallel products not isolated ones. Publishers cant sustain their current levels of profitability through sales of eBooks only. They will have to also market their prints in parallel to eBooks. Truly and slowly, we are witnessing a paradigm shift in the areas of digital reading. Indian users still prefer printed content and the infrastructure to access and use digital content is yet

to be made conducive or robust in India. The role of 3D in ePublishing is emerging in specific market segments in India. While technology will continue to drive evolution in the publishing industry, at the end of the day, its content that continues to be the soul of the publishing industry regardless of either digital or print formats. Hence, by switching to eBooks, we can save our trees and our next generation.