Tirupati Kiran and Usha Prathyusha MB of Kathaa Prapancham share their love for books

Tirupati-based Kathaaprapancham Books, a Telugu publishing house, tells an inspiring tale of passion and hope. Behind its rise are the efforts of its founder Tirupati Kiran and editor Usha Prathyusha MB (co-publisher). Their love for books played a key role in navigating the publishing industry and making print publishing thrive in a digital age. Hailing from Tirupati, the book lovers became business partners to revive a dying publishing house.

Kiran says that he shares his birthday and year of birth (May 19, 1985) with his favourite writers Ruskin Bond and Gudipati Venkata Chalam. “Manamu antha sahityam srushtinchaka poyina, kaneesam pustakaalu chadavaali. Publishing cheyyali ani oka korika undi (We may not be able to create great literature, but we should read books. I wish to publish books,” he says over the phone from Tirupati.

Love for books

‘Premchand Kathavali’ by Munshi Premchand translated into Telugu
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Special Arrangement

Kiran’s love for books began in his childhood when he relished books in Telugu and English. While his grandmother’s bedtime stories impacted him, reading the Young World supplement of The Hindu opened up a new world. “Now, books are like my breath,” says Kiran, who reads around 150 pages daily before going to bed.

Kiran came to Hyderabad to pursue a career as a writer, worked as assistant and associate director for Eenadu Television, and, later, a script and ghostwriter for movies. “Books take the credit for my different stints; without all my reading, no one would have given me these opportunities.”

Step towards dream

Kiran would regularly attend literary and film festivals across the country to meet authors, engage in discussions and celebrate literature with other bibliophiles. One memorable meeting involves waiting at the Cambridge Book Depot to meet Ruskin Bond and take his autograph.

Inspired by his literary encounters, he first opened a Facebook page Kathaaprapancham in 2013, where he wrote about Telugu stories and literature. He followed it up with a blog and a website. Although he took up a media job in Hyderabad, he was dissatisfied. Later, his return to Tirupati due to personal reasons allowed him to fulfill his dream of opening a Kathaaprapancham book store and a publishing house, in 2018. “I worked alone and did everything,” he recalls.

From publishing books in Telugu to taking copyrights from writers of other languages to publish translations of their books and participating in almost 15 book fairs, he did everything to make his publishing house a success. Kathaaprapamcham took steps to stabilise; its weak financial situation deteriorated further due to COVID-19. ”I was about to shut down the publishing house and kill my dream, when Usha revived it,” says Kiran.

Fresh perspective

Books published by Kathaaprapancham
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Special Arrangement

“I was only a follower of Kathaaprapamcham’s works,” recalls Usha, an avid book lover and a student of English literature from Tirupati. Her interactions with Kiran began when she spotted pirated books in her groups on Telegram during the lockdown. She sent screenshots of those groups to him, and he filed a case against them and got them closed. Later, during their interactions Kiran spoke of his plans to shut Kathaa Prapancham due to losses. Recalling the heart-breaking moment, Usha says, “Being passionate about books, I earnestly wanted to try to give it a new life.”

New ideas

Usha invested her time and money and chose ‘Premchand Kathavali’, an anthology of 100 stories of Munshi Premchand (translated from Hindi to Telugu by Achyuthuni Rajyasree) as her first project. She also took recourse to modern publishing tools. “Kirangaru used to get work done in DTP (desktop publishing) with page makers; that traditional method is time-consuming. I don’t have the time to sit in front of a laptop, I only use my tablet and mobile to get the work done,” says the mother of two.

Using InDesign to get the pages designed and Canva for other works, she was able to get the book ready in one year. The success of Premchand Kathavali marked the second innings of Kathaa Prapancham. “We feel proud that no publishing house has, until now, got 100 stories of Premchand translated in Telugu,” says Kiran.

Working in sync

With students after a storytelling session
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Kiran and Usha work in tandem by combining their strengths. Kiran’s experience and literary knowledge help in selecting works and marketing them, while Usha’s ideas bring the works to life. “My mind is never idle, it is always thinking of new initiatives,” says Usha, who coordinates with translators located remotely, plans layouts, size, paper and price for the books. To reignite the love for reading among kids distracted by digital devices, Kathaa Prapancham has published a series of 10 sets of storybooks in 2024; another 10 sets are underway (totalling 100 books).

While Kathaa Prapancham launched nine titles between 2018 and 2023, the publishing house could bring out 10 titles in nine months (September 2023 to April 2024) after Usha took over as editor. She also made a significant difference in book distribution. “Distributors ask for a 40% cut, which is a huge sum for small publishing houses like us. We are not sure whether the books were sold, as the distributors don’t give us the money. Kirangaru had faced losses initially due to it,” she explains. The publishing house began to market its books online and directly to bookstores; proceeds from the book sales could then be ploughed back to publishing. Now, plans are on to open a WhatsApp business account to reach out to book lovers online and make the books available globally.

Usha coordinates with schools to organise storytelling sessions that Kiran conducts. So far, they have conducted such sessions in 500 schools across the Telugu states in the last four years. Efforts to secure rights for translating and publishing prestigious works in Telugu, with renowned publishing houses such as Harper, Penguin, Westland, and Viswakarma Publications paid off. They have secured translation rights for works such as Ret Samadhi (a Hindi book which won the International Booker Prize) by Geetanjali Shree, a Malayalam novel Randamoozam by M T Vasudevan Nair (a Jnanpith awardee) and Road to Abana by Lata Gwalani.

Hoping to make Kathaa Prapamcham a torchbearer of high-quality literature in Telugu, Kiran says, “We want to bring great stories of other languages to life in Telugu and take Telugu literature to other languages.” They are hoping to broaden the horizons of readers.