Page 25 - Report-2020

Sent you the material via WeTransfer yester-
day. Please feel free to reach out for anything
you might need.
I was also thinking that there has been a lot of
media coverage this year, which should be
reported as well. Please check to see if there is
enough space to manage a few coverages
from this - https://www.paragreads.in/press/. I
can help you which one to pick.
For statistics from April 2020 to March 2021-
books published - 31
teachers trained - 4373
number of community library sessions held -
11654
children reached - 25240
What were the major challenges faced by the Hello Rohit,
children publishing industry during the
pandemic?

We were not able to reach withdrawing/slashing committed sanctions
our readers or interact with them during the and two, we saw an all-time low sale, between

lockdown. is was quite disheartening. Social- April and September 2020. is rocked the
media come in handy but we are unsure how entire publication programme. At one point we
much of it actually reached the children. were not sure how long Eklavya publications

e ort will be able to survive if this situation
Another major challenge was severe financial persists.
crunch because of - one, funding agencies

What were some of the steps you had to take to

continue publishing high quality children’s

books?

First silver lining was that internal consultations it was decided that entire
most of the editorial and design team members organisation will create a pool of Salary
could continue working on the books in pipe- Support Fund through sta donations. is

line with synergy even during lockdown, so we pool supported the publication person power
had more than a dozen titles ready for press by shortfalls for almost six months. Later we
July-August, but no funds to print. realised that this step was quite unique,
resorting to an across the board, staggered slab
We tried Crowdfunding for the first time to get pay-cuts, so that one is not forced to resort to

these books to press, and it worked fairly well. lay-o s even in dire situation.
We were able to raise support for 12 children’s
books and half a dozen nature-society series In addition, we also requested authors and

map booklets. But Crowdfunding could not illustrators to extend contract period to delay
support salaries of editorial, design, dissemina- publishing. is gave us time to garner funds
tion and operations team members. at and make sure that the quality was not
required di erent strategy, so after multiple compromised in any way.