The indie editor: Arpita Das on why Yoda Press will remain independent

The living room of a DDA duplex in south Delhi is where Arpita Das has been running Yoda Press from for nearly six years. A small nook on the right with two wooden desks serves as a semi-formal work area, but Das or senior editor Nishtha Vadehra are as likely to use the dining table or the sofas in the sitting area.

Yoda Press is the proverbial garage enterprise, but unlike the tech enterprises that started out that way and grew large, Yoda Press has remained determinedly small. In fact, for an independent publishing house like Yoda Press, being small is a way of remaining insulated from the commercial pressures that compel large publishing houses with plush offices and hundreds of staff to publish an assembly line of books picked largely on the basis of their saleability. Running a tight ship has allowed Das to bring out books that have limited appeal, to experiment and give more time and attention to books. Not that being small is all it takes – legions of independent publishers have had to fold up over the years, unable to keep up with a shrinking market dominated increasingly by large publisher and retailers. Which makes Yoda Press' 10th anniversary last month a particularly commendable milestone.
It is a testimony to Das' tenacity, her early decision to concentrate on 'alternative', 'crossover' areas of scholarship and her careful editing which ensures that while Yoda books are solidly researched and serious, they can be read by both academicians and lay readers.

Yoda Press' early reputation was built on its queer list, on publications such as Sunil Gupta's photo-memoir,Wish You Were Here; the illustrated A Little Book on Men; and Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India. In 2010, Yoda's publishing programme expanded to include travelogues, memoirs, books on food, poetry and even fiction. But still, the emphasis was on narratives that challenged the mainstream discourse.
Das, needless to say, is not one for comfort zones. "The comfort zone is comfortable, but I become impatient with it very soon," she says. 

It's an ethic that is reflected in the new directions Yoda's publishing programme has taken. It has, for one, ventured into the children's genre with the very unusual Humans in My Backyard, a book of photographs charting the tale of Thyaga, a young elephant whose survival is threatened by humans. It's unusual also in being available in ebook format only.

If survival is about keeping up with the times and innovating, it's an instinct that comes easily to Das. Last year, she and a few others started AuthorsUpfront, a self-publishing venture. Self-publishing is generally derided as 'vanity publishing', but Das realised that there was a new breed of edgy, experimental authors who, because their books were of a certain kind, didn't want to go to conventional publishers.

Already the fledgling imprint has brought out some distinctive publications, including the graphic anthology Dogs, Raghu Rai's photographs of Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi titled The Tale of Two: An Outgoing and an Incoming Prime Minister, and the best-selling Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis.

Part of Das' adventurous spirit is also reflected in her openness to the e-format. Unlike other publishers who fetishise the physical book, Das has been quick to realise that e-formats give independent publishers a more level playing field in distribution. "It's a pointless argument we've got ourselves tangled into — the book fetishists and the digital loyalists. I see my child and her friends — they are so comfortable reading on devices. It doesn't matter to them, they want to get to that word." With digital publishing, she also realises, "You can take that risk, fine-tune a book in the next edition — you don't have to be stuck with 5,000 copies."