VK Karthika’s exit from HarperCollins India after ten years of holding the top job in the company came as a bit of a shock to the author community in November.

Noncommittal on her departure, Karthika has told the media, ‘All I can say is, I’ve had a glorious time here and am going to miss the many wonderful writers and colleagues I have had the good fortune to work with over the past 10 years.’

As for whether or not she plans to launch her own imprint in the near future, Karthika merely said, ‘Who knows!’. Chiki Sarkar after exiting from Penguin India has made a success of her independent initiative, Juggernaut, within a short span of a year.

Karthika has for the last one year expressed her unhappiness and the desire to quit, especially after leadership change in the company last year, ‘which has brought in an outlook difference’, says the industry grapevine.

Ananth Padmanabhan, HarperCollins CEO told the media, ‘As publisher, Karthika has built invaluable relationships between HarperCollins and its authors, agents and publishers, not just in India but around the world as well. She has been a dear friend and colleague and will be missed.’ Padmanabhan, who moved from Penguin to HarperCollins in 2015 is known to have an aggressive marketing vision for the Rupert Murdoch owned company.

Experts in the industry say it has to be business vs quality. ‘With the vast change in the demographics, the overwhelming presence of people below 30 means that reading books is no longer a natural, organic activity – there has to be a reason to read a book. And in this segment, it is campus and corporate romances that rule.’ As such, it is being said HarperCollins India is looking to bring more genres to the Indian market, like and similar to the Indian publishing giant Rupa; low-priced and highly popular stuff like Chetan Bhagat. With the average print-run of books down to 3,000 or fewer copies, a company has to produce a great many number of books to reach its targets.