sarasvati beats lakshmi
her mother-in-law (from Indian Outlook weekly)
By Kulamarva Balakrishna
Vienna, Saturday, February 9,2008:Friend author journalist of Opec fame Khalid Hasan writes even marketable farts sell as books in India. I am not surprised even superstitions sell. When I wrote my book A portrait of Bombay´s Underworld in 1965 M/S Manaktala & Sons did not pay me any advance but sold during the first week of publication at the Bombay Oval Maidan book fair over nine hundred copies.The same time the late R.K.Narayan considered India´s Anton Chekov´s book Guide was released but did not sell as many copies.Then it became a film starring Dev Anand.It is selling names.As for my book, M/s Manakatla´s,who folded up but did not pay me.I went to a court of law.Then in order to save himself Mr.Manaktala issued ten rupee checks to prove to the court he is willing to pay but unable. Look at the list of authors made by Reddy,whose editor Vinod Mehta wrote about Bombay´s red light district,subject of a chapter on my book on the subject after my book was released.On the same subject Benedict Costa, a friend and colleague employed by the Illustrated Weekly of India wrote another book on same red light district.The sales figures I would know.All to say marketing is a trick.I wrote for The Times Weekly an article on how Indian slave traders imported poor Nepali girls to the Golpitha in Bombay.That article was made into a film by Mira Nayar as Salam Bombay with the portrayed =Solahsaal= sixteen year old with branded breast exposed by my photo as the pimp lifted the girl´s breast cover for all to see.Nayar did not show the courtesy of acknowledging. I saw the film after several years of its release, in Vienna.I could have taken The =Venice Festival Awardee= celebrity director to a court of law but it was late because of time bar.I say this all to give a perspective.There should be agents.There should be names. There should be gambling Dalal Street istyle.Look at my friend M.F.Hussain. He was trapped to make his own paintings´ copies and count two billion rupees a year on 200 copies.That was his undoing.Now he can not return to the lawless country that is India.In my book, A Portrait of Bombay´s Underworld edited by Arun Gandhi,then working as Chief Sub Editor for The Times of India, I had called only Bombay city as a lawless city.Now the whole of India has to be crowned by that title.Today´s India has no drinking water but it thrives medicating on cow´s urine.Its politics and business is a garbage business out right.Less said of the conditions the better.In any case let my readers know how cash flows in India´s dry rivers including the Mithi sludge river closed to the sea but encroached by building sharks.Less said is the better.I give the text sent to me by Khalid Hasan.The text follows:
indian book market
flowing with cash
Sheela Reddy of Outlook India has a rundown
of all the hefty advances Indian publishers are
doling out to writers like Nandan Nilekani,
Dev Anand and Amitav Ghosh these days.
From "Words Worth Millions":
Something funny is going on in the famously
tight-fisted circle of Indian publishers. For
the past few months, they have been punting
dizzily on manuscripts by untried Indian authors,
coughing up millions of rupees in advance royalties.
The buzz about the boom in Indian advances has
spread so fast that publishers and literary agents
heading West with Indian manuscripts are
swerving right back home, demanding five and
six-figure dollar advances that rival those in the
UK or Europe.
With six or seven big publishers here all fishing
in the one small pond of Indians writing in English,
book auctions are now very much a part of the
publishing trade here. Till a year ago, publishers
in Delhi usually waited for their annual forays to
the Frankfurt or London book fairs, hoping to
catch the eye of a literary agent or publisher
who would be generous—or stupid—enough to
part with Indian rights for next to nothing. As
beggars, they didn't count for much. "They
wouldn't even give us the time of day when we
approached them," recalls a publisher in Delhi
ruefully. But now, it's their day in the sun. "All
of us get at least four or five queries a month
from agents and publishers abroad who think
a manuscript might be of interest to Indian
readers. Of these, at least two turn into full
-scale auctions," she says.
This will be big news for journalists with India-specific
projects in mind. Here's mine: a motivational book for
India's emerging middle class called, get this, "The NRI
Guide to Riches, by Sam Patel." Followed in quick
succession by "The NRI Guide to Early Retirement,
by Sam Patel," and "The NRI Guide to Home Opulence,
by Sam and Darshana Patel" (obviously there are no
actual Patels, just models for the book cover).
So where were we? Here's a list of authors Sheela
Reddy names, and their nice, chunky advances.
Now we get everything in India!
Palash Mehrotra - The Butterfly Generation
$20,000 (Rs 8 lakh)
Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger
- $35,000 (Rs 14 lakh)
Tarun Tejpal - The Story Of My
Assassins - Rs 22 lakh
Dev Anand - Romancing With Life - Rs 15 lakh
Nandan Nilekani - Imagining India- $35,000 (Rs 14 lakh)
Amitav Ghosh - Sea Of Poppies
Trilogy - $110,000 (Rs 44 lakh)
Tony D’Souza - The Konkans -
4000-5000 pounds (Rs 3-4 lakh)
- $16,000 (Rs 6.3 lakh)
Now, just how significant are these numbers?
On one hand they're far from what some of
these writers would get in certain Western
markets. But not all; Tarun Tejpal's Indian
advance was larger than what he reportedly
was offered by an Italian publisher. And for
literary fiction, $20,000 to $30,000 for a first
time author, even in the U.S., is nothing to
sneeze at.
More importantly, for hundreds of potential
authors in India who may have been reluctant
to enter the industry earlier, because they simply
couldn't afford to, these figures will be serious
motivation. I can think of former colleagues at
my ad agency in Bangalore - the classic frustrated
copywriter - who could only dream of leaving
their jobs behind in the 90s in order to take on a
book project. The standard line was that they'd
have to move abroad to pursue their true passion.
This has led to many of the best-known Indian
writers being NRIs, and that will most certainly
change.
An advance, by the way, is not necessarily the
total amount one makes off a book - it is merely
how much one is paid up front in order to take
the time to complete a book. At least here in the
U.S., in order for the author to make more money,
s/he has to sell a certain number of books before
beginning to see royalties. Early on, the percentage
earned per book will be on the low side, and will
inch up as certain sales thresholds are crossed.
And often, when one receives a low advance, they're
more likely to start receiving royalties earlier on
than if they'd gotten a big advance.
As Reddy explains, the increased advances are
generating substantial buzz. A bidding war broke
out over rights to Aravind Adiga's White Tiger,
"a slim fictional tale, in the form of a letter written
by a village-born driver to the Chinese premier,
giving his version of India's global economic boom."
Harper Collins finally won.
But winning The White Tiger is not a decision she
[Harper Collins' VK Karthika] regrets, even if
it means selling 40,000 copies of it in hardback
—not altogether impossible, as recent successes
have proved."The White Tiger has great commercial
potential, a novel that can speak to anyone, anywhere.
And don't forget, it includes paperback sales as well.
We'll recover our money, even if it takes two years."
The competition for rights to Amitav Ghosh's trilogy
was more complex.
Ghosh's agent, Barney Karpfinger, asked the six
major rival houses here to not only read the
manuscript of the first in the trilogy, Sea of Poppies,
but demanded a presentation from each of them:
on editing, marketing and positioning on their lists.
After that, the bids. It was perhaps the most fiercely
fought bidding war on Indian soil for an Indian book,
soaring to new and unprecedented heights. It closed
or rather, was brought artificially to a close—somewhere
in the region of 1,10,000 dollars (Rs 44 lakh). For
the first time, the winning bid was slightly lower
than the losing one. After a point, as the winning
publisher, Ravi Singh of Penguin, puts it, "It's not
only about money, but what you bring to the
table in terms of editing and marketing."
Reddy also addresses the changing market
conditions brought on by a middle class readership
of some 300 million people, along with higher prices
for some books (like Dev Anand's presumably
scintillating autobiography), allowing publishers
to recover advances fairly soon.(end)
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