Publishing: The way forward

Kanishka Gupta, the literary agent, author, and founder of Writer's Side, South Asia's largest literary agency, tells us about his experiences of the publishing world, giving us insights into path-breaking and significant developments, the not-so-happening areas in the past decade, and the way forward.

While the publishing scene has seen more than its fair share of challenges in the past 10 years, part of the silver lining has been the entry of a few multinational publishers into India. Kanishka shares, "During the last decade, several multinational publishers like Simon and Schuster that didn't have a presence in India have set up shop here. Then there are others like Bloomsbury and Pan Macmillan who earlier focused on the distribution of their UK-published books by Indian and South Asian authors, and therefore had a limited list in India. Now, they have a robust local list and are publishing across all genres including business, mind-and-body, and spirituality and self-help. Aleph was started by David Davidar when he came back to India, and Amazon acquired Westland, which initially began with a small stake to test the waters and became a complete takeover."

"It is good for authors and agents as it means they have more options to choose from; earlier, we had a handful of big publishers," he adds. "Now, multinational publishers get their UK/ US counterparts to bid for a book that came from India. An author does not need a renowned foreign agent to get a foreign deal today."

Rise of Commercial Fiction

The last decade has also marked the rise of Indian commercial fiction. Authors like Amish Tripathi and the likes of Ravinder Singh and Durjoy Datta are selling in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. They began with small publishers before bigger publishers discovered them.

The age of translations

Another positive trend has been an interest in translations from Indian languages like Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi, although we still have a long way to go. Kanishka says, "Perumal Murugan is global name. His 'One Part Desire' got prominence because of the controversy. He gets published in the US/ UK; I haven't seen that sort of attention for translation from Indian languages in years. Another big success story was 'Ghachar Ghochar' by Vivek Shanbag, which sold by word-of-mouth in many languages across the world. Now, Indian language translations are at par with literary fiction in English." But Indian translations haven't made the expected impression barring a few names because of the inconsistency in the quality of translation.

Books on Science

Similarly, sales have been optimistic too. A few books that warrant a mention include Siddharth Mukherjee's 'Emperor of Maladies', which kicked off a rush of similar books on science. Nobel Laureate Venki Ramachandra's 'Gene Machine' sold thousands of copies too. Another game changer was 'Accidental Prime Minister' by Sanjay Baru which sold over 100,000 copies and sparked a major interest in political writing thereafter. 'Tell-all' books too are doing fairly okay, with Rupa Publications doing a lot of such books. A book by Shaheen Bhatt, Mahesh Bhatt's daughter, titled 'I've Never Been (Un)Happier' has already gone through five reprints. "She deserves all the success. She has gone through the phase and was very good at writing about it," he says.

The Bollywood Factor

"In non-fiction, although Bollywood continues to stay robust, the sad part is that there has been a steep decline in books on cinema that veer towards academics," he laments. The agent minces no words when he says, "I am generally disappointed with publishers' fixation on Bollywood. It's not like all of the books published in the genre are selling well. But publishers still harbour a view that cinema is glamorous and brings in more money for everyone involved. But the money spent on wooing the actors, finding a ghost writer and on promotions has no correlation with the sales. It's all vanity."

All is not well in Indian publishing too. For example, while literary fiction as a genre has grown, Indian authors have not made much impact. "India has not been able to set up its own ecosystem. Of course literary prizes like the DSC and JCB that run marketing and media initiatives through the year have helped the genre. JCB ties up with WH Smith, Amazon and literary festivals to promote not just the winning author, but shortlisted authors too. However, we don't have any literary fiction writer who has broken through internationally as Arvind Adiga had done; White Tiger was the last Indian literary fiction that won a major prize and sold 2 lakh-3 lakh copies in India itself."

The state of poetry Similarly, many genres are dead, he says, but publishers should not give upon them. "Poetry is dead; no mainstream, general interest publisher will print poetry unless it is a Ranjit Hoskote or Arundhati Subramaniam – or those who are popular like Akhil Katyal. Many good poets self-publish, and even well-known poets pay money to publishers that are more like printing presses and have no idea about how to make their books available in bookstores, or how to get media attention. Another genre that isn't selling are short stories. However, I think one should take a bet on anything that is good."

Unlike popular perception, Kanishka gives a thumbs down to e-books ad audio books. He says, "New ways of reading have been rejected. Print has prevailed." At the same time, he also values start-ups like Juggernaut. "Nobody can match their marketing and editorial vision. They work with this amazing energy, which is very visible if one visits their office. They have published 25–30 books that they were super convinced with and have pursued them passionately at every stage."

Sway of the OTT

With OTT platforms taking over readers' space and time, the future of books is in danger. Even though there is a sudden interest in books being adapted as shows on Amazon and Netflix with major studios woken up to the content in the writing world, it does not necessarily translate into sales.

"Today, a book doesn't sell more than 10,000-12,000 copies even if it gets into the Man Booker shortlist. There is serious trouble ahead if publishers don't change the way they market their books, use their money sensibly and stop being vain," Kanishka states as a matter-of-fact. "The next decade will decide if alternate platforms of reading like audiobooks will survive. I do see literary fiction picking up and something substantial may come up," the much sought-after agent signs off on a positive note.

- As told to Rajeshwari Kalyanam