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With the publication of Ravi Subramanian’s fifth novel Bankerupt , Penguin Random House India’s commercial strategy is becoming increasingly evident. In July last year, Penguin took away the bestselling Subramanian from Rupa, where his first four novels Devil in Pinstripes , The Incredible Banker , If God was a Banker , and The Bankster were major hits. Penguin’s publisher Chiki Sarkar signed Subramanian for a multi-book deal at an undisclosed sum of money.
Subramanian followed pop writers Ravinder Singh and Durjoy Datta into the Penguin Random House stable. Both of them were won over from their earlier publishers, and both, judging from their continuous presence on the bestseller lists, have proved to be good investments for Penguin. Interestingly, the acquisition of these writers almost mirrors Penguin’s earlier literary acquisitions of Amitav Ghosh and Ramchandra Guha. Both those writers belong to the small breed whose works are both critically acclaimed and prove big sellers. And now, with the merger with Random House, Jhumpa Lahiri — whose The Lowland is still on the Indian fiction charts — also comes into the fold, giving Penguin Random House a strong position both at the literary and the popular ends of the bestseller market.
Who blurbs the blurber? A-list authors are hot property for writing blurbs for other books, but when it comes to their own books, who dares write the jacket copy? In the case of one such author whose long-awaited book is coming out soon, the editor’s description was summarily brushed aside by the writer himself. He provided his own text for the back cover. Which sounds right, except this isn’t meant to be a summary of the novel, but a statement of why you should buy the book. So the writer knows that best, right? And the publisher cannot afford to antagonise him by suggesting improvements.
India’s lit-blitz carnival season is winding down. 2013-14 has seen every city with a population of over 5,000 pop up with one or, preferably, two literature festivals. At least, that’s how it must seem to writers and publishers, who have to trot indefatigably around the country promoting their new books and networking. Prajwal Parajuly, writer of the acclaimed TheGurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee , admits to getting confused about which city he’s in and eating nothing but hotel food for six months.
Taking away a big author from another publisher must count as a coup. David Davidar at Aleph has done it with Vikram Seth, who will now publish A Suitable Girl with the Aleph Book Company. When? ASAP. For As-Sometime-As-Possible. Davidar is also publishing the 20th anniversary edition of A Suitable Boy , which should have an entirely new generation of readers now. It’s goodbye Penguin for Seth. Another such lateral move that’s sort of slipped in beneath the radar is that of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s — also away from Penguin — to HarperCollins. Chatterjee’s new novel, Fairy Tales At Fifty , will be out later this year.
How to sell more books? The weeping and gnashing of teeth are much in evidence these days whenever more than three publishing professionals get together. Except at literary festivals, the wine has dried up because swank book launches are few and far between, but no alcohol is needed to induce despondency. The great white hope — other than the Ravinder Singhs, Durjoy Duttas and Ero Tica (every publisher’s looking for something in that last category) — is the AWT. Or, Author Who Tweets. (Also Facebooks.) At least one publisher is setting up a workshop for its writers to learn the basics of social media marketing.
It may not be long before the publishing advance is linked to the number of friends and followers a writer has on Facebook and Twitter.
The biggest question in Delhi’s English language publishing circles: so where will the merged Penguin Random House have its offices? While Penguin Books has long been based in south Delhi’s Panchsheel Park, Random House has had two offices in Noida, across the Yamuna from Delhi. Now, the news is that all of them will move into a tony office in the digital gaon of Gurgaon, surrounded by tech giants like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Penguin Random House Authors can expect lots more pizza and drinks at their publisher lunches.
Arunava Sinha translates classic and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English. Follow Arunava on Twitter >@arunava
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