Now Indian writers pen for the masses

Young readers browsing at the New Delhi World Book Fair in PragatiMaidan. File Photo: R. V. Moorthy

A decade ago the average Indian teenager who read through the night was usually lost in the adventures of Nancy Drew. Later, the reader would graduate to the realms of intrigue spawned by Jeffrey Archer, John Grisham and Frederick Forsyth, among others, from the West. However, all that changed some years ago with the emergence of the Indian writer. He wasn’t like the other “Indian” writers, who only aimed for literary acclaim; his books were made to be read, and by the masses.

“Publishing was earlier a snooty business and it was tough to get books published. However, publishing houses became more accommodative, all due to pure economics. They realised that Indians were reading and they wanted to read books like mine,” says Ravi Subramanian, award-winning author of six best-selling books — Bankerupt (2013), Bankster (2012), The Incredible Banker (2011), Devil in Pinstripes (2009), If God Was a Banker (2007) and I Bought the Monk's Ferrari (2007).

His sentiments were confirmed by Amazon.in, the biggest web-portal for book shopping. The top bestsellers in the Capital and NCR are not titles that win awards overseas and make appearances at literary fests.

I Too Had a Love Story , Who Will Cry When You Die? and the The Oath of the Vayuputras top the list among other Indian works of fiction.

“Thirty per cent of books sold, fall in the Indian fiction writing pool from authors like Preeti Shenoy, Amish, Ravinder Singh and Chetan Bhagat,” said an Amazon.in spokesperson.

The attitude of the intellectual Indian attempting to pen his thoughts into words has also undergone a drastic change. “Earlier, an author wrote his book and then kept his distance from everything else. But now, these writers aggressively market their own books. It is an added help that the publishing house is also willing to back an author all the way. In fact, I believe that the author is the CEO of his own book,” said Mr. Subramanian, adding that another factor that had changed was the number of books an author churned out.

“These days writers bring out at least one book a year which I too manage. It is simple marketing actually. If a reader likes a particular author they keep reading all his books, and if the supply is not kept up, then the reader shifts his loyalties. It is almost impossible to win back a reader's loyalty once it’s gone,” he added. International publishing house Penguin was quick to identify this trend and started a separate section, “metro reads”, to cater to this new breed of writers.

“In 2009-10, commercial fiction began to identify itself and we started our imprint for mass market fiction, ‘Penguin Metro Reads’, in 2010,” said Vaishali Mathur, senior commissioning editor at Penguin. She added that on an average, the publication received more than 250 manuscripts from hopeful writers. This section focused more on “competitive pricing and higher volumes,” compared to their books coming from their other categories.

Harper Collins on the other hand does not have a particular imprint for the sellable Indian writer but has published a number of books written by Indian writers. “Harper Collins has only two categories — fiction and non-fiction. Colaba Conspiracy by Surendra Mohan Pathak and Gangs of Wasseypur-The making of a modern classic by Jigna Kothari are some of the books we have for the Indian reader,” said a Harper Collins spokesperson.