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Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

Self-help? Amitabha Bagchi reading excerpts from his debut book, “Above Average” at a bookstore, a multi-city self-financed effort that he says generated a lot of interest in readers

“I had a rough idea as to what kind of a contract I wanted, so quite confidently I asked my publisher for those terms,” he says. Changing the tone of his voice, he gets dramatic, “I was told, no.” Mellowing down, Bagchi seemed to have pleaded, “Pleassee…and still it said, no.”

“That’s when I realised I am not in a bargaining position and so signed it the way it was formatted for me,” says the light-hearted Delhiite, whose novel is in the best-selling list of works by a debut author. “15,000 copies sold!” flashes first on the website he has put up with “help” from Harper Collins, but Bagchi is quick to add, “Just today, Harper told me it has gone up by another 2,000.” He is obviously buoyant at the reader response despite failing to sign the contract about which he had “a rough idea”.

Now look at the overall scenario for debut authors in 2007 and you have something positive to talk about. First, there is a definite surge of new writers. If a Penguin India spokesperson says, “This year, we have published 18 debut authors cutting across all genres,” Harper Collins senior editor Nandita Aggarwal matches it by adding, “The number of manuscripts received has definitely gone up.” It has published over a dozen new authors in 2007, while Rupa too has 12 such names.

Secondly, most of these first-timers seemed to be doing fairly alright, sales-wise. Besides Bagchi, there is Advaita Kala’s “Almost Single”, Ravi Subramaniam’s “If God was a Banker”, Ankush Saikia’s “Jet Set Woman”, Amandeep Sandhu’s “Sepia Leaves” to name a few titles which are attracting readers’ interest. Enough of a boost to set them on to their next book.

Interestingly, besides a handful of them, (such as David Devadas’s “In Search of a Future”) most of the books doing well are light fiction, with autobiographical elements, targeted at the changing pattern of readership of English books. A trend that publishers, authors and literary agents consider “positive”.

Says Ravi Subramaniam, “Literature is not only about hills, valleys and birds flying. I don’t want to write a Kiran Desai or an Arundhati Roy kind of book which perhaps 100 people buy and only 50 read. My books are for casual readers with no heavy English.”

Concurs Anuj Bahri of Redlink, a literary agency, whose family owns one of Delhi’s oldest bookstores, Bahrisons, “We need to have more books which are fast read, not heavy literary fiction. For this, we need different genres like thrillers, fantasy fiction, historical writing, etc.” The trend has started, and “in 2-3 years, it will be better.”

Such a need has perhaps made Kala’s book, the country’s first piece of chick lit, fare well. With her book finding a mention in the Western media, Kala is now in touch with publishers for its international edition. “Also, I am getting queries for film rights,” she says.

Alongside, also tumble out pointers like why most debut authors go autobiographical, receive a paltry sum as signing amount compared to the West, how selling 15,000 copies is ‘great going’ here, besides complaints like insufficient publicity for books by publishing houses and how new authors are not genre conscious and so a few genres are still untouched.

Bagchi, in “Almost Average”, picks frames from his life, as “You need to have characters with depth, and creating one is not easy the first time.” Subramaniam, in “If God Was a Banker” too speckled a few personal elements. But herein, Sandhu has gone the whole hog. Not just with “Sepia Leaves”, which talks about his mother’s schizophrenia, but with his next book too. Though new author Saikat Majumdar says he has saved himself from the tendency the first time, “Silverfish” is full of Kolkata that he saw.

Yet another factor that seems common to debut authors is their struggle to get published. Almost all of them have said, “It was difficult”, and signed a contract which tilts more towards the publisher. Sandhu says, “I collected a few rejection slips and forgot that I had sent my manuscript to Tara Press. So when I got a call from them, I was taken aback.”

Publishers’ inadequate effort at promoting books is also a complaint. Bagchi says, “I travelled to different cities at my own expense and started a website and a blog to talk about my book, which pushed sales.” Paltry royalty is an issue too. Subramaniam says, “I get pocket change.” Bagchi adds, “I get Rs.15 per copy. With eight years put in for a book, is that enough?”

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