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. <snip>
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)
- Shrabani Basu - Victoria & Abdul - $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.
Read the rest of her article here. Outlook has more on rising advances for homegrown talent in "The Dollar-Rupee Conversion."
And if you're interested in knowing more about book deals and the latest news from the U.S. publishing industry, subscribe to Publishers Lunch. Another useful source of information is Publishers Weekly, which has a daily news update.
