A lot of blame for this phenomenon must be shared by the publishers. They have willfully diluted their standards and lists. At the turn of the 21st century, they discovered that the middle-classes were ready to use it to realise dreams they had been nursing for a long time. Newly affluent Indians were ready to pay vast amounts to trek to the Everest Base Camp with a Seiko Alpinist on their wrists, to cruise down the Nile in khaki Seersucker jackets, document the Serengeti with their Leica M-3s, scout for the Lochness Monster with a tweed flat cap on their heads and a dram or two of Ardbeg in their hand. And write novels with their matte-black Mont Blanc Meisterstucks to be published by houses which once had Rushdie, Narayan, Nagarkar, Roy and Naipaul on their frontlist.
What’s more, this lot was willing to bankroll the entire print run of 500 copies. In turn, they would get 50 copies to gift their ‘loved ones’ and have a book launch at a Bandra or GK-1 jazz bar.
Many new publishers mushroomed and minted money. Older, more reputed houses, too, opened barely concealed vanity publishing divisions. These vanity books, mostly novels, all but killed the literary novel in India. These novelists were repeat customers, and when in 20 years’ time their sons and daughters also wrote novels and books of poetry, they bankrolled these, too, as they would pad up their CVs for admission in US and Australian universities.
Novels lost their mystique, their dignity. And in turn, so did the publishers. The editors who published these novels lost their ability to appreciate storytelling, as they looked for ever more simple narratives. All nuance was sandpapered over and complications frowned upon. The marketing departments soon started to endorse POD – Print On Demand – to save warehousing costs. ‘Why print 3,000 copies when you can print 300 copies and release the book on Amazon? One can always print more over the weekend when all the copies are sold.’ Soon, these marketing and sales mandarins lost their ability to assess risks, to sell books.
These fake novels and their hired publicists also killed the book review in India. As these novels flooded the desks of book review editors week after week, in understandable disgust, they stopped reviewing works of fiction and concentrated on non-fiction where this fakery was less apparent. But review editors, too, lost their relevance. Most newspapers simply did away with their review pages.
Publishers and writers are equal partners in the creation of a book. Without a publisher, no writer can become a true author. In turn, without writers, publishers might as well sell soap. Publishing can’t be run as an FMCG business, as the collapse of Amazon-promoted Context – which published some fantastic non-fiction titles – early this year shows.
Publishers are of vital importance to writers and society as gatekeepers and opinion-makers. So, it is my fervent appeal to them to only publish novels they truly believe in. And not some dross they hate but hope would sell lakhs of copies, or a book by an academic who will make sure that his or her college library buys the complete backlist.
Please be evermore elitist. As to my comrades – the novelists and storytellers – kindly stop fobbing off your memoirs, travelogues, reportages, diary jottings, psychiatric case histories, and doctoral theses as novels. You are a service provider. Provide stimulation if not pleasure. Otherwise, like a sniper, you’re just picking off readers, one by one.
(The writer is author of The Time of the Peacock)