10 May,2026 07:31 AM IST | Mumbai | Akshita Maheshwari
Pic/iStock
The Indian reading ecosystem is at an inflection point. We are the 10th-largest publishing market in the world, and 2025 saw Indian books command global attention - from Arundhati Roy's Mother Mary Comes to Me to The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Indian literature, it seems, is finally being taken seriously on the world stage, earning the kind of recognition authors once only dreamed of.
And yet, beneath this moment of pride, it is still common to hear, "If you want to make money, don't be an author." For those who grew up as voracious readers, who once believed that writing could be both passion and profession, these global wins feel as inspiring as they are distant. In a market where influencer-led titles dominate bestseller lists and are swiftly optioned for screen adaptations, what happens to the authors who simply set out to tell stories? For many, this dream is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.
Swati Hegde wrote her first manusript at 12 years old, "if you could call it that," she says. She sent the manuscript to Penguin but got rejected. "I was just happy to know that an actual publisher read my book," says Hegde, now 30.
When she pitched her first actual manuscript to literary agents in India, she found the landscape thin. "Back in 2018, when I was pitching, there were maybe three or four literary agencies. Now there must only be five or six," she says. The agents she did hear from wanted to chop her book by a hundred pages. So she started shopping abroad, eventually signing with New York City-based Liza Dawson Associates. In 2024, she debuted with Match Me If You Can, published in the US by Penguin Random House - and, because she lives in India, by a leading Indian publisher as well.
The differences between the two experiences were stark. "When I got on the first call with my Indian publisher, the first thing they told me was: People don't read fiction in India, so don't get your hopes up too high," Hegde says.
When sales of the book underperformed in India, the publisher's response was to ask Hegde to do more on her end. "I was already posting about the book every single day on Instagram. I replied saying I hoped they were also continuing with their efforts. My book came out in June 2024 and I got this email in January 2025. I never heard back. That was the last email I ever had from them." Her US publisher, by contrast, offers an author's portal to track sales in real time, offering more transparency.
She also points to the Instagram pages of leading Indian publishers. "You'll notice that most of the books they recommend are foreign books. Their feeds are filled with books that are not Indian," she says, "Publishers are promoting the Emily Henrys, the Stephen Kings, the Suzanne Collinses. In a bookstore's bestseller section, there will be maybe five Indian names on the entire wall, and more than half of those will be non-fiction. I suspect a majority of Indian publishers' revenue doesn't come from the Indian authors they publish. It comes from the foreign authors whose books they're printing and redistributing."
Her US editor's attitude stood in sharp contrast. When Hegde asked if she should be doing more to push sales, the editor said, "Sales are not your job. It's the marketing and sales team's job. You focus on writing the next book."
Then there is the pay. Hegde was paid approximately 16 times more in the US for the same book. "What I got paid in India was 6 per cent of what I got paid in the US - which is laughable. Even accounting for the difference in economies, if you're paying your author that little, where is the motivation to build a sustainable writing career in India?" Her agent takes a 15 per cent cut, "but is well worth the work my agent does," Hegde adds.
"In the US, it's understood that for non-fiction, you need a platform because non-fiction is sold on the author's expertise. But fiction is the great equaliser. The story needs to stand out, not the author's follower count. What often happens in India is that a celebrity or influencer publishes a book and their fans - not readers, their fans - make it sell. The sales numbers are massive, but actual readers of the genre will tell you the book wasn't up to the mark. It got a deal because in most cases, the author was famous."
Non-fiction, too, comes with its own set of issues. Writer Yashica Dutt, whose Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar-winning memoir Coming Out As Dalit (2019) earned literary recognition in both India and the US, argues that even where pay is meagre, the ecosystems differ significantly. "In the US, once your book is out, you'll be invited to have conversations in intellectual and civil society spaces, and there is an expectation that you will be paid for your work."
According to National Library Archive, India has banned over 1000 books since Independence, with nearly 30 per cent of these bans occurring in the last decade. "There is a lot more censorship in television and cinema than in books. It's understood that a small section of society reads to begin with," says Dutt. In the US, she notes, books face organised removal from school curriculums, particularly those promoting diversity, Black life, or queer experiences. "In India, I don't see so much of that. But as women, and often as queer folks, I constantly think about what the social reaction to personal details of my life would be."
Publishing in the US comes with its own constraints. "As a South Asian author, you're expected to write around certain tropes - mango orchards, grandmother's mehendi, weddings, matrimony." And despite Coming Out As Dalit being one of the most anticipated books of 2019 in India, breaking through in the US took four years. "I didn't have the pathway that exists for certain Indian authors crossing over. That's why it took me four years to find a publisher in the US."
Paradoxically, Dutt sees more openness to new voices in India than in the US, where literary acceptance often requires an MFA or Ivy League connections. What the US has built, however, is a culture that venerates writing. "There were authors who were rockstars in the '60s, '70s, and '80s." Writing retreats and communities that nurture this, she believes, already exist in India. "We just need to go look for them, and make them a much bigger part of the literary world than they currently are."
The first birthday gift Aarti V Raman remembers is a library membership card, given to her by her mother at age seven. "I was reading Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum when I was 10 years old," she says, "I had a very active and vivid imagination, growing up on thrillers and larger-than-life stories." She channelled that imagination into her first novel Kingdom Come (2014) published by Harlequin. "They gave me an incredible amount of support - the full press tour treatment, book launches, everything," she says. Her next book, With You I Dance, followed with Fingerprint.
Raman has always written romance. But in India, mythology and non-fiction dominate the publishing charts. In the West, romance is a multi-billion dollar industry, exploding further through BookTok and Bookstagram. So she pivoted to self-publishing, reaching readers across the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Germany, and South America.
"It doesn't matter if you're published by a publisher or doing it yourself - you still have to do all the marketing. Taking your corner of the market has to be done completely and entirely by you. So if I'm doing all that hard work anyway, why should I get paid 10 per cent royalty? With self-publishing, I get to keep the entire cheque." She was making money pretty much the day she hit publish on her first Kindle Direct Publishing title. She hasn't looked back since, selling around 38,000 units herself, with friends in the space selling millions.
Would she return to traditional publishing? "For me, a woman living in Mumbai, it wouldn't have been possible to write the volume of books or make the money I've made without self-publishing. When you are dealing with international markets, you get paid at international market rates. Money-wise, self-publishing, hands down."
10th
India's ranking in global publishing charts
90 K
Number of books published in India in 2025
300
Number of books banned in the last ten years
Rs 18L
Stipend offered to the authors in the New India Book Fellowship
Nandini Nair, Assoc Director at NIF Book Fellowship
Twenty years ago, historian Ramachandra Guha realised that, "in India, people had ideas, rigour, and scholarship, but no support," says Nandini Nair. So he started the New India Foundation (NIF), which is a Bengauluru-based nonprofit that supports the research and writing of books on modern India.
Nair is blunt about the landscape, "If you want to make money in India, do not write a book. There are a handful of authors who can actually survive from writing. Every other author has to do something else."
For debut authors, publishing becomes even harder. Many manuscripts may get missed by publishers if they don't come from a big name. "For us, the important thing during the application process is the proposal and our belief that this is an important story and an interesting voice. We get around 500 applications each round from both debut and established authors. And we award around five fellowships each round," says Nair.
Of the 39 books that have been published out of the fellowship, 15 have been from debut authors. "Being attached to the NIF helps debut and established authors. With our in-house editor, by the time the manuscript reaches the publishing house, it is all but ready. This makes it very attractive to publishers."
The stipend too helps sustain authors so they can focus solely on writing. "You get Rs 1 lakh a month for 12 months, plus Rs 3 lakh on the book being accepted, plus Rs 3 lakh on publishing."
Chetan Mahajan Founder, Himalayan Writing Retreat
For a layperson with a dream to be an author, the publishing industry can seem like a big, bad, impossible-to-navigate world. "The publishing industry can be quite opaque," says Chetan Mahajan, who founded the Himalayan Writing Retreat alongside his partner Dr Vandita Dubey. "There's a lot of misinformation going around. A literary agent might charge you money upfront, even though that's not supposed to happen. Similarly, there's the whole scam of what is an Amazon bestseller." Mahajan's team actually tested this. They published a book with Lorem Ipsum filler text, got eight friends to buy it simultaneously, and earned it an Amazon bestseller tag.
"A lot of authors end up getting scammed in the pursuit of publishing," he says. The retreat, and its blog, tries to cut through that noise. But beyond information, there's the loneliness of the craft itself. "Writing is lonely, but it doesn't have to be lonesome. If you're 10 authors all struggling with similar problems - knowing you're not alone helps in many ways."
The structural problem, however, runs deeper. "Traditional publishers like Penguin, HarperCollins, and Rupa publish around 1000 to 1500 books in India in a year, but there are at least 50,000 being pitched for those slots. Sometimes great books don't get published, and sometimes very average books do, for the wrong reasons. The publishing industry is very network-driven. If you know somebody, or are an influencer, it really makes a difference."
A big challenge in India is the lonesome aspect of it. In other countries, you may be put up for residencies to write full time. Debut authors rarely have access to this in any country. So signing up for a retreat like this can really help authors. But is asking writers to pay for this, the solution? "I'd like to think our events are cheaper than pretty much anyone else's. Our creative writing course, which is our entry-level 101 course, is '34,000 and includes four nights' stay and everything," Mahajan says, "For those who can't attend in person, we have the First Draft Club, a monthly writing community now over 800 members strong which offers resources, peer advice, and guidance on agents and publishing."
And how does one get published with this programme? "Last year, we ran a programme with Devdutt Pattanaik and HarperCollins. We charged student participants '10,000 rupees. They came here, stayed with us for four days, learned from Devdutt Pattanaik, and 10 of them wrote an entire book over three days. HarperCollins has already signed up for the book and it should be coming out by the end of this year," Mahajan says, "Similarly, we run the Khozem Merchant Non-fiction Fellowship in partnership with Penguin. About 90-plus people who are alums of the Himalayan Writing Retreat have published their books."
15
Out of 39 books published by the New India Foundation were by debut authors
Kanishka Gupta, Literary agent
In India, which already suffers from a dearth of literary agents, Kanishka Gupta is one of the biggest names to represent your work. He argues that it isn't just authors who aren't being paid - publishers themselves are barely breaking even. "Publishers have to pay 50 to 60 per cent to the distributor, adjust for editorial costs, marketing, and printing. In the end, they are also left with very little money," Gupta says, "There are legacy names, Booker winners, or commercial authors manufactured by the publishing machinery because of their following that are making money. That's all." Gupta also charges a standard commission of 15 to 20 per cent.
Even award winners aren't guaranteed a deal. "It took me close to a year to sell a Sahitya Akademi Award winner's book to publishers. Her own publisher passed on the next manuscript. People are looking at sales figures and not taking on books just to have a prestigious name on the list."
This has fuelled the rise of influencer books, which can rake in unprecedented numbers, but come with their own problems. "I once interacted with an influencer who wanted someone to ghostwrite his book. When I asked how it would work, he said, âJust go on my Instagram, that's the material. Do the fact-checking using Google.' I was repulsed and decided not to go ahead. The book was published elsewhere. I don't think it has done well."
Precisely for this reason, influencer books can be "hit or miss," says Gupta, "For every Prajakta Kohli, there are dozens who don't sell as much. You have to be the right kind of influencer. Seema Anand, who writes on desire and sexuality, is a good writer. Kanan Gill is known for his intellect - I'm not surprised his book sold 40,000 copies. I do take on influencers, but I'm very selective."
