Bridging the gap for India's authors

When Falguni Kothari wrote her first book Itrsquos Your Move Wordfreak she submitted the book to many Indian publishers She heard from Rupa amp Co in a monthrsquos time and it took another five months for the contract to materialise Waiting to board her flight literary agent Mita Kapur picked up Kotharirsquos book at the airport contacted her and sold her new book Bootie and the Beast to Harlequin Kothari loved the experience ldquoOnce Mita was handling my book I could focus on writingrdquoLiterary agents arenrsquot new to India US and UKbased agents represent bestselling Indian authors like Salman Rushdie Suketu Mehta Amitav Ghosh and Aatish Taseer This makes them famous on the global literary market Often agents engineer large advances via auctions and bidding wars Aravind Adigarsquos book The White Tiger had a heated bid on itThe right writerYet the tribe of homegrown Indian literary agents is growing A cursory look at Kapur Siyahi Kanishka Gupta Writerrsquos Side Anuj Bahri Red Ink Jayapriya Vasudevan Jacaranda and Urmila Dasgupta Purple Folio reveals that they have been active in seeking authors and in finding homes for their books Writerrsquos Side has placed over 300 books in five years and has a 90 success rate At Rs 5 crores Anuj Bahri managed one of the largest payouts for Amish Tripathirsquos next series on Lord RamRavi Singh of Speaking Tiger isnrsquot convinced that a good author needs an agent to find a publisher in India Yet the number of agented manuscripts finding homes with publishers is rising Milee Ashwarya editorial director Ebury India and Random Business at Random House says ldquoA bulk of our books are either commissioned or selected by our editors through the submissions we receive This has increased exponentially On any given day we get 4060 unsolicited manuscripts We try to do justice to them all but quality can vary In such cases a well presented agented script gets attentionrdquoGlobal vs localIn the US the literary agent is the gatekeeper to the publishers and is a tough cookie to crack Authors labour over the query letter that will appeal to literary agents and pitch manuscripts to them in writer conferences The literary agents expect a perfect copyedited manuscript to even decide if they will accept a book or not In comparison Indian literary agents handhold before manuscripts are ready for submission Gupta says ldquoIf I like the concept I might advise on rewriting the story to make the storytelling betterrdquoLR Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathirsquos titles are being optioned for TV shows or movies Chetan Bhagat ushered in massmarket books In the last decade Chetan Bhagatrsquos success has brought rapid changes in an industry that till then was driven by the lsquoliteraryrsquo lineage of Salman Rushdie Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy The era of mass market books brought in new genres of college romances crime thrillers and chick literature Historical mythological and religion based fiction also gained traction Kapoor explains ldquoPublishers are open to experimenting with genres Debut authors getting platforms that help us find good homes for their booksrdquoDebut authors like Chhimi TendufLa who wrote The Amazing Racist would have gone unnoticed if not for a literary agentDebut mattersThe rise in publishing imprints and new publishers has made it difficult for debut authors and even established ones to navigate the system Chhimi TendufLa whose The Amazing Racist was placed with Hachette by Gupta affirms ldquoI wouldnrsquot have been published without Gupta He got multiple offers and negotiated for me An author who wrote one of the best books I have read couldnrsquot get published in India initially because he didnrsquot go through an agentrdquo Kapoor agrees ldquoAuthors in India are now realising that having an agent facilitates a lot of processes and dealing with publishers the nittygritty of contracts and royalty statements promotion plans and followups are not for allrdquoIndian literary agents are gaining traction with authors and publishers Gupta has been in the business for less than a decade and most of his authors are via referrals of clients and through direct submissions He is the only acting agent of Writerrsquos Side and runs a tight ship yet a dozen editors work with him to critique and edit the manuscripts Kapur is a familiar name in literary circles and works on various literary festivals Bahri runs Delhirsquos famous Bahrisons bookstore in Khan Market and has great insight on readers choices He selects books as a literary agent with this knowledge of the market Indian literary agents have also partnered with global agencies to sell rights in different territoriesQuality to the coreAccording to Amish Raj Mulmi commissioning editor at Hachette ldquoMost major publishers in the West and here including us have begun to not accept unsolicited submissions Literary agents will continue to provide that extra dose of quality that may take a midlist literary fiction to becoming a solid narrative that captures the imaginationrdquoYet the payback doesnrsquot nearly justify being in the business Kapur explains ldquoItrsquos difficult to run an agency since we donrsquot have a running monthly income mdash there is no revenue model and surviving on commissions is impossiblerdquoIndian publishers actively seek new authors on their own as well and sometimes from the same landscape that the agent does Both scan social media literary festivals even selfindie publishing to discover a worthwhile author Gupta rues ldquoWhy would a writer want to route hisher book through me when Chiki Sarkar or VK Karthika approaches them directly How can agenting grow in India Sometimes publishers call my authors directly to discuss new concepts and ideasrdquoGupta also chafes that most writers have a lsquocolonial hangoverrsquo because they think a US or UKbased agent might help them get a better deal Ashwarya disagrees ldquoIndian agents work hard to understand the market and its trends and assess what publishers want fairly well They present us with welledited manuscripts and we take their submissions seriouslyrdquo Singh adds ldquoItrsquos as easy or difficult as working with an agency whether it is Indian British or American What matters really is the sensitivity professionalism and integrity of the agents rather than their nationalityrdquoFigure it4060 unsolicited manuscripts received in a day at Random House50000 Auction price to HarperCollins for Tarun Tejpalrsquos book The Story of My Assassins