Are you a bloody good writer?

In January last year Shubhra Rishi 29 Shantheri Mallaya 35 and Vinay Kumaar 23 all three of them technology writers decided to write a whodunnit After a month of continuous meetings plot discussions character development and writing sessions the trio finally finished their manuscript Tentatively titled A Game of Pawns the book is a murder mystery with the interspersing lives of three people That was the easy part The real game had just begun They had to try and find a publisher who would take a look at their work Amish TripathiAuthor of the Shiva TrilogyldquoI didnrsquot know whom to send it tordquo says Rishi Then came along Bloody Good Books a new publishing initiative with a twistBloody Good Books BGB is a fresh venture by author and entrepreneur Rashmi Bansal author of Stay Hungry Stay Foolish Connect the Dots Itrsquos a crowdsourced and crowdcurated publishing company Unlike other publishing houses BGB functions in a different way ldquoWe let the readers choose the books they want to see publishedrdquo says Bansal who describes her venture as a ldquonotforprofit platform to discover original fresh and pathbreaking writersrdquoThe mechanism is simple mdash aspiring authors send their manuscripts to BGB Out of these the best ones will be picked and the first three chapters of these manuscripts will be uploaded onto their website Here readers will be invited to browse through the manuscripts and vote for the ones they would like to read further Depending on the quality of the manuscripts and the readersrsquo choice the firm will decide on which book to publishVinay Kumaar coauthor of A Game of PawnsBGB is primarily an ebook publishing venture and plans to release a minimum of six and a maximum of 12 books a year ldquoIf your book is published that means itrsquos pretty goodrdquo states the websiteApart from publishing the firm also plans to give feedback and tips to budding authors to help them improve their writing chops something which traditional firms never doAddressing the marketBansal says she knows the pulse of young India as she travels to colleges around the country to give lectures on entrepreneurship She was the founder of Just Another Magazine a publication with a cult popularity ldquoWherever I go there are people who come up to me and tell me lsquoMarsquoam Irsquove written a book please take a look at the manuscriptrsquo I keep getting emails of new books and manuscripts people have written So there is talent and people do want to get published and be read widely Thatrsquos how the idea for the company germinatedrdquo says BansalRashmi Bansal founder ofBloody Good Books BGBShe believes no publisher really has their fingers on the pulse of the market She says many books die a premature death because editors at publishing firms have a different view as compared to that of the market This is not only in India The first Harry Potter book Harry Potter and the Philosopherrsquos Stone was rejected by 12 publishers The 13th publisher picked it up only because his eightyearold daughter insisted ldquoDaddy this is so much better than anything elserdquoldquoFor a long time we had this view that only lsquoliteraryrsquo authors mdash Vikram Seth Arundhati Roy etc mdash were worthy of getting published They were good books but may not have been what the majority of the public wanted Now you have Indian authors writing primarily for Indian readersrdquo elaborates Bansal who promises to give manuscripts a fair and democratic process in which readers can express their opinion on themWhile theyrsquore open to all BGB expects the yuppies age group 16 to 30 years to hop on to their bandwagon the fastest In fact the only other person in the company is 24yearold Niyati Patel who has a couple of years experience in magazine publishingBansal has deliberately chosen a younger age group as her target audience as she wants to give firsttime authors a fair chance ldquoItrsquos very difficult for a new author to get published Even if you send your manuscripts publishing houses will generally not revert because they get thousands of submissions Even the ones they do publish itrsquos hard to gauge whether the book will sellrdquo she explainsFlipping the current model BGB gives the power to the readers to choose the books they want to see published Itrsquos a communitydriven publishing house as Bansal calls it ldquoMost people buy a book and after three chapters they stop reading if the book is boring Instead here they get a chance to sample the book before itrsquos brought out If they like what they read wersquoll give them the whole dealrdquo she addsThe firm has its sights set on the ebook market which is still at a nascent stage in India but is set to explode according to Bansal ldquoWe believe ebooks are the future and we will concentrate our whole and sole on themrdquoAB Chakravarthy another one among the 22 authors who have sent in their manuscripts has similar views Chakravarthy has churned out a thriller called Split Second ldquoItrsquos about an ad man who thinks he lives two lives and has caused the death of his favourite movie actress This is being watched from two schools of thought physics and psychiatryrdquo he tells meThe engineerturnedMBA selfpublished a novel called The Best Person I Met in 2007 two years ago ldquoThat was a printed book which sold around 6000 copies But this time I have decided to go the electronic way because I believe the way ereaders and tablets are being sold ebooks are going to be hugerdquo says the effervescent authorThe trio of Rishi Kumaar and Mallaya too prefer being published as an ebook ldquoItrsquos a platform we would like to be in because itrsquos easy to discover and distribute ebooksrdquo says RishiBy the community for the communitylsquoSocialrsquo is the buzzword for most ventures these days With the penetration of smartphones and tablets in the country everyonersquos always online The numbers speak for themselves From January 2013 to September 2013 more than 31 million tablets were shipped according to data provided by CyberMedia Research a market research and consultancy firmIDC an international analytics firm reported that 128 million smartphones were shipped by vendors to India in the third quarter of 2013 mdash phablets formed a 23 per cent share in this chunk In the second quarter of 2013 IDC reports claimed vendors shipped 93 million smartphones Phablets are smartphones with screen sizes between 5 inches to 7 inches mdash good enough for reading Then therersquos Kindle by Amazon an ebook reader that has seen vast popularity With the entry of Amazon to India the ebook market looks extremely promisingAuthor Amish Tripathi who himself had a tough time selling his first novel The Immortals of Meluha to print publishers believes BGB is very interesting ldquoAs of now therersquos a single editor who is somehow supposed to figure out what the readers want They may get it right and sometimes they get it wrongWhat an editor is supposed to do is pick books that readers may like But they end up choosing manuscripts that they like according to their own personal taste This is what we in the corporate world used to call a lsquojob role confusionrsquordquo quips the former banker who has sold millions of copies of his Shiva trilogy Tripathi is very interested to see how BGB works out as it circumvents the lsquopersonal choicersquo of an editor as he calls itKarthik Srinivasan the national head of SocialOgilvy the social media arm of advertising giant Ogilvy amp Mather is fascinated by the idea but is slightly apprehensive about how many readers will actually participate ldquoItrsquos a brilliant concept no doubt about that But how many people will actually read three chapters In this day and age of short attention spans itrsquos difficult to get people to read your workrdquo he saysHowever Srinivasan believes if the incentive is good enough the concept may actually click Bansal agrees ldquoYes we will obviously have incentives The mechanics and the logistics are yet to be figured out but we will have rewards for those who participate There will be autographed books and meetups with wellknown authors ldquoApart from editing proofreading packaging cover design etc BGB will represent the authors when heshe approaches print publishers ldquoItrsquos easier to attract publishers if a manuscript can show it has potential readers Thatrsquos the advantage for writers with BGBrdquo says BansalPublishers speakWhen asked about the curated model of publishing Poulomi Chatterjee managing editor Hachette India says ldquoItrsquos an interesting model that has worked onoff for publishers Fifty Shades of Grey was initially published online as a fan fiction of Stephanie Meyerrsquos Twilight and because of its popularity it was taken on by a publisher and sold with a huge marketing pushrdquoDiya Kar Hazra Publisher mdash Trade Bloomsbury India quotes Macmillanrsquos crowdsourced teen romance imprint Swoon Reads and feels the model would only work with certain genres ldquoIt would be particularly effective with mass market and commercial fiction For the writers it appears to be a onestop solution for a manuscript mdash they donrsquot need to shop around Also yoursquore publishing what the readers like so itrsquos commercially viablerdquoTraditional publishing works on lists or publishing programmes Chatterjee says and though the choices are marketled and market research is conducted they are based on a hunch about how a particular genre or title will catch on and sell mdash not on the established popularity of somethingHazra adds ldquoOne has to be careful about plagiarism piracy and copyright And a writer should be clear of what he wants If theyrsquore keen on a print edition the print publisher will also want erights If the book has been available for a while electronically or otherwise it may not be as easy to get a traditional publisher interestedrdquoWould they consider such a model for their own firms ldquoNot as a conscious or an established modelrdquo Chatterjee repliesHazra opines that a publisher needs to create taste readership and a market while providing readers with what they like ldquoWhile itrsquos great to have commercial success to only allow readers or the mass market to dictate what you publish is the end of variety choice uniqueness and identityrdquo she explainsBut both publishers kept their options open saying they would consider a manuscript if it fit their publishing programme and adhered to their quality standardsldquoThe decision to publish would depend on how much Ithe editor reading the manuscript liked it and whether it works for our listrdquo says HazraldquoIf we do come across writing that is making waves and it makes sense adding it to our list we would look at doing sordquo states ChatterjeeMeanwhile Bansal and Patel are busy reading manuscripts that are pouring in by the day ldquoTwenty five years from now we want to be known for being the first to publish the next Arundhati Roy Amish Tripathi John Greene or Suzanne Collins Thatrsquos our mission and visionrdquo If you think yoursquore the one you know what to do