Most writers won’t shy away from talking about their first book. But Faheem Bhat, 22, is of another breed. The Srinagar resident, whom we connect with over a phone call, refuses to share the title of his debut fiction that released in 2017—even though it’s just a Google search away—and became one of the fastest selling books locally. He goes on to tell us how he was most amused that his love story actually found so many readers in Kashmir, where “there isn’t a huge culture of reading [among the youth]”. “I can’t relate with that book anymore. I even told my publishers to stop printing copies,” he says. One thing that stood out, however, was his protagonist Fenin’s obsession with reading. “He finds solace in books… reads about fictitious worlds all day. One day, all of a sudden, he finds himself living the life he always wanted,” reads the blurb of that novel.

Bhat, who was all of 18 then, was probably living a page out of his own book. Soon after its release, Bhat dropped out of engineering college, much to the consternation of his family, to pursue a career in publishing. “I always believed that books could save me.” He launched Lieper Publication, a self-publishing house, to encourage more writers to release their books, and in different languages. Though, looking back, he admits, that he could have taken sharper editorial decisions, that experience emboldened the young literary entrepreneur to invest deeply into the world of publishing.