A boom in the business of literary agents in India

For publishers looking to bet on the next, potential big selling author, Aditya Mukherjee would seem to tick all the right boxes — he is an MBA from an IIM, a start-up entrepreneur and his 2013 book Boomtown is a pacey, good read. Yet, when he'd finished writing Boomtown, Mukherjee had little idea what to do. He didn't know any commissioning editors, how to get his manuscript across to them, or make sure they read it. Being the enterprising kind, he read up on the subject and decided that he needed an agent to represent him. He got himself one — Mumbai-based Purple Folio, started by Urmila Dasgupta, and in three months, he had a deal with Rupa.

Purple Folio is just one of several literary agents that have opened shop in India in recent years. Prominent among these are Kanishka Gupta's Writer's Side and Red Ink, started by Anuj Bahri who runs the popular Bahrisons book store in Delhi. Then there are Siyahi by Mita Kapur and Jacaranda; Aitken-Alexander Associates India, the local chapter of a leading UK-based agency, and Priya Doraiswamy's Lotus Lane Literary, which operates out of New Jersey.

Business is booming, if you go by the business the agents report. In 2015, Writer's Side notched 100 deals for its authors, 37 of them first-timers — a majority of these with established publishers."In the first month of 2016 itself, we were close to selling 20 new titles," says Kanishka Gupta.

Mita Kapur's Siyahi too, reports a good year with 31 new authors, and another 10 who've come back to it with fresh manuscripts. Siyahi has also made 51 deals — 13 for international rights, 14 translation rights and 24 India rights. Literary agents not just ensure a book finds a publisher, but also negotiate translation rights, the rights for other markets, film and TV rights, and now, gaming, says Kapur.

What is driving the rise of literary agents? "Literary agents are essential in a publishing ecosystem where it is increasingly a writers' market and publishers are preferring to source represented manuscripts rather than unsolicited submissions. It is a win-win scenario," says independent publishing consultant Jaya Bhattacharji Rose. In line with practices in the West, publishers like Hachette in India too have stopped accepting unsolicited submissions. With so many people writing books these days — Kapur gets eight-nine manuscripts a day, 95 per cent of which she rejects — the life of agents is a busy one.

While agents are useful, one leading publisher who does not want to be identified, said that in terms of quality they are of questionable value. "Many a time, the manuscripts that agents send haven't even been edited. Often, agents just throw everything at you, hoping some of it will stick. There's no real qualitative difference from unsolicited submissions," she says, pointing to how established agents in the West have full-fledged editorial teams, work with authors and build relationship of trust with publishers. "It's still a nascent phenomenon here," she says. Which is perhaps why so many well-known Indian authors — Rana Dasgupta, Vikram Seth, Pankaj Mishra, Amitav Ghosh, Aravind Adiga, Arundhati Roy, et al — work with agents abroad.

"Uneven or poor quality is a matter of taste," counters Gupta of Writer's Side. "Also, if quality was of so much importance, then all titles liked by commission editors should be backed with offers. In reality, some of these good books don't get past sales and marketing teams," he adds.

Dasgupta of Purple Folio feels the problem in India is the lack of a sustainable revenue model for agents, who typically get 10%-20% of advance. Given the poor quality of most first drafts, she says, agents often need to put in a lot of work to rewrite or suggest changes, doing the same work that a publishers' commissioning agent would do. "But when it comes to an Indian agent, what happens to that feedback and those cheques for a rewrite? There is no salary and the commission is pitiful, but ask for a fee and you are immediately lambasted for being a crook. Why?"