Much hype, few sales

Since its inception, JLF has been featuring heavyweight literary fiction authors, both from the subcontinent and elsewhere. As the literary world gears up for the festival’s 10th edition, let’s look back at the trends that emerged in the genre in the past year. 

2016 saw commercial fiction in India further establish its ascendancy over its literary counterpart. Not only did big names in the genre like Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh, Durjoy Datta and Sudeep Nagarkar continue to sell briskly, but we also saw the arrival of two new breakout authors — Savi Sharma and Ajay K Pandey. While the former self-published her novel on Amazon, and caught the attention of mainstream publishers because of high sales and positive reviews, the latter published through the mass-market churner Srishti before being lapped up by a mainstream publisher for no less than a seven figure advance. 

This is a major development in a segment where a handful of authors have held a stranglehold over sales and readers. A top publishing house sales executive says, “Out of the 2,000 or so novels published in this space annually, only about two sell in a big way”. Like their predecessors, the USP of these books is their simple, relatable and stock characters, plot and language, which appeal to the lowest common denominator. If such authors are writing books, their readers are also often being initiated into reading because of their books. In that sense, authors of mass market fiction should be credited with expanding the reader base across India. The sad fact is that most will never graduate to reading more serious genres. 

As opposed to this, there has been a decline in the sales of literary fiction and translations. Even the latest releases by giants of Indian Writing in English, including a former Booker winner, have missed sales estimates by a significant mark or sold at a slower pace than expected. There has hardly been any breakout debut literary fiction in terms of sales, making some publishers rethink their strategy for acquiring fiction. The fact that most literary fiction titles don’t come cheap, does not help. A publishing professional said that monetarily, the genre makes little sense and publishers manage to recover advances for about one-fourth of the literary fiction titles they put out in the market. Literary fiction, according to this professional, continues to be prestigious for commissioning editors.

Most multinational publishers are scaling back on translations, although the space is seeing new entrants like Niyogi Books. According to well-known translator Arunava Sinha, “Fewer translations are being published from Bengali and other languages are getting more play”. Harper’s sales head Sameer Mahale says that they are now actively pursuing translations from Gujarati, Punjabi and even Kashmiri. One of Harper Perennial’s big successes of the year, Vivek Shanbag’s critically acclaimed GhacharGhochar, which sold more than 5,000 copies, was translated from Kannada. One of Pan Macmillan’s big translated titles of the year, NS Inamdar’s Rau, which inspired Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani, is a translation from Marathi. 

One of the biggest trends in Indian publishing over the last decade or so has been the emergence of literary festivals. Hardly a day goes by without the announcement of a new festival. But do these festivals actually help bring in new readers for literary authors, especially debutants? A senior sales executive said that at most of these festivals, only books by major or celebrity authors sell briskly. He added that there are some festivals where despite an author’s presence and participation in multiple panels, only 5-10 copies of his books get sold. The influence of the West is only restricted to a Booker or a Pulitzer, and many literary books that win other prestigious international awards rarely benefit in terms of sales. Most of the top Indian prizes have no sway whatsoever over readers. I was  told how a bookstore chain, which sponsors a major prize, has significantly cut down on its re-orders for the winning books across all categories. 

But all is not doom and gloom for literary publishing in India. Publishers like Aleph and Speaking Tiger still focus on literary fiction. The latter’s unique and ambitious International Fiction series, which has published stars like Eka Kurniawan and Fiston Mwanza Mujila, has been warmly received. ‘We will keep adding to our list,’ says Anurag Basnet, Speaking Tiger’s managing editor.