Even as you write your book, save up for a good publicist

Not satisfied with the publisher’s promotional efforts, more and more Indian authors are taking charge of marketing their books (and themselves) by hiring PR firms, reports G Sampath

Suppose you’ve just published a book, and you’re not happy with your publisher’s efforts to promote it, what do you do? Earlier, Indian writers would resign themselves to a post-publication limbo of modest sales and mellow oblivion. They would probably blame their karma and abandon their closely-guarded fantasies of becoming the hot new bestselling author hounded alike by German paparazzi and Hollywood executives. Not anymore. 

Today, a new breed of enterprising authors, most of whom, co-incidentally, are from either IIT or IIM or both, are taking things into their own hands. Amitabha Bagchi (IIT), Mainak Dhar (IIM), Rakesh Mishra (IT professional), Ravi Subramanian (IIM), Karan Bajaj (IIM), Sandipan Deb (IIT), Chetan Bhagat (IIT and IIM) — all have one thing in common. As first-time authors who were not satisfied with the marketing efforts of their publishers, they all turned to a PR agency.

It is unanimously agreed in publishing circles that the pioneer of this trend is Chetan Bhagat. Back in 2004, Bhagat hired Good Relations PR to promote his first book, Five Point Someone. Karan Bajaj, who is sometimes rumoured to be a ‘twin of Bhagat separated at birth’, has hired Pink & White Consulting to promote his Keep Off The Grass. Mainak Dhar has handed over the responsibility of marketing his book to Mavcomm Consulting. 

Technically, Deb is the first Indian author to use a PR firm — Bhagat claims he got the idea from Deb, whose book on IIT-ians released a few months before his own. Deb, however, clarifies that it was a “friendly gesture” from a PR firm owned by a pal and hence he didn’t have to pay for their services.

Deb was lucky. PR firms earn their bread and butter from corporate clients who have budgets for them. Individual authors can’t afford them unless they have deep pockets.
This is perhaps why most authors who have hired a PR firm are from IIMs/IITs — their academic pedigree is a fair indication of their income levels. 

Bhagat is cagey about how much of his own money he invested in promotion. Publishing insiders estimate that, his three novels taken together, he would have spent Rs7 lakh.
His current publicist CorporateVoice-WeberShandwick wouldn’t confirm the figure, but it tallies with the industry average of Rs2-5 lakh retainership fee for a six-week promotional blitz, with a four-city book tour thrown in.

The prohibitive costs did not deter Bagchi from investing in a PR firm for his first novel Above Average. “I wasn’t sure my publisher could do the kind of marketing required for a book that had the potential to reach a larger audience. So I hired a PR firm to organise the launches and follow up with the media,” he says. Altogether Bagchi spent about Rs1.25 lakh on promotion. “I figured that if I sold 8,000 copies, I would break even,” he says. He more than broke even. His book is priced at Rs195. Till date he has received royalties for 15,000 copies, which in his case works out to Rs2.25 lakh — a profit of Rs1 lakh, minus taxes.

But does it really befit a self-respecting author to dirty his hands with the cynical commercialism of self-promotion? Says Bagchi, “Many people feel that an author is a sort of delicate genius who can’t be involved in things like marketing. I respect that view. But it also means that several years of my effort could disappear into nothingness. I didn’t want that to happen to my book.”

Chetan Bhagat, the man who started it all, has stronger views. “Indians are hopeless at marketing,” he says. “Not only that, they look down upon it. Your work is supposed to be so profoundly impressive that it will become a success all by itself. C’mon, everybody knows that’s not how it works. Take Sea Of Poppies, written by an author who is presumably more ‘respectable’ than me. It is about Indians slaving away under the British. Do you seriously believe it wasn’t targeted at a market? Do you think this is the subject Amitav was passionate about all his life and wanted to spend three years writing about? Look, the marketing angle is important abroad, and that’s a sign of maturity. It’s not a turning away from substance.” 

Still, why should an author have to hire a PR agent? “A publisher would focus on promoting the book, but only a PR agent can promote the author as a brand in his own right,” says Anand Mahesh, director of Mavcomm Consulting. “This authorial brand equity then translates into sales, and other spin-offs, such as newspaper columns, getting invitations for literary festivals, offers to feature in TV shows, do film scripts, etc.”
Indeed, Bagchi, one of Mavcomm’s clients, now has a regular column in the supplement of a popular newspaper. And Bhagat is right now saying a big ‘Hello’ to Bollywood, with the film adaptation of his One Night @ The Call Centre releasing this week. 

Another first-timer, Aravind Adiga, has a different take: “It all depends on the genre of the book. If it’s a management or self-help book, it helps to build the author into a brand. But for literature, the book is more important than the author.” Adiga’s novel (The White Tiger), short-listed for the Booker this year, is clearly literature.

Interestingly, Bagchi and Adiga are both HarperCollins authors; the former hired a PR firm; the latter, true to his faith in literature, did not. Yet they have sold nearly identical number of copies: around 16,000. But then, isn’t the Booker committee the most powerful PR agent any author can get?  Moral of the story: Unless you’re sure your book will make it to some prize shortlist or the other, invest in a PR agent.  
sampath@dnaindia.net