It’s a world where you’re young or you’re dead. Or, for that matter, new or worthless. Thirty-year old actors endorse anti-ageing creams, hair dyes and wheelchairs. And last year’s perfectly usable phone has about the same value as that unidentifiable guck you stepped on while sprinting to the Apple Store.
Yesterday is a bad word. Age is a crime.
This applies to books, too, these days. Yes, those very things for which the word “classic” was invented. Classic, as in timeless, mature, enduring and all the other nifty things that “old” denoted.
Writers have to be young. Books have to be new. And that’s not necessarily the opinion of readers, by the way.
How old did you say you are?
Five years ago, when my first book was published, in spite of possessing a fullish head of self-owned hair, I knew my pic wasn’t going to make it to the back cover. I was in my late forties, you see. The marketing dept of the publishing house – there is one, it is well-hidden and invisible to the naked eye, but I’m told it exists – didn’t see any point. Their informed opinion (based on the extensive research and analysis by Ram Singh the watchman) was that my wrinkled mug and my none-too-firm abs – well hidden under a voluminous shirt though they may have been – weren’t going to sell one extra copy. And they were right.
But I was fine with that. My fading fictional good looks hadn’t gone completely to waste. I had managed to con my wife into marrying me. Now was the time for my magnificent work to speak for itself. However, I couldn’t help but notice that every one of my younger counterparts, men and women, had author pics on their back covers.
Some in quite unfathomable poses, like the cookbook writer floating beatifically on an inflatable dolphin in her pool wearing what looked like a Native American chieftain’s headgear. (Trying to corner the reservation/casino market in the US, maybe?)
The second clue that I had perhaps joined this game too late was when a journalist with an investigative bent, having sniffed out my old-person smell from the 1970s-setting of my semi-autobiographical book, asked me the rather direct, usually ineluctable question, “How old are you?”
“Old enough to remember the ‘70s,” I said.
In the next couple of years, as I hurtled helplessly towards a horrific fifty, watching my dismal sales figures and barely potty-trained kids making high-profile debuts with titles like Bikini Bahu and Love Came After She Died, something became apparent. Like ballet, swimming, Carnatic music and the flesh trade, writing isn’t a field that tolerates late entrants.
New Young Writer: yes, please.
Established Old Writer: hmmm, maybe.
Ageing New Writer: are you kidding?
Frank McCourt and Laura Ingalls Wilder wouldn’t have made it past Ram Singh’s cabin if they were Indian.
Now let’s come to the new.
Built-in obsolescence, once the bastion of the computer industry, has now become the policy of publishing houses. Each major publishing house produces so many books every year that, quite often, one title of theirs gleefully pushes another title, born barely a week ago, right off the overcrowded bookshelf and into the literary black hole of remainders. The next week, the shover becomes the shoved, and ditto the following week, ad infinitum.
While car and cell-phone companies build obsolescence into their products with the objective of basically selling a mildly altered product in a newer-faster-sleeker disguise for a higher price, I was unable to understand publishers following this model. And in an erroneous way at that.
If they were doing it right, wouldn’t they be selling the same book by the same writer, with minor changes here and there, with a new title and a new jacket? What was the sense in killing one saleable product (the word used by a large-ish bestselling author, not me, in lieu of the word “book”) with another completely different one?
This insta-ageing bug, this diabolical biological weapon invented by the publishers themselves, that today’s books are infected with, makes newspapers wary of them, as well.
“But your book is old. We review only new books,” a writer friend was told when he managed to pin down a reviewer. His book had come out three months earlier.
It took me another ill-fated book and a couple of more years to figure out somewhat why publishers euthanise their own books. Or, at least, why publishers watch, coffee cup in hand, updating their FB statuses, as one of their “babies” writhes on the floor, frothing at the mouth, and dies unsung.
It makes business sense.
Let’s take the Mahabharata. We all know what happens to poor Abhimanyu in it. Why do you think he knew how to get into the chakravyuha but not out of it? It was Krishna’s best-laid plan to save Arjuna. So also books by old newcomers, the also-rans and the never-minds. They are the foot soldiers, the expendable Abhimanyus on whose debris stand the Arjunas, the cocktail-at-lit-fest-swigging-cojone-swinging-bestselling writers.
Some simple maths here. Let’s say a publishing house brings out fifty books in a year. Not every writer gets the same royalty or the same advance. Now, every one of these titles ostensibly has a marketing budget, i.e., the amount of money supposedly set aside to promote the book via launches, ads, lit fests, etc.
You don’t need a marketing-genius-banker-turned-bestseller-by-committee-book-product-maker to figure out what happens next. A non-bestselling-infantryman-south-Indian-humorist will suffice. Those monies are used almost exclusively for the big guys who’ve taken larger advances – the too-big-to-fail guys. QED.
A couple of months ago, a writer friend got mail from his publisher (a big-name one that was going for a management overhaul) with a PDF attached. It was the typeset manuscript of his award-shortlisted book from five years earlier. The gist: oh, we don’t need your book any more. Yeah, like, whatever.
I can understand how he felt. Pretty much like a parent collecting his once healthy child dispatched in a body bag by the boarding school that had promised to take care of it.
Sometimes when I wake up at night, I think of this dilapidated house with broken windows. It’s in a part of town people have stopped going to. It’s not even the main house. It’s the servant quarters of the once palatial house in front of it. The big one has been demolished and there’s a rickety “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” board where its main door used to be. The tiny outhouse has survived, though. I see a Steadicam shot of the dank insides. Books. Books. Books. Everywhere. Books by the Abhimanyus. Unread, unbought, gathering dust, rotting, some sporting three-for-the- price-of-one stickers, all waiting to be swallowed up by time.
My next book is coming out a couple of months from now. To borrow from the great epic again, I feel somewhat like King Shantanu, the poor guy who started the hoary mess, watching another new baby being lowered into the swirling black waters of the no-return-policy Ganga.
Maybe I should save myself the agony and keep my future babies safe at home, cozy and warm in their spiral-bound comforters.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli has written two novels (Ice Boys in Bell-Bottoms and Jump Cut) and a play (Dear Anita). He has written a third book which may or may not be published.
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Yesterday is a bad word. Age is a crime.
This applies to books, too, these days. Yes, those very things for which the word “classic” was invented. Classic, as in timeless, mature, enduring and all the other nifty things that “old” denoted.
Writers have to be young. Books have to be new. And that’s not necessarily the opinion of readers, by the way.
How old did you say you are?
Five years ago, when my first book was published, in spite of possessing a fullish head of self-owned hair, I knew my pic wasn’t going to make it to the back cover. I was in my late forties, you see. The marketing dept of the publishing house – there is one, it is well-hidden and invisible to the naked eye, but I’m told it exists – didn’t see any point. Their informed opinion (based on the extensive research and analysis by Ram Singh the watchman) was that my wrinkled mug and my none-too-firm abs – well hidden under a voluminous shirt though they may have been – weren’t going to sell one extra copy. And they were right.
But I was fine with that. My fading fictional good looks hadn’t gone completely to waste. I had managed to con my wife into marrying me. Now was the time for my magnificent work to speak for itself. However, I couldn’t help but notice that every one of my younger counterparts, men and women, had author pics on their back covers.
Some in quite unfathomable poses, like the cookbook writer floating beatifically on an inflatable dolphin in her pool wearing what looked like a Native American chieftain’s headgear. (Trying to corner the reservation/casino market in the US, maybe?)
The second clue that I had perhaps joined this game too late was when a journalist with an investigative bent, having sniffed out my old-person smell from the 1970s-setting of my semi-autobiographical book, asked me the rather direct, usually ineluctable question, “How old are you?”
“Old enough to remember the ‘70s,” I said.
In the next couple of years, as I hurtled helplessly towards a horrific fifty, watching my dismal sales figures and barely potty-trained kids making high-profile debuts with titles like Bikini Bahu and Love Came After She Died, something became apparent. Like ballet, swimming, Carnatic music and the flesh trade, writing isn’t a field that tolerates late entrants.
New Young Writer: yes, please.
Established Old Writer: hmmm, maybe.
Ageing New Writer: are you kidding?
Frank McCourt and Laura Ingalls Wilder wouldn’t have made it past Ram Singh’s cabin if they were Indian.
Now let’s come to the new.
Built-in obsolescence, once the bastion of the computer industry, has now become the policy of publishing houses. Each major publishing house produces so many books every year that, quite often, one title of theirs gleefully pushes another title, born barely a week ago, right off the overcrowded bookshelf and into the literary black hole of remainders. The next week, the shover becomes the shoved, and ditto the following week, ad infinitum.
While car and cell-phone companies build obsolescence into their products with the objective of basically selling a mildly altered product in a newer-faster-sleeker disguise for a higher price, I was unable to understand publishers following this model. And in an erroneous way at that.
If they were doing it right, wouldn’t they be selling the same book by the same writer, with minor changes here and there, with a new title and a new jacket? What was the sense in killing one saleable product (the word used by a large-ish bestselling author, not me, in lieu of the word “book”) with another completely different one?
This insta-ageing bug, this diabolical biological weapon invented by the publishers themselves, that today’s books are infected with, makes newspapers wary of them, as well.
“But your book is old. We review only new books,” a writer friend was told when he managed to pin down a reviewer. His book had come out three months earlier.
It took me another ill-fated book and a couple of more years to figure out somewhat why publishers euthanise their own books. Or, at least, why publishers watch, coffee cup in hand, updating their FB statuses, as one of their “babies” writhes on the floor, frothing at the mouth, and dies unsung.
It makes business sense.
Let’s take the Mahabharata. We all know what happens to poor Abhimanyu in it. Why do you think he knew how to get into the chakravyuha but not out of it? It was Krishna’s best-laid plan to save Arjuna. So also books by old newcomers, the also-rans and the never-minds. They are the foot soldiers, the expendable Abhimanyus on whose debris stand the Arjunas, the cocktail-at-lit-fest-swigging-cojone-swinging-bestselling writers.
Some simple maths here. Let’s say a publishing house brings out fifty books in a year. Not every writer gets the same royalty or the same advance. Now, every one of these titles ostensibly has a marketing budget, i.e., the amount of money supposedly set aside to promote the book via launches, ads, lit fests, etc.
You don’t need a marketing-genius-banker-turned-bestseller-by-committee-book-product-maker to figure out what happens next. A non-bestselling-infantryman-south-Indian-humorist will suffice. Those monies are used almost exclusively for the big guys who’ve taken larger advances – the too-big-to-fail guys. QED.
A couple of months ago, a writer friend got mail from his publisher (a big-name one that was going for a management overhaul) with a PDF attached. It was the typeset manuscript of his award-shortlisted book from five years earlier. The gist: oh, we don’t need your book any more. Yeah, like, whatever.
I can understand how he felt. Pretty much like a parent collecting his once healthy child dispatched in a body bag by the boarding school that had promised to take care of it.
Sometimes when I wake up at night, I think of this dilapidated house with broken windows. It’s in a part of town people have stopped going to. It’s not even the main house. It’s the servant quarters of the once palatial house in front of it. The big one has been demolished and there’s a rickety “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” board where its main door used to be. The tiny outhouse has survived, though. I see a Steadicam shot of the dank insides. Books. Books. Books. Everywhere. Books by the Abhimanyus. Unread, unbought, gathering dust, rotting, some sporting three-for-the- price-of-one stickers, all waiting to be swallowed up by time.
My next book is coming out a couple of months from now. To borrow from the great epic again, I feel somewhat like King Shantanu, the poor guy who started the hoary mess, watching another new baby being lowered into the swirling black waters of the no-return-policy Ganga.
Maybe I should save myself the agony and keep my future babies safe at home, cozy and warm in their spiral-bound comforters.
Krishna Shastri Devulapalli has written two novels (Ice Boys in Bell-Bottoms and Jump Cut) and a play (Dear Anita). He has written a third book which may or may not be published.
