When Jamyang Norbu won the Crossword Book Award for fiction in 2000 for The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes, sales of the book went up dramatically. When Kiran Desai?s second novel The Inheritance of Loss came out in 2006, the Strand bookshop in Mumbai saw limited sales, till of course she was nominated for the Booker Prize and went on to win it. Publisher Penguin had to hurry hundreds of copies to bookshops soon after the Booker announcement.
While one can?t compare the Indian book prizes ? the Crossword Book Award was launched in 1998 ? and its western counterparts like the Booker, celebrating its 40th anniversary, Vidya Virkar, partner of Strand Book Stall, says any nomination or award ?immediately brings the author into sharp focus and that?s always good for a book?. At her stores in Mumbai and Bangalore, sales have shot up as soon as a sticker with a Booker nomination or winner tag (or the US-based Pulitzer or National Book Award) appears on the cover.
This year, Penguin India and Harper Collins India have one author each in the Booker shortlist, Amitav Ghosh?s Sea of Poppies and Aravind Adiga?s The White Tiger, and bookmakers in Britain have both authors on their radar.
Harper Collins India has already sold 20,000 copies of The White Tiger. Penguin has sold 30,000 copies of Ghosh?s Sea of Poppies in two months. Says an insider: ?Amitav Ghosh is a brand and he has a huge readership. His books have done very well across India.?
For Adiga, a first-time writer, the Booker nomination ?will help establish him in people?s memories,? says VK Karthika, publisher and chief editor, Harper Collins India. Harper Collins India is hoping to sell at least 5,000 more copies of the book on the back of the Booker nomination.
For Penguin, Booker winner Kiran Desai?s (2006) The Inheritance of Loss has already sold 1,80,000 copies and ?it?s still around?. Ask Adiga how will a Booker nomination help a first-time writer like him and he quips: ?It?s a dream come true for any writer ? especially for a first-time writer. I don?t think of it in utilitarian terms; it?s just such a wonderful thing, such an honour.? R Sriram, co-founder Crossword, and who was instrumental in setting up the Crossword Book Award, says even the Indian award has led to significant increases in sales. ?Norbu was a surprise winner but sales of his book went up tremendously. From unknown writer, he became a bestseller. So did Bama, the Dalit writer whose book Karukku won the Indian Language Fiction Translation Award that year,? he adds. ?She is popular in France and has an excellent readership. Undoubtedly, the Crossword Award was the tipping point,? adds Sriram.
But he admits that compared to the Booker, the Indian book awards do not make that much of an impact. Sriram rues the fact that the Indian awards don?t get the coverage garnered by a Booker nomination. ?If we were to get that coverage, our sales would have been huge. This is one of the issues,? he adds. The other quibble is with the publishing industry. ?In the UK, the entire publishing industry supports the Booker. We haven?t got that kind of support in India yet,? he points out.
Adiga admits that, although his first book came out in 2008, he has been writing seriously since 1997: ?For me, the process hasn?t been easy at all,? he says. The debutant writer chose Harper because ?they publish very few books a year and try hard to make every one of them succeed. This is particularly important when you are a first time writer.? Critics may turn up their noses at the speed-reads and campus novels (read Chetan Bhagat?s books) but the ?mass market novel? is providing the publishing industry with more than its bread and butter. Now, that?s another story.