We asked a publisher-editor, a writer and an editor what they felt about book launches. Are book launches a necessary evil in India? How are these events connected with the projected sales? Do they vary according to the language of the book? Do most authors find the questions from the audience tedious? Could they recall a particularly interesting launch, or one that flopped? What, for each, would be an ideal launch? Here are their responses.

Rukun Advani, Editor and Publisher, Permanent Black

Ninety per cent of Indian publishing revenue is generated by textbooks and reference material. This vast chunk is invisible in our public sphere. The iceberg tip, comprising fiction, non-fiction, and pulp fiction, has traditionally relied on marketing strategies such as reviews, posters, mailers, seminars and talks. To these has now been added the book launch party.

Intelligently handled, launch parties are no bad thing. Some authors are scintillating speakers. The launch can provide them a great podium and generate decent publicity as well as sales, with helpful spin-off dissemination via gossip. It seems a pity that an indiscriminate deployment of the launch party has given a potentially good thing a bad name. Economists use the phrase, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”, to argue the axiom that, whatever you do, there are always hidden costs. Within Indian book marketing this could be amended to “there ain’t no such thing as a free launch”.

Several opportunity costs are obscured by these launches: I can think of two.

First, if all the expenses of these launch parties are weighed in relation to, say, the benefits that might accrue to our book culture from ploughing the same money into enhanced advertising or subsidies for book review journals, the hidden cost of these parties is high: all those funds, more productively focused on supporting a book ethos instead of the stand-alone occasion, might well sustain a high-calibre literary journal or two which, so sustained, could then pay reviewers and writers better than they do.

That first-rate local literary journals are missing in the world around us whereas the money for launch parties is never in short supply links with a second hidden cost. Book-marketing money is often wasted on empty glitz. This is connected to the overall tabloidization of culture and the media. Publishing exists within the same culture and has been infected. Launch parties are for the publisher what Bollywood and the BCCI are for the newspaper: trivializations of life to be decried within private mutterings but kept going for fear of readership losses. So, it is unfortunately true that launch parties help stardust journalists call themselves writers and enable publishers to disguise bilge as novels.

Book launches can be excellent: we’ve all been to some great ones. Discerning publishers must feel a special misery attending those in which an air of cultural vacuousness seems an accurate reflection of what’s in the book.

Ruchir Joshi, Writer

I know it’s banal to say this, but some book launches are terrible, dire, and others are great. It all depends on a) the book, b) the author and her or his friends and connections c) the publisher and d) the location. Many launches are boring, a ‘haazri-bharoing’, a kind of dull queue for free booze and snacks, a chore. Others are electrifying because the book is good, the author reads beautifully, or there is some small or big whiff of literary or other scandal, whatever.

I would come down on the side of having book launches over not having them, because we in India celebrate the Arts too little, and usually in too staid a fashion. But because a new exhibition, film or book should be a moment of joy and laughter and revelry, at the very least for the people involved in bringing out the work, and hopefully for many others as well.

The authors don’t need to surrender their instincts and leave everything to the publisher or publicist — sometimes, the creator of the work has the best idea of how that work should be launched.

My best book launch was my own, for The Last Jet-Engine Laugh, when I was grabbed by six friends and dumped into the decorative pool in the courtyard of the British Council (after all the Brits, stuffy or otherwise, had gone home, mind you) in Delhi. Then we grabbed many of the grabbers and dumped them in as well. Charles Correa designed that pool as a decorative feature, little imagining what good use it would have on the hottest day of the summer of 2001.

The worst book launch? Too many to enumerate here.

Diya Kar Hazra, Managing Editor and Rights Manager, Penguin Books India

It is a rare author who doesn’t want a book launch. What every writer wants is his or her book to be read. And for the book to be read, it has to be seen—seen in bookstores, on the pages of newspapers and magazines, even on television. When a book is launched, the event is usually covered by the media, making it more visible. Even regional language writers, when their books are translated, want a launch to ‘celebrate’ the release of their books (especially since books in Bengali, Hindi or Malayalam are rarely accompanied by book events).

So what exactly does a book launch involve? Twenty years ago, it was a reading from the book by the author or a guest reader, a couple of speeches, questions from the audience followed by refreshments. Carrying pre-publication excerpts in newspapers or serializing the book in magazines, printing posters and the occasional bookmark were also not uncommon. These days, books are launched in new and exciting ways, though certain things remain the same, including the goal — to be seen, noticed and heard. Publishers continue to tie up with leading national dailies and there are excerpts and serials in newspapers and magazines, posters, postcards and bookmarks; there’s also air time on radio and television; ads, interviews and shows; posts on blogs and websites; events linked with bookstores, book chains and music stores; quiz shows, art exhibitions, outdoor events; freebies and giveaways — even publishers’ catalogues are launched these days!

Both authors and publishers are forever thinking of novel ways to release their books — screen a film; invite a celebrity; host a debate; choose an unconventional venue and ensure an exotic menu. It depends on the book, really, and the nature of the subject— the manner in way a book is launched and promoted has to suit that particular book. Publishers count on the media to cover these events so that the book gets noticed and sales soar.

While book launches do translate into better sales and bigger numbers, there have been instances when books that haven’t had a multi-city launch, or any launch at all, have gone on to become best-sellers. Some of them even sold international rights and had foreign language editions.

But these are exceptions. In most cases, at the end of the day, what matters is that books are seen, talked about, and yes, read.