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| BOOM TIME: Ramachandra Guha (top) and Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee (below) are among those who have struck gold with their non-fiction works |
Two months ago, not many would have thought that a book on cancer would make it to a coveted bestseller list. But Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee — whose book was born because of a patient’s queries on cancer — has been a runaway success. The Emperor of Maladies: A Biography of Cancer was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2010 in the non-fiction category.
It is boom time for non-fiction by Indian writers. Mukherjee’s book, for instance, may have taken him six years to write, but he found a publisher in just a few weeks. “It was unbelievably easy to find a publisher and they were incredibly supportive. I guess it was because the topic hasn’t been explored so far,” says the assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University in the US.
From biographies and autobiographies to reportage, history, spirituality, business and self-help, non-fiction has never had it this good. “People are now reading more than ever before and reading in varied genres of non-fiction as well,” says Udayan Mitra, publisher of Allen Lane and Portfolio, Penguin India.
A look at the prominent books of 2011 shows a trend in favour of non-fiction. Some of the eagerly awaited titles include Kashmir by Sonia Jabbar, The DLF Saga by real estate mogul K.P. Singh and Ramesh Menon, Cinnamon Club by Vivek Singh with Abdul Yaseen and Hari Nagaraj, Broken Republic by Arundhati Roy and Geek Nation by Angela Saini. Journalist Rasheed Kidwai’s book on the Congress 24 Akbar Road, Aarthi Ramachandran’s biography of Rahul Gandhi and Rahul Pandita’s work on Maoists, Bastar Calling, are some of the other books on the anvil.
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“Most people pick up non-fiction as they find it relevant to their work or lifestyle,” says Mitra. “In many cases there is an effort to learn from these books and this creates an interested readership,” he adds.
Not so long ago, non-fiction was seen as a genre that was perhaps a bit prosaic. But now, Westland Publications CEO Gautam Padmanabhan stresses, readers are discovering that the segment contains within it multiple, true-to-life stories which aren’t necessarily dull. “This is directly related to the fact that we have a number of strong writers today who are willing to dabble in the genre,” says Padmanabhan.
The most popular non-fiction categories, apart from self-help and business, are books on current affairs, memoirs and spirituality. “There is also an emerging market for books on sports, film and travel,” Mitra adds.
Journalists’ accounts, especially from conflict zones, are finding many takers. “It’s the 9/11 effect,” says Priya Kapoor, editorial director, Roli Books. “Readers want to read more from conflict areas and reportage is getting popular,” she explains.
Current affair programmes on satellite television are whetting people’s appetite for hard news. “People are interested in India and China — they want to know what’s happening in this part of the world,” says journalist-turned-author Basharat Peer. His book Curfewed Night,’ published in 2008 about growing up in Kashmir during the insurgency, was a bestseller. “There is a lot more scope today for such writing in India,” he adds.
The general buoyancy in the Indian publishing scenario too has boosted sales in this segment. The book publishing market in India, pegged at approximately Rs 10,000 crore, is growing annually at a rate of 10 per cent. Though fiction has always outnumbered non-fiction titles, the imbalance is now changing. Penguin India’s adult non-fiction list in 2010 comprised 110 books, about half of their publishing basket.
Increased sales have also led to multiple reprints. Ramachandra Guha’s book on environmental philosophies How Much should a Person Consume?, published in India by Hachette India in 2010, went into a reprint even before it was released in the Indian market. Hamish McDonald’s Ambani and Sons published by Roli Books went into reprint thrice and as many as 17,963 copies have been sold so far. From Penguin India’s stable Gurcharan Das’s The Difficulty of Being Good and Subroto Bagchi’s The Professional sold more than 20,000 copies each in 2010.
“The cumulative sale of Das’s book (published in 2009) is close to 50,000 copies, which is truly phenomenal. It indicates the growth in readership and the market,” says Mitra. “Five years ago a bestselling non-fiction title would not have sold more than 5,000 copies in its second year of publication,” he adds.
But the writers rue that the money in non-fiction is still far less than what fiction writers command. “Because narrative non-fiction in India is still at a nascent stage, we don’t get enough money or support,” writer Sonia Falerio said at a session on non-fiction at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January. Falerio, who took five years to write Beautiful Things, a documented research work on Mumbai’s bar girls, said she had to sustain herself on a very low budget.
Peer stresses that he wrote his book mainly because he had a Western publisher. “The Indian publishers need to loosen their purse strings a bit. After all, we devote two to three years of our life to a book,” he points out.
But the publishers say there is a reason for the discrepancy. “The difference between the two segments really lies in the fact that as of now Indian fiction has a bigger market abroad than Indian non-fiction. So writers of fiction are able to earn more from their sales abroad,” says Mitra.
However, he adds, sales in India tilt the balance in favour of non-fiction. “In India, the top non-fiction books tend to outsell most of the best-selling fiction — so there’s no question of the authors making less money.”
But the tidings aren’t grim for everyone. For some, at least, the monetary gap between fiction and non-fiction writers is narrowing. Guha struck a Rs 97 lakh deal with Penguin India in 2009 for a series of seven books, including a two-volume autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, to be published between 2010 and 2015.
For the lovers of the written word in the country, life’s never been this good.