Agents of change : Renuka Chatterjee and Jayapriya Vasudevan

In publishing jargon, it’s called the ‘slush pile’. A dump, as many aspiring authors would imagine with a shudder, positioned in some dark corner of a publisher’s office, where all those unsolicited manuscripts neatly typed out in double spacing get unceremoniously tossed into upon arrival, subsequently waiting their turn to see the light of day. On most occasions, they die a wretched death right there, with or without a cursory glance from a junior editor.

“No more!” exclaims an excited Anuj Bahri, taking time out from answering calls that come pouring into his office from publishers. “Things have got to change and Indian writing has to overcome the hurdles it has faced for so long. Bookselling will be a different ball game in the future, and we are here to make it happen,” he says.

Until yesterday, Bahri was a bookseller. Today, he has carved out a little space alongside Bahri Sons, the bookstore he owns in Delhi’s Khan Market, to open Red Ink, a literary agency that he believes “will radically change the dynamics of Indian publishing.” And he’s not alone in the fledgling business. Osian’s, the art foundation, has joined the race with its own agency headed by former publisher Renuka Chatterjee. In Bangalore, editor Jayapriya Vasudevan has been discovering her own share of writers across India through her outfit called Jacaranda Press.

In the six months of its operations, Osian’s has already signed 10 authors from India, with three more in the pipeline. “We also have author Jose Dalisay from the Philippines on board, whose book Soledads Sister was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2007,” says Chatterjee.

Jacaranda, relatively older than its peers, now has an impressive author list that includes names such as Greg Chappell, Tushar Gandhi, Dilip D’Souza and Thomas Weber. Red Ink, on its part, has also signed on a bunch of young writers, along with a few established ones. “We’ve just sold the India rights for Shrabani Basu’s new book to a publisher for $16,000,” says Bahri. The big bucks, it seems, are finally coming in.

But what, really, do agents do to rake in that kind of cash? And why, in a market where big names such as David Godwin Associates — agents for Booker winners Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai — have already made a foray, should one root for Indian agents at all?

The business aspect, to begin with. While an author’s job is to write a book, an agent’s job is to sell it — that is, make sure it commands the price it deserves. “We bring a certain quality to books we present to publishers,” says Vasudevan. “We negotiate good, sensible contracts. We edit the books if needed. We work hard on press and sales. Besides, the author gets someone who looks out for them, who’s there as a sounding board. We take care of everything, leaving the authors to do what they do best — write.”

It’s a benefit writers of yesterday definitely didn’t have. “The contracts that we used to sign were often heavily tilted in favour of the publishers,” says Anurag Mathur, author of the bestseller The Inscrutable Americans. “Authors were often denied global publishing rights, or a decent advance, and they suffered because they weren’t mature enough to read between the lines,” he says.

That apart, Indian publishers, in the absence of agents, were known to pay meagre royalties on their titles — sometimes as low as five per cent on the cover price. Moreover, since royalties are calculated on the number of copies sold, authors are often left guessing about how many copies of his or her work have actually been sold, to tally it with the amount dished out by the publisher as annual royalty.

Besides, the fact remained that several Indian publishers in the past refused to deal with Indian agents. “It was ironic, since they actually bought the same titles later from foreign publishers at many times the price,” says Bahri. “Perhaps they thought Indian agents were just not up to the mark, and there weren’t many to deal with in the first place.”

The existing system, however, is now set for a shake-up. Chiki Sarkar, chief editor, Random House India, offers her own take on the issue. “There are more publishers around in India now, so it’s more viable having agents. It seems to me that Indian writers need agents, particularly those being published in regional languages who often hardly see proper royalty payments. So I think it’s a fantastic thing that agencies are starting up here,” she says.

Clearly, publishers seem to have opened their doors for the agents, despite it meaning that their monopoly would be compromised on. “Agents were always there in the West, and given that Indian publishing is growing, it was only a matter of time before they arrived in India,” says Ravi Singh, executive editor, Penguin.

The cut — currently varying between 10 and 20 per cent of the royalties — that writers have to part with for an agent’s services really seems a pittance, considering that they leave few hassles for the authors to personally bother about. And since the big advances are now coming in, no one seems to be complaining either. “When we began, Rs 10,000 was an average advance. Now we can talk about advances worth a few lakhs,” says Vasudevan.

Yet there are concerns as to whether or not Indian agents would be able to match Western agencies, believed to have a wider reach in the global market. And it’s something best explained by none other than the biggest one of them all — David Godwin. “I felt that The God of Small Things was such a remarkable book that I could be genuinely useful in placing it around the world,” says Godwin of Roy’s 1997 debut title. “Over 40 publishers around the world took the book. For us, it is important to have an international focus so that books are not just sold in India but all over the world,” he says.

Indian agents, however, say they are taking care of the global market by getting into tie-ups with foreign agencies. Jacaranda Press got The Marsh Agency, London, to work with it a few years ago, while Red Ink has as many as five agencies around the world working as partners, including the Mulcahy & Viney Agency, UK.

Chatterjee underlines yet another reason Indian agents stand a good chance of capturing the Indian market. “There are plenty of good authors to be found in India. Quite honestly, I think the biggest change will be to find what publishers call ‘mid list’ authors, who are just one or two books old and not so well established. Many of them are actually worth 10,000 copies and a six-figure advance, and it’s for an agent to recognise that potential and then fight for the terms he or she deserves,” she says.

So go write. The next big title could well be yours.