Amish at the launch of his book The Oath of The Vayuputras

Eastern India accounts for 8 per cent of sales of Amish’s Shiva Trilogy. If that doesn’t impress much, try this — we in the east have spent Rs 3.4 crore buying The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras! The trilogy has mopped up a neat Rs 43 crore from across the country, selling 1.7 million copies in just over three years.

What makes these figures even more astounding is the fact that none of the books have been priced more than Rs 350 at any time. The last title came out in February and continues to top bestseller lists. In fact, the weekly sales of Meluha and Nagas have nearly doubled with the release of Vayuputras, from roughly 4,300 copies to over 7,500, making the Shiva Trilogy, published by Westland, the fastest-selling book series in India.

“For me this entire journey is a dream ya, from a time when I didn’t even think that the books would get published to this… it’s a dream! It’s difficult to find words to tell you how I feel about it. All I can say is that it’s Lord Shiva’s blessing,” Amish told t2 from his Mumbai home.

Blessing it may be, but an Amish book launch is also about a marketing blitz. The IIM Calcutta graduate is intimately involved with the marketing of his books, right from when he self-published Meluha, unable to find a publisher.

“See, one of the benefits that we had while marketing Book 3 was the budget. We had the budget to do a lot of ideas that we couldn’t have attempted earlier. For example, we launched a music CD for the three books. It’s an idea that’s never been attempted for a book series, creating an original musical soundtrack,” Amish explained.

According to the former banker, film producers have consistently shown their ability to “use the Indian obsession with music to market their movies”. “Music in Indian movies is not just a part of the story, it’s also a marketing tool. The question was, could we use this tool for a book series?” His team argued that given that the books were doing business worth crores, the scale of the series was now “of a movie”.

Amish is happy that he and his team didn’t just put old songs in the CD, they produced original songs, drawn from different sections of the three books. “And with top-notch artistes, like Sonu Nigam, Taufiq Qureshi, Palash Sen, Bickram Ghosh,” he added.

What he didn’t mention is another famous name — Amish himself. Though he puts his involvement in the CD to “one of the advantages of being the producer”, audiences at the Kolkata Literary Meet will remember a tuneful Amish rendering Aapki aakhon mein kuch meheke huye se raaz hain in January this year.

“The music CD idea worked very well for us. It’s a marketing idea that earned revenue!” said Amish.

Other than the CD, which is titled Vayuputras and is available in stores and online, Amish’s team also created a music video. “It’s almost like an entire movie — we have ships, horses, a battlefield, it looks like a movie!” said Amish.

And just like a film production house, Amish had a success party for Book 3. The grand do was held at the Taj in Mumbai and was attended by Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan, among others. A “somras” brew was served to guests and there was music and dance too.

And speaking of films, Karan Johar is making one on the trilogy and matters are “in the scripting stage”. There’s Hollywood interest in his books too.

So, we ask him, what is he up to these days — enjoying success?

“Nahin nahin, it’s not like that ya. But yes, I am enjoying my free time with my family. We’ll go on a holiday soon. Then I’ll start working on my next series. I myself haven’t decided what it’ll be, though. There are various ideas, one is set in Egyptian mythology, one is on Lord Manu, one on Lord Rudra, one on The Ramayana, one on The Mahabharata.

Amish is yet to pick his new story, rather — as he often puts it — the story is yet to pick him.

Samhita Chakraborty

What do you want Amish to write on next? Tellt2@abp.inand we’ll send your requests to him