Bibliofile

If there was anyone who doubted there's money to be made in coffeetablers, here's something to rest those doubts forever: in the last week of June every year, a select group of illustrated artbook publishers hold a conference at such exclusive locales as a castle near Madrid, or a luxury hotel in an island near Venice to discuss how best to network and market their books worldwide. The tradition began when two Croatian publishers took some publishers in the West for a luxury cruise of the Adriatic to persuade them to buy a coffetabler on the islands. When the number of publishers became too unwieldy for a cruise, they settled for the most exotic holiday resort they could hit upon. Till last year, Pramod Kapoor of Roli was the only Indian publisher in the group.

Neelima Dalmia, author of a memoir of her much-married father, the late proprietor of the Times of India, R.K. Dalmia, under the rather misleading title, Father Dearest, has just completed her second book. Even more explosive than her first book, it apparently has the first family in the newspaper business worried, even though it's disguised as a roman a clef. Penguin's snatched the manuscript and author away from Roli, and it's not for her writing skills that she's so much in demand...