Bibliofile
'Tis the season of that most dreaded word in the publishing world — "returns" — when a distributor sends back his stock of unsold copies to the publisher...
We may not have agents but we have the next best thing: talent scouts. Every major publishing house now boasts of them—the commissioning editors whose job it is to spread the net out farther afield to catch new talent in the bud. And apart from Delhi, the city most publishers are banking on to produce new writers is Mumbai. That's where Penguin's recruited at least a couple of commissioning editors, including Shobhaa De. That's where Roli is also now thinking of casting its author-catching nets by hiring former editor and columnist Anil Dharker as commissioning editor.
His "free and frank" views won him many enemies in the PMO but it was the one quality our PM said he prized most in hisNSA, Mani Dixit. All the PM's men, including successor M.K. Narayanan, turned up full force at the launch of Mani's last book, IFS—History and Challenge. Natwar Singh left hastily but had he stayed, he may not have been so pleased with Mani's plans for his next book. The book, Cocktails and Bandhgalas, a candid take on the goof-ups in the government.