Bibliofile

Advance Warning

One question Kaavya's publisher has not answered yet is: how will they recover the five-figure advance they paid her? Bibliofile's guess is they've written it off. Or the portion of it they've already paid her. It's an open secret among authors that five-figure advances rarely translate into five-figure cheques. A portion of it is paid when they sign up an author, an instalment comes when the author's delivered the manuscript. And for the remaining amount, authors are made to wait however many years it takes them to produce a second book.

Don'ts at a Do
This month's prize for unusual book dos goes to Laxmi Dhaul and her publisher Rupa. Dhaul's picturebook, The Dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya, was released during the annual urs held at the Sufi shrine in Delhi. Rubbing shoulders with the bibliophiles were devotees who have probably never read a book in English. But it proved to be like any other launch: people crowding around the hapless publisher clamouring for free copies.