Bibliofile
Who leads the sales figures among the Big Three -- Naipaul, Rushdie, Lahiri? Why is Shobhaa De the mai-baap of Penguin? Is Chetan Bhagat over-hyping by claiming 2,00,000 pre-orders?
Summer Breezes
Then there are the commercial titles, on which publishers are relying for their real profits. Shobhaa De is not the mai-baap of Penguin for nothing: 40,000 copies of her latest Superstar India have gone into bookshops, and there are more waiting in the warehouse. Newcomer Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger is trailing at 18,000 pre-orders. Even P.M. Nair’s The Kalam Effect has 15,000 orders. And publishers used to think summer was a bad time to release new books!
Third Mistake
Has Chetan Bhagat succumbed to over-hype by claiming 2,00,000 pre-orders for his latest Three Mistakes In My Life? Suspicious rivals did some detective work to discover how many copies have been printed. It’s 60,000, still a record of sorts but not good enough for the Mumbai banker, who has a full-time private publicist.