Publishers in the West are still reeling from bad sales last year, brought on, some say, by post-9/11 blues. The worst-hit were the celeb biographies, for which publishing houses shelled out huge sums of money. But publishers here seem undeterred. Nearly every publishing house here, big or small, is banking on a biography/autobiography to save them from the financial ruin that is sending jitters down the industry worldwide.
Penguin’S list for the first six months has three biographies—an "authorised" biography (read hagiography) of Ram Jethmalani by Nalini Gera, yet another cricket star biography, Sourav by Gulu Ezekiel, and Sonia Gandhi by Rashid Kidwai. Rupa has a forthcoming autobiography by Marxist Mohit Sen. Roli, already famous for its gushy-quickie celeb biographies, has netted the most unusual one—Father Dearest: The Life and Times of R.K. Dalmia (the man who bought Times of India from Bennet and Coleman) by one of his daughters, Nilima Adhar (Namita Gokhale Edition).
