Pocket-sized—but not, alas, pocket-priced—books are making a comeback in the West. Indian publishers could have told them this years ago but publishers and editors there are just beginning to wake up to the huge popularity of slim-paged books of 10-30,000 words on everything under the sun, from biographies to novellas to current events and even extracts from the Bible. Like Indian readers, those in the West are turned off by hefty tomes. But unlike Indian readers, they are willing to pay as much for a work that’s several thousand words lighter.
We’ve heard of chicklit but chickenlit? This is the coining of local wits in a market town in the UK to describe novels on agricultural themes!
