It's a game Rupa's R.K. Mehra seems to have perfected: keep an eagle eye out for which author's copyright is lapsing (normally, it is 50 years after an author dies) and come out with a brand new edition of his works at a fraction of the original price. The latest titles he has grabbed are of James Joyce. Both Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man have already hit the bookshops at an irresistible Rs 95 and Ulysses will join the growing list of Rupa's snatched trophies by next week.
Are ghost writers a disappearing breed? Unlike the hacks of yesteryear, they now demand a price that runs into several lakhs of rupees. Even then, they're not easy to find. Ask Nanak Kohli, the "Mercedes Benz" of Sikh entrepreneurs, whose one wish in life now is to find someone to inscribe his blameless life into a book. He's approached several hacks already but the answer has mostly been a firm "No." Says a publisher, who has received several requests from industrialists to find them a ghost writer: "It's not easy to find a ghost writer these days. They either want to work on their own book or find the generation gap too hard to handle."
