Sobti is not the only Hindi writer who has her knife in for Hindi publishers. Most writers complain of shocking malpractices among Hindi publishers. "They'll never give you the right royalties and they fudge the number of copies they've sold," Hindi writers claim. "And if you insist on being shown the accounts, they're capable of telling you the pages have been eaten up by white ants." Which is why Hindi writers greeted Penguin's entry into regional publishing with enthusiasm. That was till they discovered it was more interested in translating its English authors into Hindi rather than the other way round.
No publisher is perhaps more acutely aware of how such allegations can strain author-publisher ties than Nai Sadi Book House's Satish Verma. When he published Babloo Srivastava's fictional memoir, Adhoora Khwab (Unfinished Dream), the first thing he did was to advise his mafia author to buy holograms—computer-friendly stickers that help an author keep track of his book's sales himself. Verma took the precaution as he did not want to be shot in the head over any 'misunderstanding' on actual sales figures.
