To The Masthead
David Godwin, the agent who knows how to get tight-fisted Indian publishers to cough up undreamt-of advances, has done it again: he’s sold Aravind Adiga’s next novel set in Mumbai, Last Man in the Tower, to HarperCollins for “an undisclosed sum”. Though it’s the highest advance ever for the publisher, it still doesn’t match up with what Penguin paid for the sequel to A Suitable Boy. All the publishers here have been salivating over Adiga’s novel in the works, prepared to outbid each other. But, surprisingly, there was no formal auction—the book was offered only to Random House and HarperCollins. But Adiga decided to stay loyal to the publishers of his The White Tiger. And no wonder: it has sold a record 1,50,000 copies in hardback alone.
Cold Cuts
It’s not often that Penguin is not even invited to send in a bid, especially for a big book like Adiga’s. It’s understandable if a book is pre-empted, but why would Adiga instruct his agent to show the book only to Random House and HarperCollins? Could Adiga be still smarting from the rebuff two years ago, when Penguin withdrew from the auction for The White Tiger because the price was soaring “too high”?
Author As Butterfly
“I’m delighted to be a Penguin India author—hopefully for a long, long time,” says US author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni after selling her novel, One Amazing Thing, to them. Wonder if they’ll believe her, considering her record of (publishing) promiscuity: her last one, The Palace of Illusions, was with Picador, while the one before that, Victory Song, was with Penguin, and two others with Roli Books.
