Lost Heads
A litfest organiser wrote to me asking who he should approach in the various publishing houses for the list of authors he wants to invite for their litfest later this year. Beats me. The state of affairs in Penguin everyone knows by now: headless for the moment and yet another senior editor—Diya Hazra—quitting, taking the toll so far to four. Picador lost its chief—and only—editor recently, and has been replaced by HarperCollins’ former commissioning editor. To all the authors feeling stranded by this unending game of musical chairs, our only advice is: hang in there, it’s got to get better—probably by August this year, when Chiki Sarkar officially moves to her new job as Penguin’s new publisher; and David Davidar’s contractual agreement with his former employee, Penguin, expires.
A Ready Tongue
If there’s one publisher who knows how to keep overheads low and turn it into a virtue, it’s probably feminist press Zubaan’s publisher, Urvashi Butalia. Her office is literally over a cowshed, but that didn’t deter her from hosting an at-home for journalists recently. Over fruit punch and snacks made by their resident cook, her devoted team of editors and publicists came up with a PowerPoint presentation of their forthcoming titles cleverly designed to put the fun back into the F-word.
Fall From A Tower
Is it his resolve to avoid the five-star book-launch route or that his 2,50,000 readers have yet to wake up to the fact that his new book is already on the stands, but Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower is missing from the bestseller lists for the second week since its release.
