Sunday, May 6, 2012

Boom of budding authors in Present times


I am already in love with this space.It's a great platform to get exposure to one's writing skills and venting out one's feelings. As a person who enjoys writing since childhood, I feel there has been a drastic change in the opinion of public towards writers. Many people plunged into this field like today but only a few got to the apex. But today with the changing scenario we have seen a boom in the count of youth Indian writers. Thanks to Chetan Bhagat and of course recession wherein after losing their jobs many people turned to writing for livelihood.
Just like the two faces of coin, writing has brought in a lot of competition   in the market as well. There is a horde of authors, good and bad. Exploitation is as always present here. Often the publishers do not give due respect to the authors, the standard royalty rate of 8-10% has come down to 5%. I have even heard about publishers not responding properly to the authors about the sales figures.The established publishing houses are not ready to give chance to the budding authors while the ones that give chance do not even posses editors, leave alone good editors. the rough manuscript is published as it as. Even the editors are unable to correct the grammatical errors. In a recent book that I read, the single change that the publishing house brought in the manuscript was changing 'hair' to 'hairs'. Amazingly we always studied it as 'hair' in lower classes but then we can't do anything as the author is already indebted to the publisher for getting his book in the print with no capital investment.
If you are a debut author and your work isn't of romantic genre, you might as well become a rolling stone because the expectation from a young Indian author is a love story or another campus life. They have a good reason for you that romance sells anyway but for a debut author  something different may create losses for the house also. They can't take a chance. While a recent interaction with another youth author, I was told that a publisher had once said to her that love,sex,fun and a fresh story line is that sells the most.
These are just a few instances. And of course we can't forget that we all have to be grateful to them as they are the ones providing us bread and butter, the fame we needed and unique identity. All we need is a little more value to our work and little effort from everybody's side to bring out the best for the nation.

11 comments:

  1. Harshita, you've hit the nail on its head. This is my first read of yours and i'm endeared to the honest feel of your expressions. A good writing/writer will always surface despite the odds. keep it up !

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    1. Thanks a ton Sir..It's an honour to receive your comment on my blog :)

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  2. Ms. Harshita.. today I watched Satyameva jayate... really an eye opener... and when I finished with your article, I found it somewhere close to it...
    Really a wonderful article...
    Keep it up...
    God Bless..

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    1. Thank you Mr. Alok :)
      And it's a privilege to hear that you find my article in relation to Satyameva Jayate
      :)

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    2. You are welcome Ms. Harshita.
      Yes, it is... if I say about my point of view, with a view of a common man with a lot of questions and a living dream to be a face out of crowd...
      I found it and said it.. :)

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  3. and for writing practice...this blogosphere is best... :P
    nice read... :) :)

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  4. You've said it.
    That's why creative writers prefer to blog now-a-days.

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  5. A very well-writ post and I second every word of it. Fantasy
    Fiction, Science Fiction, Crime Thrillers even Erotica for that matter are to come of age here.

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    1. Very true Basil..These are the genres that haven't been so popular among the Indian writers but they are sure to come soon :)

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