Monday, March 15, 2010

Some people are playing by the book

The Indian Premier League season is back, and so is Fake IPL Player. Cashing in on the highly controversial anonymous blogger called Fake IPLPlayer, who took the IPL 2009 season by storm, HarperCollins Publishers has just come out with a book called The Gamechangers by The Fake IPL Player. The book is about the blogger spreading gossip and tainting reputations with the scandalous revelations on his blog, even as Indian Bollywood League, India’s premier T20 cricket tournament gets all set for its third edition. 

While this may be the most whacky sports-related book this season, the entire publishing community sees a big opportunity in view of the big sports events lined up, off the field.

“Certain categories of books such as biographies and almanacs will see a spurt of interest with IPL 3 and Commonwealth Games,” says Lipika Bhushan, manager marketing, HarperCollins Publishers India. Not surprisingly, all publishers have big releases lined up for the next few months. Penguin India will soon release a biography of Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni; a book on India’s small-town cricket heroes; Abhinav Bindra’s autobiography and Karun Chandok’s diary of his first year in Formula 1. Harper-Collins India is coming out with a book on the Commonwealth Games by Boria Majumdar and Nalin Mehta around the middle of this year, when the buzz around the games is likely to peak.

Sports writer Gulu Ezekiel’s update of Sachin: The Story of the World’s Greatest Batsman (Penguin India) is set to be released later this month amidst the IPL fever. Some industry experts believe that the interest could even spread to other genre—such as fiction—with sports as the central theme. Perhaps, that explains the buzz around the The Gamechangers.

Full report here Economic Times

1 comment:

  1. Dhoni's WORLDS top cricketer with the right attitude
    great blog...keep it up!
    thnks & rgds

    ReplyDelete