“Books are a boring product,” says the writer who has changed the face of Indian publishing.
Chetan Bhagat, whose latest book 2 States is selling a copy every two seconds, feels that the challenge is how to make books interesting for today’s youth, “who have so many choices to spend their money on”.
His titles — 5 Point Someone, One Night @ the Call Centre, The 3 Mistakes of My Life and 2 States — have sold over a million copies each. “If you sell a thousand copies, you break even, if you sell 10,000 copies, yours is a best-seller, but I sold more than 10 times over, and a copy of 2 States is selling every two seconds,” the IIT-IIM alumnus said recently while interacting with the students of the Bengal Institute of Business Studies in the city.
While Bhagat attributes the success of 2 States to “Indians loving love and marriage” he also stresses on innovation.
“5 Point... is a book by, for and about Indians,” he pointed out. Besides, the pricing also helped. Chetan says he had asked his publisher Kapish Mehra of Rupa, “How low can you keep the price?” He knew he was selling to students and couldn’t price it above Rs 100. Mehra said Rs 95 and the price hasn’t been revised since.
Full report here Telegraph
No comments:
Post a Comment