Indian publishing needs to get less fun

In India it is editors who decide what readers get to read. Why is it that mediocrity becomes a goal in the attempt to bridge a non-existent divide between ‘literary’ and ‘commercial’ fiction?

In the world of Indian English publishing, kitsch has begun to dominate the mainstream. Penguin India publishes ‘Metro Reads', books that they call ‘fun, feisty, fast'; Random House India produces the ‘Kama Kahani', a series of Indianised Mills and Boons; Hachette India openly states that it cares most about commercial thrillers; and with its latest, highly-marketed release, Johnny Gone Down, HarperCollins India seems to be headed in the same direction. These are all books that openly disclaim any particular literary merit. They are projected instead as ‘fun' reads — with the implication that only a killjoy could possibly protest them.

A preliminary question
But before we get to that question — are these books fun for us? — there is an important preliminary question:why are they being offered to us? The easy answer is that the market is clamouring for them, just look at Chetan Bhagat. But this is too easy. It's been seven years since Bhagat's first book. Why would it take so long to follow his example? Moreover, the mainstay of Bhagat's readership has never been readers per se.It has been non-readers, those who are new to books, even new to the English language. This is certainly a massive group, and after Bhagat's success it has certainly been tapped — but by the smaller publishers, such as India Log and Shrishti Publications — not by the A-list. For them, Bhagat has simply been a fact of life — too dominant to ignore, too declasse to embrace. Which is one reason why their own ‘fun' releases take great pains to explain that they're well-written too, that they ‘bridge the divide' (a fashionable phrase) between the literary and the commercial.

Full report here Hindu