As Crossword completes seven years in the business, the Mumbai bookstore, with a database of around 1,20,000 titles, is slated to open two more outlets in the suburbs. Apart from the Crossword Book Award for English fiction, the bookstore has also added an annual award for Indian language fiction translations. Five books have been shortlisted for each, and the awards will be announced in early December. SUMEDHA RAIKAR-MHATRE talks to Sriram who plans to introduce more categories of awards next year.

After introducing the Crossword Book Award last year, you have added another award this year. What has the response been?
Fantastic. We received 16entries for English fiction nominated by reputed publishing houses like Penguin and IndiaInk. Of these, Vikram Seth's An Equal Music and four others have been shortlisted. Thirteen nominations were registered for Indian language fiction translations into English. Here, the idea is to recognise the best translated work of fiction from the 14 Indian languages. Five entries have been shortlisted in this category. Both the awards entail a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh each.

We are fortunate to have gained the confidence of major publishing groups in this venture. Academicians have also lent unstinted support. The Crossword awards are being seen as the Indian avtaar of the Booker Prize, but they are actually a combination of the Booker and Pulitzer. Multi-category awards help popularise Indian books, authors and publishers and indirectly promote the reading habit. We will soon initiate other awards for children's fiction and non-fiction.

Will the creation of newer categories generate forced entries?
Not atall. Look at it this way. The prize money for golf in India last year was five crore rupees. The award money for cricket and other popular sports is astronomical. But no one ever thinks of instituting large cash prizes for writers. Our prizes are an incentive for the writing community. The desire for a Crossword award may generate a great work.

In what other ways does Crossword promote the written word?
The bookstore has around 40,000 titles at any given point of time. Customers can shop from home either through Dial-a-book, Fax-a-book and E-mail-a-book. Our monthly newsletter is mailed to over 17,000 customers. In the past we have organised interactive sessions with authors like Arundhati Roy. These activities, including pictionary contests and the annual fair with Santa, are aimed at making the place more reader-friendly. We want to market books aggressively. In India, advertising books is not the norm.

Is it because the reading habit has taken a back seat?
I don't think that peopleare reading less. Literacy levels have gone up. The number of textbooks and subjects for children has increased. More people subscribe to multiple newspapers today. Currently, over 1.8 million titles are in print in English alone, worldwide. The overwhelming sales of books like Chicken Soup for the Soul proves the existence of a new breed of readers.

It is wrong to conclude that TV time eats into reading time. That is being simplistic. In America, which has the maximum number of TV channels, expenditure on books was $ 28.7 billion in 1999. It is estimated to be $ 38 billion by the year 2003.

There are more publishers in India today than there were five years ago. Five major bookstores have come up in Mumbai alone in the last five years, with the latest, Granth, in Goregaon. The printed word has a definite clientele in India, we just have to tap it. If we don't, people are bound to channel leisure time and expenditure to other modes of entertainment.

You are very optimistic about readers. What do youthink of Indian writers?
I think Indian English writers have come of age. They are not only popular in India, but also sought after abroad. We have talented writers like Roy, who outsold best-selling popular fiction writers like Sidney Sheldon, Jeffery Archer and John Grisham. Around 20 Indian names feature regularly in the best-seller lists in UK & USA. And it's no accident.