Even for eyeballs inured to all sorts of advertisements flickering on television, this 15-second one is new: an animated car vrooms into the screen and to the dust jacket of Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. An ad for an individual book is unusual, but not surprising considering HarperCollins has reportedly shelled out an advance of $35,000 (Rs 14 lakh) for the debut novel. While HarperCollins India has started a promotional blitzkrieg of sorts, others are pitching in for their authors. Nobody is ready to publish and perish. Not yet.
While Adiga’s book is advertised on a newschannel and on yahoo.com banners, HarperCollins India is planning a television commercial for Paulo Coelho’s novel Brida as well — this one will hit another newschannel in the first week of June. CEO P.M. Sukumar says, “A bewildering quantity of books is out in the market. The increasing corporatisation of retail book stores has propelled us to take the initiative of creating awareness for books that matter.” Among them is Chronicles of Narnia, for which HarperCollins India is running a lucky seat contest at PVR cinemas where the Hindi Prince Caspian is showing; those in the “lucky seats” leave the hall with the C.S. Lewis classic. To promote the newly launched HarperHindi, they are also distributing for free 700 movie tickets with copies of Narnia’s Hindi translation, apart from distributing merchandise like free Narnia diaries and T-shirts. Earlier, such paraphernalia came to the scene only when there was a big-ticket launch, like a Harry Potter book.
The relatively new publishing house Westland and Tranquebar Press, meanwhile, is tying up with a social networking site to publicise its Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul, the first country-specific Chicken Soup that is put together by Raksha Bharadia. “In future, we see ourselves using the Internet very strongly to take our books to the people,” says Priyanka Chowdhury, head of publicity, Westland, who thinks TV and radio ads for books will catch on in India. “The book business is peculiar in the sense that we operate on a very thin profit margin. It is a vicious cycle because funds for promotions come from profits and there cannot be profit unless there are promotions and the books sell.”
Rupa and Co, however, is not surprised by Adiga’s ad. Kapish Mehra of Rupa says the publishing house had their first TV spot back in 1974, when they launched Sunil Gavaskar’s autobiography Sunny Days. For Chetan Bhagat’s new book, Three Mistakes of My Life, which at Rs 95 is as expensive as a packet of washing powder, Rupa, however, did not book a TV commercial; instead they suitably tied up with Big Bazaar. “We wanted to cut across all the fancy paraphernalia and reach out to our target audience. We had 3,000 people attending the launch in Kolkata alone,” says Mehra. While Penguin India was not available for comment on their promotions, they are likely to have an ad trick or two up their sleeve for Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies to be launched on June 1.
Apart from the wine-and-cheese openings, publishing houses have been doing interesting but relatively inexpensive promotions like getting dancer Malavika Sarukkai to perform for sister Priya Sarukkai Chabria’s book release or a qawwali for the launch of Salma Ahmed’s memoir Cutting Edge. But no longer. When huge advances become the prologue, hard sell will script the first chapter.