The 6Bridges Interview

We have all heard about being separated from each other by 6 degrees of separation. With some people you wish the degrees of separation would be 600 instead and less than six for the ones you are desperate to meet. The group that started the website at 6bridges.com (their byline says it is “An exclusive global community of Indian Professionals”) did it to connect Indian professionals across the globe. The site focuses on 6 key areas (another six) : Career growth, entrepreneurship, Re-skilling, money management, leisure and professional networking. We got chatting about this and that. Let us cross the 6bridges:
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Corporate Novels

Career stories are in, and a new set of part-time authors is cashing in on the trend. Bankers, admen, scientists , hoteliers, HR professionals, are all drawing on their experiences to produce ‘corporate novels’ where the careers of the protagonists take up just as much space as their love affairs. And a new generation of readers is lapping it up, says Dibeyendu Ganguly in Corporate Dossier section of Economic Times dated 27 February 2009
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Women Read More Fiction Than Men

Deccan Herald reviewed Married But Available in its Sunday paper dated Jan 25, 2009. Veena Pradeep says

“You may however be left with this vague feeling that this is more of a guy’s book rather than a gal’s. If writings of women about and for women that are also read by men are called Chick Lit, what would writings of men about and for men that are also read by women be called? In a way, Abhijit Bhaduri and his ilk may have spawned this new genre of Indian fiction. Can we call it Guy Lit for want of a better term?”
I generally get a little wary about classifying books, music, movies into genres and compartments. It is the equivalent of stereotypes that makes us pre-judge a person. We have a liberal list of stereotypes about countries, ethnic groups, gender and any other grouping possible.  Each stereotype puts a set of limitations around what we expect that group to be capable of or not even when it is a positive expectation. When it works in our favor we don’t mind the categorization and yet bristle with indignity when the grouping puts us at a disadvantage.

So when my book is classified as “guy lit” it automatically puts me at a disadvantage. Women will no longer read the book I fear. That knocks off half the human race from my readership and I will never make my millions in royalty . I ask Rascal Rusty for advice. He tells me that it is a good thing for my novel to be classified as “guy lit” because that will make more women read it. They would want to know how guys think. Who does not want to understand how the men in their world think or feel especially about them. I certainly hope he is right. 

Try this out for yourself. When you go to the bookstore the next time, politely enquire if they have more women buying the books or men. If the cashier is able to get past political correctness, you will hear what the NPR article  confirms what I have always noticed.

See what I mean, more women read fiction than men. Some biographies also may be passed off as fiction I suppose – just trying to defend the guys. Hey more guys than gals have read Harry Potter – doesn’t that count? The article hypothesises that women are comfortable with a wider range of emotions than men and perhaps they are buying the books for the men back home to read. Is that true for what you have seen?

“Surveys consistently find that women read more books than men, especially fiction. Explanations abound, from the biological differences between the male and female brains, to the way that boys and girls are introduced to reading at a young age.” says NPR. It further goes on to say, “The typical woman read nine books in a year, compared with only five for men. Women read more than men in all categories except for history and biography.”

Limiting as it is, a stereotype also helps us make sense of a really complex world and gives us the comfort of knowing what to expect. Classifying anything into groups makes it easy for shoppers to choose. So the person pushing the shopping cart around in the mall looks for the signage in the aisles that announces the contents on the shelves. In a library we like to make it easy for ourselves to choose the book we are looking for by identifying the classification. There can be some howlers in that. Games People Play – the 1964 classic by Eric Berne on the Psychology of Human Relationships was classified initially in the Sports section of our library until the Professor of Psychology intervened.

The final verdict: We may not like getting pigeonholed but it finally helps us make choices.

How to Get Your Novel Published?

You have the novel ready. And you are now ready to count the steady flow of royalty. You have practised the odd moment of living it up like a rich person. So why is the publisher not grabbing your manuscript.

Heck – that’s the reality check. Your publisher needs to feel that your manuscript is going to be the next Harry Potter or whatever last made a few good millions – for the publisher. Yes… you read that right. The publisher is really trying to gauge the readership of your novel. So in a very simplistic manner, they are not really trying to figure out if your plotline was intriguing or not. They need to know how many people are likely to BUY your novel.

How do you find a publisher?

Option 1: Get yourself invited to a dinner party where publishers are hanging out. Then try and strike up a conversation with one of ‘em. NOT RECOMMENDED.

Option 2: Go to a literary festival or a writers’ workshop. Helps to get you in the queue to pick up a few visiting cards of publishers and employees of publishing houses. Try and listen in to the panel discussions. That always helps. Listen to other writers and editors and publishers.

Option 3: Find yourself an agent. In US they have a book called the Writers Market. You can buy it off Amazon.com or a bookstore. That lists basically, which publisher is publishing the genre of novels that yours fits in. They list names of agents who will represent you to the publishers. Here is an interview with Eric Simonoff - the agent who represented Jhumpa Lahiri. Some of the agents want a “Reading Fee” – a hefty sum of money to read your manuscript with no obligations. Heck, it is a tough world.

Option 4: Keep sending the manuscript to the publishers directly. Most websites have addresses where you can mail the manuscript. Some want electronic version, some want the hardcopy, some want a pink bulldog to go with it. Whatever they want and in whatever format they want it – you increase the probability of someone reading it if you follow instructions.

And I don’t know if I should say this to you, but… well… be prepared for the famous “Rejection Slip”. I was told by an engineer that the number of rejection slips will always be one less than the number of manuscripts you have mailed, since one of them will be the acceptance slip. In mathematical terms the rejection slips will be n-1 if n is the number of manuscripts mailed. Well – he was wrong. I got more rejection slips than manuscripts mailed (one publisher sent me two of those pre-printed ones).

See sample Rejection Slip below

Dear

Your writing has a refreshing style and the plotline was really gripping and fabulous.

However… – this where it gets creative –

a) we have just stopped publishing this genre/ category of novels/ poems

b) we are understaffed and will not be able to pay attention to the manuscript for the next five years/ sixty months – whichever is later!

c) you have just missed the submission deadline for the next five years.

Yours sincerely (if THAT is sinecerely, I wonder what is not)

Royalty and Other Fictional Characters

Who on earth thought of this cruel term called royalty? There is nothing royal about it. It is bloody unfair to term the few coins we authors make (when someone buys our book) as royalty. It just creates false impressions. Just makes it hard to be an author. Read more

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