Chapal Mehra has chaperoned many well known books into the market. I asked him all the questions that plague first time and most ignorant authors like me. Here is a sample:Abhijit: What are some of the watchouts for first time writers when they sign a contract with a publishing firm?Chapal: Most professional publishing firms have standard contracts which they are not open to amending. It is the way they do business and these cannot be altered to every author’s requirement. In fact they are mostly standardized across organizations with a few changes here and there. As a first time author you need to know what you get into a contract with the publishing firm for :Copyright: Understand the difference between copyright and the right to publish.What territory are you signing the book deal for? Do you want to keep US and UK or Europe rights for yourself?Please check the royalty clause. Are you happy with what the standard royalty is ? Usually it’s the same across publishing firmsPlease check the subsidiary rights. Do you want to give up or keep –translation rights, film rights, tv series rights etc. In most cases I would advise its best to let the publishing company keep these unless you want to do something with them or you think it will have enormous potential which you have a strategy to exploit.If its an advance contract what are your dates of delivery? What are the conditions associated with non- or late delivery?Its always good to discuss the contract with your editor to also understand why the organization is offering the contract that it is . Most large professional publishing firms are not out to rob you. But its important for you to understand their thinking.

I have always been interested in exploring what Corporations can learn from Video Games. Here is what are top reasons:1. How to design the work content/ an activity that people willingly come back to regularly.2. How to design the task such that it is tough and yet people strive to improve their skills by working at it regularly3. How to design a task that is so engaging that people will sneak back to give it a shot even when they are REALLY tired.4. How to create reward systems that are intangible and yet meaningful enough to motivate people to excel even as the tasks become harder and harder.5. How to effortless teach people to collaborate and compete with people across the world (think online games) and raise each others skill level.The biggest insight I had was when I read that a focus on remaining (vs. completed) actions increases the motivation to move up to a more advanced level...

The Wikipedia told me about the "Chinese water torture". This was a torture that was supposed to drive its victim insane with the stress of water dripping on a part of the forehead for a very long time. It was characterized by the inconsistent pattern of water drips. Supposedly, the desire for the human brain to make a pattern of the timing between the drops will also eventually cause insanity to set in. That was then. Today that method is replaced by subjecting unsuspecting colleagues to horrible presentations that makes the water torture look almost benign. There are many reasons why presentations go haywire. You have probably suffered through many sessions where the speaker reads through what really looks like the pages of a book - except that all 5000 pages including the graphs and tables of research data are all put into one slide. The font is small enough to inspire people not delay any more the decision whether to wear specs or not. Worse still many presenters feel that the slide is like a teleprompter. They read it out line by line and imagine that the audience is either illiterate or so lazy that they will not read stuff even if it is in front of them. Here is the big secret -1. If you have sentences to share with your audience, use a Word document2. If you have data and graphs to show – use Excel. Give them a printout that they can either read ahead of the meeting or can sus out after you have gone home3. If have a conclusion to share or an idea you want them to remember use PowerPointThe Slide Rule (pun intended): Have a single point on a slide – preferably with a visual. The visual should be about the story that goes with the slide. The slides are for the audience to remember as key take aways. Slides are not speaker notes. It is not about the slides anyway.

Do you think Indians in general have a sense of humour?Our culture is full of stories the witty person - think Tenalirama, Gopal Bhand, or Birbal. The theater forms have all had the comic as an integral part of the story. Indian cinema - Hindi as well as other Regional language cinema has also seen development of humor. Hence in a country of a billion people there is a healthy percentage of people who relish different shades of it. Humor is very situation specific and context specific. What you find funny as a ten year old may not be so when you are older. Some humor is specific to a region or social class. Each language has its own notion of humor as does each class of society. The breadth of humor one appreciates is a by product of the extent of exposure one has had to people who are different. As Indians have become more confident, we have learnt to laugh at ourselves. Only someone who is secure within can laugh at himself or herself. Self deprecating humor is reflective of a self assured person. I believe economic prosperity and exposure to a global environment have expanded the variety of jokes we laugh at today. You see more comedy shows on TV than we did a few years back. Youtube and the Net has given us access to more brands and flavors of humor. So as a country we are discovering the joys of a global fare.

We have all grown up in a world that clearly values rationality and rational behavior. Being emotional was frowned upon. Whenever someone displays emotions in public view it makes news (Think of Maradona's expressions as the team played and lost) and the world turns its cameras to look at the person who just "lost it". When I studied Science in school, I was told by my teacher that if there was something that cannot be explained by Science it was not worth knowing and that it was obviously irrational. Such was the vehemence with which I was nudged towards being rational. As I grew to develop my own view of the world, I got fascinated by the limitations of rationality. Rational stuff had a logical sequence and clearly activated that part of my brain that I had difficulty accessing. You try this one and you got to do this real quick: A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?Write down your answer. If you said that the ball costs 10c, then you are part of the majority. That is the good news. The bad news is that the correct answer is 5c. Shane Frederick, Prof at MIT Sloan posed this question to more than 3,000 students at eight different universities. Fewer than half gave the correct answer. The trick is to not go by your instinct which gives the wrong answer, but to take a second more and reflect on it. Shane has developed a 3 question test - that question is one of the three - that can be almost as accurate in predicting characteristics that other tests like the SAT, ACT, or the Wonderlic Personnel Test. He also found that those who do well on the cognitive reflection test tend to be more patient in decisions between smaller sooner rewards and larger later rewards. They are also more willing to gamble in financial domains.

What do you want to be when you grow up? The answer is very often influenced by the kind of person who you view as a role model. Role models inspire. Role models resonate with what we want to be. A role model has to walk the talk. Authority figures are inevitably burdened with the task of being exemplary in their conduct at all times. Parents of very young children realize that the children tend to emulate their behavior whether or not it is appropriate or even safe. Many parents have walked in to discover their three year old trying to apply lipstick like Mummy or shave like Daddy - sometimes with disastrous results.