Earnings from books

By Manohar Malgonkar

IN the mid-sixties when my books began to be published abroad, in England book-publishing was called a ‘business’ whereas in America it was an ‘industry’. But whether business or industry, publishing books was somehow a cultural pursuit, too; like an art gallery, run by "the underpaid and overqualified ... bright people attracted to the business by their love of books". They were independent enterprises more interested in quality of product than profits.

In my own case, my publishers, Hamish Hamilton in London and Viking in New York, were family-run businesses. Hamish Hamilton, ‘Jamie’ to his friends as well as to his authors was, after all the founder of his imprint. He was a typical product of Rugby and Cambridge (where he got a blue for rowing). One of his stable of celebrated authors, John Kenneth Galbraith, once introduced Jamie to his dinner-guests as follows: "He is a wealthy London publisher, legendary in his generosity in royalties and advances to authors". And of Jamie’s publishing house, Galbraith says: "Hamish Hamilton volumes are the best printed, the best published books in the English-speaking world".

Jamie Hamilton had already published a novel of mine and accepted another before we met, at a party in Nitya Wagle’s house in Bombay where the Hamiltons were staying. And when I told Jamie and Yvonne (Mrs Hamilton) that I was visiting London later in the year and looked forward to seeing them, Yvonne spontaneously piped up: "Oh, but you must stay with us!"

After that first visit, whenever I happened to be in London, it was just taken for granted that I should stay at 43 Hamilton Terrace where again to quote John Galbraith, "people gathered with so civilised a dismissal of national identity."

Similarly, whenever the Hamiltons came to India — and they came regularly every winter — they invariably spent a couple of weeks with us, as our houseguests.

My New York publisher, Viking, was also a highly conservative, family-run business. It had been founded by Harold Guinzberg who, I was told, had made — or inherited — a fortune from the garment trade, and gone into publishing. In the sixties, the head of the firm was Harold’s son, Tom Guinzberg, and it was Tom, as I later took to calling him, who had personally written to me saying how much he had liked my book. And when I was in New York to help out with the publicity of the book, it was the owner of the shop, as it were, who himself entertained me and, generally speaking, made sure that I was looked after, leaving the editorial decisions to Marshall Best, who, at the time, had acquired the status of a guru in the firm.Marshall, too, became a friend and himself acted as editor to a novel of mine which Viking published.

But already, family-run publishing houses were on the way out. Even when Jamie Hamilton was till very much the hands-on chairman of his imprint, the firm of Hamish Hamilton was taken over by the Thompson group and became a component of a world-wide publishing conglomerate. And not long after, Viking was swallowed up by Penguin and for a few years, continued as a double-barrelled imprint, Viking Penguin till, as the result of yet another merger or takeover, joined up with Putnam to become Viking Penguin Putnam.

The business of book publishing became de-personalised, and increasingly more profit oriented, with publishing decisions watched over by accounts and market people who, as often as not, overrule editorial decisions. Jamie Hamilton used to take his authors to his London clubs, the Garrick, or Whites. Nowadays Idoubt if there is much common grounds between London’s book-publishing and London’s clubland; it has forged links with London’s market-place instead.

The Americans don’t congregate in clubs. Visiting Viking authors were taken to cosy luncheons at famous restaurants by either the boss himself, Tom Guinsberg, or the Chief Editor,Marshall Best, both of whom made you feel that they were interested in your literary career. While dealing with salmon mousse and sipping Chablis, they sought to draw you out about your plans for your next novel and the next.

Now the eating places are in the same class but the man-or woman-who takes you out is some imprint-hopping editor who is quite likely to ask, "Who is he?" If you mention either Tom’s or Marshall’s name. He or she is not likely to have been of the original Viking team, and doesn’t give a damn about your next novel because it is not his or her business to discuss business plans with you: all negotiations are now through agents only; theirs and yours.

As the Americans like to stress about many things special to America, book-publishing is a different ball game, now. It has evolved its own ‘star’ system as they once had in Hollywood. It is said that, if four novelists, Tom Clancy, Stephen King, John Grisham, and Michal Crichton got together, they could set up the top publishing firm in America. The advances against royalties that these four authors demand-and get-are positively staggering.

Which is why it is so heartening to see a crop in young Indian writers breaking into this ball game and coming to terms with advance royalties running into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

What sort of advances are publishers offering, these days? Four years ago, when Martin Amis bargained hard to get an advance of half a million dollars for his novel ‘The Information’ he became an object of envy and derision among fellow authors in Britain, but in America, the million barriers had been crossed many years earlier, and in the late seventies Mario Puzo had been paid two-and-a-half million dollars for the paperback rights of his ‘Fool’s Die’.

The latest buzzword on royalty advances to super-star authors is provided by a tiff between king and his longtime publisher Viking Penguin Putnam. When, for his 1997 novel Bag of Bones King demanded an advance of eighteen million dollars, they let him go.

But another famous imprint was ready to snap him up: Scribner, which too had begun life as an independent publishing house but had lately become a division of Simon and Schuster which, in turn, had been gobbled up by Viacom, a media and entertainment giant which had little to do with publishing. Anyhow, whoever owns Scribner, its top team was able to work out a package deal that seems to have met King’s approval. Under this deal, King gets a advance of two million dollars for Beg of Bones and two forthcoming titles, plus a share of 55 per cent of the net profits — that’s right, fifty-five per cent.

As their promotion campaign, Scribner is giving away to approved readers videotapes of the author reading excerpts from his novel and "nine thousand advance copies".

Most authors would consider themselves lucky if their books sold that many copies in hardcover. But than that is the ‘star’ system.

Forbes magazine assesses that, in 1997, Stephen King earned fifty million dollars.

The book industry in America is a different ball game. But the fact remains that among other such ball games it is still fairly close to the bottom of the ladder.

There are the chief executives of great corporations who routinely make more money. Fifty million a year would seem like the poverty line to both Michael Jackson and Oprah Winfrey. That same year, Tiger Woods, the golfer, made more than seventy millions. And this year, when America’s basketball hero Michael Jordan decided to retire, he is said to have made half a billion dollars in a career that barely lasted fifteen years.

A billion dollars in earnings. That is a barrier that no writer has crossed, ever. It still remains the exclusive preserve of the computer industry. But here, too, a young Indian is clawing away at the competition. Sabir Bhatia who, in the year Stephen King made fifty million dollars, walked away with four hundred million dollars as the result of a single deal.

But no matter who is clawing away, the czar of the business still reigns supreme. According to the BBC, Bill Gates is now worth a hundred billion dollars!