In India, it’s a pitched battle for page views

In publishing, a good story is often just the start. After that, it’s about promotion, promotion, promotion. This is where India’s writers of young adult fantasy fiction are losing out to their Western counterparts.

The stories are there (there could be more of course, in a country with such a rich reserve of myth and folk tales). But the ecosystem hasn’t taken shape around them yet.

“Western writers have such a machinery of publicity and promotion behind them. Kids are repeatedly swamped with promotional material. There are school visits, book readings. Online, there are events and discussions. Even the bookshops here give them prominent space,” says Venita Coelho, author of critically acclaimed children’s books such as Dead as a Dodo and Tiger by the Tail.

And so a cycle forms where the buzz is built up around Western works, films and OTT shows boost them further, children are eager to read the originals, and more such works find a global market. It’s a cycle that began with Harry Potter, moved through the Twilight and the Hunger Games series and along the way created space for scores of Western writers — a recent example being Leigh Bardugo, whose Shadow and Bone, published in 2012, is now a popular Netflix series.

“There are some fantastic Indian books in this genre that need to be talked about more,” says Bijal Vachharajani, senior editor at Pratham Books. “For example Sonja Chandrachud’s Pearls of Wisdom (Penguin Random House India, 2010), about two teen wizards who dive under the Sea of Secrets and fight sea monsters to retrieve the Pearls of Wisdom. Or Devika Rangachari’s Queen of Ice (Penguin Random House India, 2014), about a beautiful, ambitious and physically challenged princess, Didda, in 10th-century Kashmir.”

The Indian YA fantasy fiction space hasn’t

Kids are swamped with promotional material for Western writers. We need that in India too. VENITA COELHO, author

really taken off in the Indian market and that’s the saddest bit, says Arpita Nath, associate commissioning editor at Penguin Random House India. “I get a lot of submissions. Some are really good. But what we have seen from the market is that readers are really hesitant to pick up Indian books in the genre. The preference is for known international authors. Teens also watch OTT adaptations like Shadow and Bone and tend to pick up those books.”

Some authors are taking steps themselves. “For my books that were released before the pandemic, I did 90% of the marketing on my own,” says Kevin Missal, 24, author of the Kalki trilogy. “I could afford it, so I went allout, offline and online, book tours across the country, signing events. I even opened my own marketing agency 10 months ago.”

The pandemic has hurt promotions as we had to cancel all our offline events, says Nath. “Before it we used to have online and offline plans to promote a book for at least three or four months before and after their launch. Publishers are doing all they can.”