Suhail Mathur

What are some of the major differences between a self-published book and a traditionally published one?

So, for starters, we do not work with self publishing houses. We only work with traditional ones because as a literary agency, it is extremely important to associate with the right kind of publishers and The Book Bakers has always tried to associate with the maximum number of publishers, right from the oldest to the youngest. But the one thing that we’ve always steered clear of is working with self publishing houses because of the whole idea of hiring a literary agent for a traditional publishing contract. 

So with regards to the question over here as to what is the difference between a self publishing house or a self published book and a traditionally published book is that in self publishing, an author needs to pay the publisher to print the book, to release the book, whereas in a traditional setup, the cost of printing the book, releasing the book etc will be on the publishing house and not on the author. And as a literary agency, it is our endeavour to provide the best possible user experience to our authors, which is why we work with the maximum number of publishers in India. But all of them are traditional publishing houses.

How has the growth and spread of E-books and Audiobooks changed the role of a literary agent globally and in India?

To be honest, I don’t think it has changed the role of a literary agent. It has only enhanced the role of the literary agent. You must remember that at the end of the day, 90% of authors, if not more, want the physical copy of the book in hand. So, while a lot of sales may have started, and a keen interest may have towards E books developed, the point is that a larger share of sales happens from paperbacks.

In my own personal experience too, I’ve seen that authors who had got published on an E Book app only, came to me later and expressed their desire of taking down the book from the said app in hopes of getting an eventual paperback deal. So, it’s very evident that paperback rules the roost. E books and audio books are great supplements to it because what an E book does is that it increases the reach of a particular title to countries where the physical copy of the book may not be available, and what an audio book does is that it gives a very personal feeling to the reader as it is almost as if the scene is being played out in front of you. But audio books at times also help in generating revenue. Which is to say that if major audio book platforms acquire your book, then they will also pay a certain amount for that acquisition, and that becomes another source of revenue for authors. 

We all know, a literary agent seeks an author bio, 1000 words synopsis, and 3 chapters of the manuscript. But, What are the things a literary agent looks for while selecting or rejecting a manuscript?

Firstly, there should be an instant connect with the story or the concept, because if that very connect is lacking, then a literary agent cannot pitch that book with as much zeal and fervour as is expected of them. So, when I look at a script, my first point is that do I like the story? Do I feel I would like to represent such a story, and if the answer is yes, then I do not generally look at market conditions even if they may be less favourable for a particular book. Of course, market conditions play a very crucial role in the eventual selection of a book, but at the same time what one needs to understand is that a publisher will always come into the scheme of things later. A literary agent will come on to the scene much before, so it is up to the literary agent to inspire the author, to guide them and to infuse confidence in them by supporting their thoughts and their stories, if one sees potential. So, for me, the story needs to be of immense value. 

What I also feel is when one is looking at non fiction books, one also needs to see what value that book is imparting. Is it a self help book? Can it benefit readers or is it a story which should be known to several people but as of now, not as many know about it. I think some of the books that we have worked on in the non fiction space and are very proud of would include Miracle Men, by Nikhil Naz, which talks about the behind the scenes story of India’s 1983 World Cup win. There’s Gunning For The Godman, which is a true account of how Asaram Bapu was arrested and it’s been co-authored by my father, Mr Sanjeev Mathur and Mr Ajay Pal Lamba, the police officer who was at the helm of affairs in the particular case. 

Queens Of Crime by Kulpreet Yadav and noted actor, Sushant Singh, The Deadly Dozen by Anirban Bhattacharya, The Barabanki Narcos by top cop Aloke Lal and Uncle Pai by Rajesh Iyyer are some of the other books coming to my mind. All these wonderful books have also found visual adaptation 

And at the same time, there are several other books in the paranormal space with leading paranormal investigators like Jay Alani, PAIRS & the Indian Paranormal Society, who have collaborated with the biggest names in horror writing like Neil D’Silva, Siddharth Nirwan, Abhirup Dhar, Sid Kapdi, Abhishek Singh amongst several others. 

We did a book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s wife Ruttie, which was brought out by Saad Khan, who’s done immense research over the period of twelve years, and Penguin took up that book. Then there are authors like senior journalist Ashwini Bhatnagar, who has worked on several amazing non fiction books with us on ranging from the life of Meena Kumari to the political life under Rajiv Gandhi’s rule. Neelam Kumar brought out a book on real life heroes who have challenged destiny and won over it. Kiran-Nirvan are my military book specialists with 21 Kesaris & The Kargil Girl already out and at least half a dozen more already in various stages of completion.  

So what these kind of stories do is that they import information about characters, who lived in flesh and blood and the present generation may not know about them in as much detail. And that is our endeavour to make the youth aware of these iconic figures. 

In fact, we recently pitched a highly successful book called The Legend Of Lachit Borphukan by Nilotpal Gohain and published by Locksley Hall Publishing about India’s greatest war on water and how a smaller army of Ahoms defeated the mighty Mughals. So, the idea is to make more and more people aware of our glorious heritage and as long as we can continue doing that, we would be very happy.

What is the volume of books a prominent literary agency like yours receives for evaluation on a yearly basis? How do you go about filtering books to the next stage?

I always believed that the volume of a literary agent’s work depends on the kind of scripts being sent out to the agent. In our case, we have been extremely fortunate to have received some amazing stories, be it from first time authors, bestselling authors or even from celebrities. Stories that strike a chord with us, firstly, and with the readers, eventually. 

And because so many talented people have joined hands with us, we are immensely happy to state that even though the unfortunate pandemic was raging last year, we were still able to sell a whopping 143 books to various publishers and in this year, till now, which is to say till July, where the situation hasn’t changed much, we have in seven months sold around 106 books. And, well, five more months are remaining. So hopefully, by the end of the year we can look at reaching or crossing our target off 173 books, which was the maximum we sold in a year (2019).  So it completely depends on the kind of scripts one is receiving and also how quickly the market is responding to it. And I think when both these aspects synergize well, there is no stopping anyone from achieving success.

With so many books getting adapted into a visual medium like movies or series on OTTs, How will this aspect impact the book publishing industry?

The impact will only be positive. And the impact has thus far only been positive because the amount of money that Films and OTT platforms pay, cannot be equated with the monies involved in the publishing industry. So there’s a world of difference, and which is why it has become more advantageous. I mean, we have also got so many of our authors film deals. But I think what will really set the bar high in the longer run is when these books are turn into acquisitions from mere Option agreements because. 

You know, we’ve been blessed because a lot of our books have been acquired but predominantly how the industry works is on an option basis. So, when the option changes into an acquisition, that is the time when the real benefit will accrue to the author, because in an option only a certain percentage of the full deal value is given. But if one wants the entire amount for that, the option needs to be turned into an acquisition, which means that the producer needs to sell it successfully to a platform. So, it is a bubble. Whether it bursts or not in the long run, only time will tell. 

How can a literary agency help a new and upcoming author in marketing his/her book and reach out to more readers? What will be your advice to young authors?

We realised quite early that once a book is released, it becomes necessary to market and promote the book, and that’s when authors are usually left hanging because they may not be knowing book marketeers, or they may not be knowing who can add best value in terms of book marketing. So as a literary agency, we at The Book Bakers decided that we should take this up on our own and we collaborated with multiple book promotion partners. 

And as of now we are working with 12 to 13 of them and have created our own database of fulfil a variety of marketing deliverables, ranging from Amazon reviews to newspapers to radios to TV channels to OTT platforms. It’s the proverbial one stop shop of marketing deliverables which can definitely benefit the authors. Additionally, and because we also want to assist authors in general, our marketing services are available not only to our authors, but also to those who may have brought out the book on their own and now require marketing help. So, we are happy to help them too.

What is the range of Author Royalties achieved in a traditional contract? What all things could fetch a better royalty for an author? How many books do you need to sell to become a best seller in India?

I think the royalties remain fairly same or similar irrespective of whether someone is writing their first book or not and that ways, the publishing industry is very fair. Obviously, the ranges will differ slightly from publisher to publisher, but not to a great extent. So, there will be a different royalty range for a paperback and a different one for a hardback, and a different one for an E book. But all publishers, working within the ambit will have royalty ranges which would be just 3 to 5% apart from one another. So, the difference isn’t much. 

Coming to the advances, the advances would depend on the saleability of a book, so it is not necessary that a publisher who may be usually giving an advance may give an advance for all books and vice versa. Non Fiction books have a better chance of getting advances but irrespective of the same, the advances are always against royalty. 

The categorization of a bestseller will differ from publisher to publisher depending on the print run a publisher is coming out with. 

Please give a bit of a background about your Literary agency, presence in India, its Vision & Mission, Top management, the Kind of books you publish, and your biggest strength as a Publisher, popular authors published, years of experience, etc.

The Book Bakers Literary Agency was started in the year 2013, close to the time when my debut novel, The Bhairav Putras, had released, and because the book became highly successful, I was invited for a lot of literary festivals. This was when we realised that so many authors were awaiting an opportunity and a chance to showcase their talent, and we felt that we should be an entity that could help them out in this process, and that’s how The Book Bakers came into being. 

We are extremely happy to mention that we have sold more than 750 books to various major publishing houses, have sold close to 50 Audio Visual adaptation deals to well known production houses, have worked on more than 400 to 500 book covers and edited around 800 books still date. So, it’s been a wonderful journey. And our core vision and mission remain the same, which is to give new authors an opportunity to showcase their talent and bring out newer styles of narration in India because that is what we are giving to the nation. That is what we are giving to the publishing fraternity and that is going to be our legacy in the longer run. 

As far as the top management is concerned, we like to work as a team so would not want to pinpoint who does what, but it is a team of several talented individuals. The agency, of course, was go founded by my father, Mr Sanjeev Mathur, who’s also the editorial head and guides our team of 8 wonderful editors. With respect to cover designing and trailer creation, we have a team of around 15 artists who are working with us. So, it is a team brimming with talent and always ready to excel.

As far as genres are concerned, we work across genres and are open to all types of books, right from highly selling one’s like Non-Fiction, true crime and autobiographies to lesser selling ones like poetry and short story collections, and anything and everything that comes in between it – Fiction or Non-Fiction. Sure, the idea is to help promote new talent and that is why we are open to anything that we see potential in, and if the idea/concept/ storyline resonates with us, then we would be more than happy to collaborate and pitch it for a publishing contract.

What change would you like to see in the publishing industry in India and globally?

The acquisition of more fiction titles for sure. That would be something that I would love to see. I do understand that it’s a matter of commercials for publishers and non fiction is doing better than fiction. But I would want more and more fiction to gain preference as far as publishing houses are concern. And I also want readers to buy more Indian books. See, one cannot expect the publishing industry to make the change if their buyers, the clients, are not showing that faith in the work that these publishers bring out.

It is necessary and imperative that Indian readers show a lot of faith in Indian writing and buy books of Indian authors because I genuinely feel that our authors are in no way lesser than their international counterparts. So, my response is not so much on a global level but on an Indian one, and these are the changes that I would like to see here.

At Sharing Stories, we have an ongoing campaign ‘Let’s Empower Our Kids’. Please suggest some books that you think every child should read before the age of 15 (mostly the character-defining age), teaching them life lessons. Things like empathy, sympathy, relationships, etc.

Some of the books coming to my mind are Razia: The People’s Queen by Shahana Dasgupta. The Sword of Dara Shikoh by the late Subhadra Sengupta was wonderful too. While as a person, she sadly did not come across as sweet as her book’s characters to me, I would still not take anything away from her writing. May be people get forgetful in old age. God bless her soul.

Then there are the fantastic Ringo and the Yogi and The Good wizard, both by bestselling author Prasun Roy. Of course, no list can be complete without the mention of Mr Ruskin Bond. Leatherback And The Strange Place by Shubhra Shah is a great book for people for the kids of today. Last but not the least. The Mystery Of The Forbidden Fort by Maulshree Mahajan is also an excellent read and perfect for young adults, so that is another book that I would also like to mention here.

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