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The new rockstars

Photo: PTI

Sign on Author interactions attract a diverse crowd

Anyone walking by the Landmark bookstore recently would have been forgiven for expecting to catch a glimpse of one of the Khans of Bollywood.

The celebrity that over 1,500 people were spilling out of the bookstore, however, was author Jeffrey Archer. Archer observed on his blog that events such as this make even authors feel like film stars. The Archer event is proof of the growing bridge between writers and readers, and the emerging public face of the author.

Himanshu Chakravarti, Chief Operating Officer, Landmark says: “We are looking beyond selling, and are aiming at creating a community. The aim is to give readers and authors the opportunity to connect and build equations.”

Anjum Hasan, whose novel Lunatic In My Head recently hit the shelves, says: “It’s great that bookstores are looking to build readers. It is quite an enlightened, long-term view.”

The growing publicity for authors has become inevitable, thanks to the media and the Internet. Media space for the literary scene, the ‘lit beat’, has matured, points out book and film reviewer Jai Arjun Singh. “The ‘lit beat’ has become a rigorous beat.”

This growth, fuelled by the need to fill growing amounts of news space, has contributed to the higher profile that authors attract today. The growth on the Internet, he adds, has also helped demystify the author.

“Earlier writing was a much more niche activity, and writers were far more aloof. Today people are less intimidated by authors, and feel more able to engage with them.”

This increased accessibility has also changed the nature of the audience attending author interactions. There are still significant numbers of core fans and book lovers, such as radiologist and member of a local book club Shala Govil. For Shala, author interactions help complete the cycle by allowing the observer to engage with the creator. “For me, the author completes the experience. The book is as real as the author.”

However, book signings are just as often attended by casual readers such as corporate investment analyst Avinash Timothy, who attended the Jeffrey Archer book signing simply to put a face to a name whose works he had read for so many years. “When you get the chance to see someone you’ve heard so much about but never thought you could meet, you have no choice but to go — whether that person is a rock star or a writer of fairly standard thrillers.”

And there are even the occasional aspiring writers eager to glean what they can about the writing process. Thus, every event features at least a question or two about what advice the author has for writers-in-the-making.

Of course, the growing publicity is not without its pitfalls.

While most writers welcome the chance to publicise their work, the obligation to be a public person can sometimes be overwhelming, says Anjum. “I am speaking to the reader through my book, and beyond that, I shouldn’t be of interest to him or her.” “Engaging with readers requires completely different skills from those required for writing, and most writers now need both sets of skills. That can be quite a daunting demand.”

This sometimes creates a high profile for writers who are media savvy and possess celebrity potential, irrespective of the quality of their works, says Jai Arjun.

But, Anjum says that there is “always the danger of superficiality, especially when interactions are treated as an event, with a focus on the appearance of a product.” And so, “there is a need to find ways to deepen this process and treat it more creatively.”

RAKESH MEHAR

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