These bestselling writers would never get invited to a litfest

Academic writers are seldom feted yet their books sell in lakhs. Sunday Times meets some unknown stars of Indian publishing

At book fairs, Lakhmir Singh isn’t mobbed by fans like Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi are. He has never been interviewed by the media and never held court at a literary festival. But writers of popular fiction would perhaps trade their non-writing arm for the kind of book sales Singh garners. If you are, or were, one of those high school students who subsisted on study guides, it was probably Lakhmir Singh who saved you from the sinkholes of science. His books on chemistry, physics and biology have been recommended as supplementary study material for over three decades across India, notching book sales of around three lakh copies a year. Even fiction’s favoured few would be hard-pressed to meet that figure.

According to the Nielsen India Book Market Report 2015, academic publishing – constituting around 8,000 publishers – corners 93% of the Rs 260 billion publishing market in India; trade (to which litfest delegates typically belong) takes the rest. The report goes on to say the K-12 publishing segment has been growing at CAGR 19.6% and higher education at 20.7%. Compare this to trade which is growing at 8.5%.

Behind these vertiginous figures are authors next door — doctors, teachers, accountants, lawyers who are courted by publishers for their domain knowledge. Their books sell in lakhs, and are priced between Rs 300 and Rs 1,000.

With 10-15% royalties accruing to them, they often earn in crores, but you wouldn’t recognize an academic bestseller if he chucked his book at you. “I keep a low profile,” admits Dr KD Tripathi, “No Twitter, no Facebook, nothing.” His Essentials of Medical Pharmacology is standard reading for second-year students of MBBS, who call it their Bible. The book, now in its seventh edition, sells around 1,00,000 copies a year (Rs 995 a copy) to students, doctors, chemists, and others associated with the subject, says his publisher Jaypee Brothers. “I was a professor at Delhi’s Maulana Azad Medical College when Jitendar Vij, MD of Jaypee, approached me to write a guide to pharmacology that was contextual to India,” recounts 74-year-old Tripathi.

Lakhmir Singh says he was inspired to write chemistry reference books in 1980. “I realized that Class 9 and 10 students who couldn’t afford private tutors would probably fare poorly in exams as textbooks weren’t self-explanatory,” Singh, 68, recalls. A chemistry lecturer at Delhi University’s Dyal Singh College at the time, he emulated the fluid narrative style of foreign academic writers whose books he encountered at book fairs in Delhi.

Singh wrote a few chapters for Class 9 chemistry and took the manuscript to six academic publishers in Delhi, five of whom recommended he partner with a known writer, because known names sell books, more so in the academic market.

Publisher S Chand, however, gambled on Singh and ordered an initial print run of 2,200. But back then it was hard for a new writer to break through the close ranks of incumbents who, through merit or kickbacks, had insinuated themselves into the school supplementary reading list. In a smart marketing move, Singh bought 500 copies of his own title, and with wife Manjit Kaur who had helped write the book, carted them on his scooter to Delhi’s schools to convince faculty and students of its merits. Today, Singh, who completed his primary education in a Patiala village, has a science series to his name.

“It’s hard getting good writers today; young academics would rather get into the tutorial business,” admits Himanshu Gupta, Joint MD at S Chand, whose grandfather established the company in 1937. His authors typically take a year or two to complete a text. Editions are updated every two or three years, but when a curriculum is about to be majorly revised, it’s back to the drawing board for authors.

In the embryonic years of Independent India’s education system, writers and publishers sought to simplify the language of textbooks, contextualize instruction, and offer students alternatives to foreign authors. It’s what got Avtar Singh started in his five-decade career writing law manuals. His seminal textbook Company Law, in its 16th edition, celebrates its golden jubilee this year. It was priced at Rs 12.50, then, and Rs 550 now. “I was a lecturer of law at Lucknow University since 1957, and my students often complained that their textbooks — authored mostly by foreigners — were expensive. They wished my notes were available to them as texts. That inspired me,” says the 84-year-old Singh, who went on to write 35 primers on all forms of law. His books are widely read by students of law, accountancy, taxation and business. Fifteen of his titles have been translated into Hindi by his publisher, the Lucknow-based Eastern Book Company.

Singh spent two years, 14 hours a day, writing his first book by hand. “I don’t have recognition, but good writing is a reward in itself,” he states.

Interestingly, both distributors and law students, when asked to name a leading Indian writer of law, name Singh. In fact, students often drop by his place in Ghaziabad on an academic pilgrimage. Tellingly, when asked how he started writing textbooks, Singh replies: “With a pen!”