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<h1 class="centre">Since its arrival, Arundhati Roy’s first memoir—Mother Mary Comes to Me—has emerged as a cultural phenom. Earlier this year, Banu Mushtaq and Deepa Bhashti brought home the International Booker Prize; it would seem that the Indian literary world is having a moment of triumph. Yet, beyond these spectacle events, a quieter, more complicated reality unfolds. Writers and publishing insiders tell a wholly different story—of an industry stuck in crisis, unable to accommodate a wider set of voices.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Unmana, who published her first novel Chikamma Tours Pvt. Ltd, a charming queer biblio mystery, in 2024, believes that there is “a severe lack of diversity” in English language fiction. “I wrote my book primarily as a response to the lack of queer characters in most fiction,” she says.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">For the past month, as Roy’s memoir hijacked the internet, Yogesh Maitreya, the founder of Panthers Paw, a Nagpur based anti-caste publisher, has been persistently crowdfunding via social media to keep his publishing house going. After nearly a decade of being a publisher, he’s currently raising money to continue functioning for the next five years and to rebuild the Library of Emancipation. With only 22% of the total amount achieved in more than a month, Maitreya is still steadfast in continuing the fundraiser.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Publishing is, by all measures, a difficult business. A Times of India report suggests that India ranks tenth in global publishing, with 90,000 titles a year. Still, there is a dearth of data on how much money mainstream publishers actually make through book sales. As I speak to industry insiders, they reveal a precarious picture.</h1>

<h1 class="left">An ex-employee of one of the Big 5 publishing houses tells me that mainstream presses are struggling financially. The big names are barely making profits on front-list titles; they have to fall back on their backlists. The demand has gone down, and to ensure better margins, publishers have been increasing book prices—which isn’t helping. “It’s a vicious cycle. We used to have these annual performance meetings to see how we were doing as compared to other publishers,” she recalls, “but I don’t know where the external data came from.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">Nobody on the inside seems to deny the financial doom. “90% of all books published make a loss,” says Subha Prasad Sanyal, a translator published by Seagull Books. “It is primarily a loss-making venture. If a publishing business is ever profitable, the rest of the 10% of its catalogue is only bestsellers, which essentially subsidises the 90%.” Most big publishers function by this formula.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">For an independent publisher, this gamble is riskier. They are born with the desire to counter homogeneity: they are less likely to produce—or be interested in producing—a bestseller. Maitreya says: “I have stories of me and my community to offer to the world. The world can buy these books, and this revenue helps me survive; it is as simple as that. I do not publish because something is in demand.”</h1>

<h1 class="centre">For an indie press to succeed or even stay afloat in this economy is extremely tough. “Unless,” Sanyal adds, “they have clout, and are also embedded within the network.”</h1>
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<h1 class="right">Several indie publishers have and continue to collaborate with mainstream presses. Both Yoda Press and Zubaan Books have tie-ups with Simon and Schuster and Penguin respectively. On the one hand, it is true that larger distribution networks are essential for stories from a smaller press. But these partnerships do hint at a kind of commercialisation.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Beyond finance and scale, however, there is also an invisible architecture of access, which operates as its own form of capital.</h1>

<h1 class="right">In 2016, when Maitreya founded Panther’s Paw, he was setting out to create spaces for himself and others that simply did not exist in publishing. “Even a cursory glance at caste-presentation in English publishing in India shows that it is dominated by brahmins and other oppressor castes,” Maitreya says. The result is an industry steeped in a Savarna gaze, where Dalit and marginalized-caste narratives remain confined mostly to translations from regional language literature—if they appear at all. The room for these voices is nearly non-existent, not only in publishing offices, but, as Maitreya argues, in the very “literary imagination” the industry cultivates.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Maitreya asserts that there is a caste hegemony within indie publishing, too. “Indie publishers with caste-capital have access to distribution, bookstores and festivals, so their books manage to get around.”</h1>

<h1 class="centre">This access to distribution channels, contacts and the ability to promote one’s work is crucial—it determines the success of a book or a publisher. It also raises a deeper, more uneasy question about the very meaning of independence, in a literary landscape still firmly shaped by social hierarchies.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">The easiest way to get a book deal, Sanyal says, is “to know someone who works in publishing—an editor who will vouch for your manuscript.” For someone without social capital or connections to land a book deal is a rare occurrence. “This internal network of vouching does become the way to get manuscripts that are half-decent.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sanyal himself got his break as a translator by winning the Harvill-Secker Young Translator's Prize hosted by Penguin. This plugged him into the publishing network, “But this is a break afforded to only one person every year.” There is also a huge class barrier to who can afford to write, publish or translate, as is evident from the kind of contracts that an author ends up signing with publishers.</h1>

<h1 class="left">In 2023 Maitreya published his memoir, Water in a Broken Pot, with Penguin India. “When the then-editor at Penguin commissioned the book, I was so happy. I thought they really understood the story I had to tell to the world.” He was offered a lakh to write the book, and royalties of which he received about Rs 28,000 just once. “It was Covid times, I had to survive. I needed money,” he says. But once the book came out, most of the money was spent on travelling and promoting the book. He adds, “I never found this book at the airport as I was told. I think readers can imagine how my experience has been.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">Sanyal says, “By definition, someone who does this work needs a degree of expendable free time in which they can write or translate as a hobby.” This sort of system essentially restricts an entire class of people from pursuing writing, since publishers aren't able to offer a reliable source of income.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Unmana too echoes this sentiment, “I know very few writers, including writers who’ve written multiple books, who don’t have a day job. First-time authors, unless they’re celebrities or have large follower counts, get very little money.”</h1>

<h1 class="right">Since pre-bookings opened, Roy’s memoir has been extensively reviewed, with Roy herself giving interviews to the Indian and international press, including The New York Times. The publisher ran a massive pre-order campaign where readers could get signed copies of the book with a tote bag and a bookmark.</h1>

<h1 class="right">For a first-time author, being read requires them to be seen first, which can be challenging. Unmana recounts that her publisher, Westland, did put together a marketing campaign for her, which was quite fruitful. But this is not always the case, she adds, “I’ve also heard from authors who’ve done a majority of the promotion themselves, including organising launch events.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">It is rare for big publishers to shell out money for the marketing of a book unless, of course, it is a highly anticipated celebrity event like Roy’s. In many ways, the nature of her literary stardom is telling about recognition and its unspoken but inescapable politics.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Roy’s popularity becomes interesting, particularly, in the context of her activism. For many years now, she has been a voice known to speak truth to power. She comes attached with a certain kind of politics—as a constant critic of the incumbent right-wing government, she has been hounded by the Indian state. Last month, her collection of essays, Azadi—also published by Penguin—was banned by authorities in Jammu and Kashmir for spreading “false narrative and secessionism” in the conflict-ridden region.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">However, in an op-ed for Middle East Monitor, Ismail Salahuddin considers what it means for Roy, who has strongly advocated against Zionism, to publish with a corporation that has invested in Israeli tech companies that aid the genocide in Gaza. Roy herself has called out Penguin in the past for its choices in publishing, yet her relationship with the publisher has remained intact.</h1>
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<h1 class="lcentre">Moreover, even as Penguin dolls out a prestigious launch for Mother Mary Comes to Me, its machinery has also been diligently promoting Operation Sindhoor by Lt Gen KJS 'Tiny' Dhillon—supposedly an “untold story” of India’s “definitive” military response to Pakistan. A bookseller from Bangalore tells me that their sales team has been sent a barrage of emails during the launch to all retailers and the press about this book and its launch. “They also held an exclusive session for booksellers as part of the marketing stint for the book,” she says.</h1>
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<h1 class="left">This parallel promotion of military nationalism betrays a political convenience—a willingness to platform contradicting ideologies. This duality is a reminder that recognition in itself is deeply political. The question, therefore, remains: Who gets to be seen and read? And more importantly, who is truly allowed to perform their politics and identities publicly, without losing access?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Unmana thinks that things are changing slowly. “But,” she adds, “we need material support for marginalised writers, especially as they write their first books. Speaking from experience, it is very hard to finish a novel if you have to also work a full-time job.” Maitreya explains, “You see the same set of people or publishers getting visibility repeatedly. It is like a caste-network. Some writers from marginalised communities appear, every time in a new, tokenised way. They are replaced by others the following year.”</h1>

<h1 class="left">The repetition is not accidental; it is systemic. Dissent, within this ecosystem, is increasingly curated, packaged and aired depending on its marketability—determined by the sensibilities of the urban elite. Publishing still remains a clique, and the real story is not who’s on the cover, but the rank outsider, waiting with manuscript in hand, for the doors to open.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Irrespective of the outward projection, the system operates on an ancient currency—whom you know, and more importantly, who knows you.</h1>

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