Michael Fishwick of Bloomsbury has done a la David Davidar. The publisher and cheque-writer has turned a fairly successful novelist. When I read about him here, I got reminded of David Davidar. Davidar was the CEO of Penguin Books India when he sent off his novel, The House of Blue Mangoes, to the most famous lit agent in London, of course under a different name. Fishwick did the same thing, and you know, he sent his ms to the same agent! Pure coincidence! Looks like Atundhati Roy's agent is the publisher's favourite too.
In the same interview, we get to know that Dalrymple has signed a huge deal with Bloomsbury that has caused some controversy in the publishing industry:
"But he stiffens at mention of the Dalrymple deal. "It wasn't wildly more than he was being paid at HarperCollins," he says sniffily. The reports ignored the small print, he adds. The £2m is for five books. "His last book sold 50,000 in hardback and will have sold 200,000 in paperback. All William's books sell 5,000 or 6,000 copies a year and have done since I first published him in 1987. So, in terms of where you are going to put your money, it is as safe a bet as you can think of."
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." ― V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
No comments:
Post a Comment