Future of fat books

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When Charles Dickens began his Tale of Two Cities with the lines, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” to portray France on the cusp of its historic revolution, little did he know that circa 2011, those very same

superlatives would be used to describe the uncertain future of his medium, the novel itself. The digital age is shrinking our attention spans, our minds, the time at our disposal. Will it shrink the Great Indian Novel as well?
Doom has been prophesised by voices as authoritative as Salman Rushdie and V.S. Naipaul. Rushdie’s latest bit of “writing” was in the form of a limerick on Kim Kardashian’s divorce, posted on the restricted-to-140-characters microblogging site, Twitter. Quite a shrinkage from his 500-page tomes Midnight’s Children and Satanic Verses.
India is witnessing a strange phenomenon. Whether it is Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis books or Amish Tripathi’s Meluha adventures, “fat books” (those over 500 pages) are finding takers. So much so, that it is the short story collections (with the exception of award-winning writers like Jhumpa Lahiri) that aren’t selling well. But for how long?

SIZE DOESN’T MATTER
Size doesn’t matter; it’s what you do with it that counts. “I have two books on my bedside table and they’re both over 900 pages long,” says David Davidar, author and publisher. “They’re the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 — both are bestsellers.” David is often asked if the cost of publishing a large novel, with its problems of portability, is a prohibitive factor. He muses, “Why does anyone choose a big book (to publish)? Excellence. If the book is good, then all those things — cost per unit etc — don’t matter.”

ALL ABOUT THE GENRE?
Social commentator and brand guru Santosh Desai believes that to say that a fat book won’t work is too categorical a statement. “Harry Potter is an example of a fat book that has worked. And it worked with a market (pre-teens and teens) where it shouldn’t have, if what is being said about attention spans etc is true.” The size of the book certainly hasn’t held back its sales in the fantasy genre. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy continues to sell (the LOTR books have between 1,008-1,600 pages), while a more recent example is Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.
Another genre that is benefiting regardless of the high page count is the thriller. Ashwin Sanghi’s The Rozabal Line and Chanakya’s Chant have been bestsellers despite their 500-plus pages. “When I was growing up, if one wanted to read a fast-paced thriller, one would turn to a Frederick Forsyth or a James Hadley Chase. But now you have books like the Meluha series, like Chanakya’s Chant,” he says.

HOW TECHNOLOGY WILL CHANGE THE GAME
The codex form of the book (pages bound together at one spine) replaced its predecessor, the scroll, so effectively that the modern-day book retains the same form nearly 1,500 years later. But it now seems that e-reader devices like the iPad and Kindle and availability of free e-books has changed the way books are published and consumed.
While many decry the harm the new technology will cause the profession of publishing, Sanghi believes it might have a positive impact as well: “When you walk into a store and pick up a book, its size and weight can create a doubt in your mind — ‘will I be able to finish this?’ But with an e-book, all you look at is the icon of the front cover, the back cover and then click on ‘download’. You don’t look at how many pages it has, so you don’t get intimidated. So I think technology will work in favour of fat books.”
It may work in favour of the books themselves, but for the publishing industry, the outcome may not be as positive. Davidar says, “Amazon has been a weird phenomenon… it has helped the cause of publishers, but ultimately, it is what will kill us too. It started as a retailer, then launched a library, wants to get into publishing…”

WILL CONSUMPTION OF FAT BOOKS CHANGE?
Even if technology doesn’t kill the fat book, will it change the way we access and read it? Certainly, you may not walk into a large store and pick up the latest bestseller. But neighbourhood bookstores may yet survive. “Where Amazon loses out is the lack of a human interface,” points out David. “So while large chain stores may struggle, smaller neighbourhood bookstores, that have a personal equation with customers, might do well. In the US, neighbourhood family-owned bookstores are making a comeback of sorts. The world of publishing, however, will be radically different in 5-10 years.”

WHAT LIES BENEATH?
Acclaimed journalist Sir Mark Tully feels the underlying question is whether people will continue to read at all. He says, “Socrates was against the idea of writing down things at all, because he felt it would end the dissemination of ideas through debate and discussion. But just as no media has ever died out yet, books — fat or otherwise — will not die out either. Debate and discussion have not died, rumour has not died. Print did not destroy rumour, radio did not destroy print and television has not destroyed radio. So long as people have some interest in a book and its author, they will buy it, regardless of its size.”