Literary Agent Suhail Mathur on Navigating the Publishing Industry
In this conversation, I would like to start off by asking you about your philosophy as a literary agent, both in terms of the authors you want to work with and the books that you would want to represent
The idea is to give authors a platform so that more and more voices, more and more writers in India, can get the opportunity to narrate or bring out the stories that they want the readers to read at large. We have been credited with bringing a lot of first time authors to the literary scene and we are immensely proud of it. And today we have the perfect amalgamation of best selling authors debuting writers, sportspersons, politicians, people from the entertainment industry
That's wonderful. So hill thank you so much for that. The book Bakers has 961 books to its credit, and I think that's a huge whopping number by industry standards. So of these several manuscripts that perhaps cross your desk every other day, how many do you actually end up representing? And also, what are the usual reasons that you generally turn down or take up certain manuscripts?
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Because at the end of the day, we also need to sell the book to a publisher. So usually if a book is over a lack of words, that's a danger mark and you would like to avoid that unless the author is willing to make changes or probably cut the book into two parts. Otherwise it becomes difficult because we would also like to add value, which we would not
And if the eventual customer and our eventual customer is the publisher, whereas the author's eventual customer is the reader, our eventual customer is not likely to take it up for those very reasons, because of it being a universal problem, then it becomes difficult. Another thing that can become difficult at times is if the book has all internationally sounding character names and the book is also set abroad. So either of the two things should be India centric
Thank you for that. Listening to you talk about how publishing really works is nothing short of being in a masterclass. So I really must thank you for sharing all these insights with us. Super helpful. Sohail so thank you so much. So let me ask you this, to keep your manuscript from not getting lost in the slush pile, do you think it helps first time authors to have a seasoned literary agent batting for them?
So what may happen is that sometimes even with seasoned authors, they may not be getting the right kind of publisher or they may not be getting the right kind of deal, or they may be at a situation where the publishers they knew have for some reason unfortunately not taken up the book. So what do they do in that case?
So we know the vibe, we know what will work. And that is why we are an asset to a publisher or sorry, to an author, and eventually to the publisher and the producer as well. But definitely for an author
Because an author is writing one book in a year, a publisher is bringing out four books every month. So there's only as much time that they can give to a particular book as far as marketing is concerned. So a publisher's marketing would be where they make a book available. Are they making it available on platforms like Amazon or Flipkart or the online portal scandal for that matter, certain stores?
Thank you so much for that deep dive. I have come across several of the books that you mentioned and I couldn't agree more with what you just said. Recently, I remember reading The Counterfeiture by Bhasvar Mukherjee and I was totally mind blown with the kind of research and the way the narrative was structured. I was totally lost. And I think I finish the book in a couple of settings. So I think I will leave you with one final question
So actually there are a lot of genres which are underrepresented. And when one says underrepresented, I think that's a slightly incorrect term. The appropriate term would be underpublished because what happens on a lot of occasions is that you do find books in certain genres, but when you see that the market is not responding to it, a lot of authors shy away from it. You know, we've been able to crack a very major genre, which is horror, till 2015, 2016
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 5:00
I think that in and of itself should earn them that spot. And also the fact that you mentioned regarding how the primary customer of the agent is the publisher, but the primary customer of the author is the reader. Right. So that makes this whole thing pretty balanced, this whole relationship between an agent and an author. I'll just quickly go through some of the things I'm remembering from the conversation because it was so good
Binati Sheth
@Binati_Sheth · 5:00
I remember the words of Anna Ventura, the goat, who says, creative and commercial can exist in the same universe. I think the same applies to the publishing industry. And in many ways, in big little ways, I'm glad that this transition has come in, because now everyone has a shot, right, with proper marketing. So thank you so much. And here's two more books
Sreeja V
@Wordsmith · 1:45
I had recently spoken to Shilpa Suraj and the conversation was around her latest book, Wrong, and I noticed there that she has thanked you in her book for having read this story and given her some feedback. So there are so many authors, I'm sure, who out there will be grateful to you for having been that bridge, right, to help them sort of achieve their dream of getting into writing
And another point I really agree with is that the publisher, the best publisher is not the best necessarily the best name in the market. It's almost like I remember when I was in school and I used to be like, this teacher is really good, but the other people liked some other teachers, and it's all about how they feel like to you or how you understand them. It's not really about the teacher, about the mentor