Film stars now delivering hits at bookshops too

He has trumped Bollywood repeatedly at the box office. Now, Rajnikanth, the south Indian superstar with the slick moves, can claim victory even at the bookstore.

A biography released earlier this month, The Name is Rajnikanth, sold more than 20,000 copies in the first week, making it among the top-selling non-fiction books in the Indian entertainment industry. It also leaves Shah Rukh Khan, and last summer’s much-hyped biography on him, in the shade. Still, Anupama Chopra’s King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema, sold a respectable 6,000 copies in its first week and 22,000 copies since it was published in August.

Written by Gayathri Srikanth, an ophthalmologist from Chennai, The Name is Rajnikanth reflects a nascent boom in publishing books about film, as growing global interest in Indian cinema and the rise of the multiplex fuel a demand for in-depth information on celebrities. The business of non-fiction entertainment publishing, in English, is now estimated to be worth about Rs10 crore in India, with the entire non-fiction publishing market tipped at 25 or 30 times that, according to Penguin India.

Om Books, which published The Name is Rajnikanth and distributed King of Bollywood in Indiaâ€"it is published internationally by Wa-rner Booksâ€" is expecting one-third of its total turnover this year to come from the non-fiction entertainment sector.

Box office to books: Copies of the biographies of Shah Rukh Khan and Rajnikanth on display at a bookshop in Mumbai. (Abhijit Bhatlekar / Mint)

And the printing house has 10 more titles scheduled for publication in 2008, up from three last year and two in 2006, the first year in which it began experimenting with such books. Titles in the pipeline for this year include Shah Rukh Can, another biography of the actor, by Mushtaq Sheikh, as well as two biographies of Amitabh Bachchan, the first titled The Small World of Big B by Rauf Ahmed due in May, and the other, The Bachchans, by S.M.M. Ausaga. Om Books wants to release the latter on the actor’s birthday, 11 October. There are also plans for a hardcover book on film posters, also by Ausaga, titled Bollywood: Poster by Poster.

“Audiences used to be shady and cinema halls decrepit,” says Ajay Mago, publisher at Om Books, which agreed to publish The Name is Rajnikanth after just one look. “With the rise of multiplexes, more people go to the movies, and in order to buy books about the movies, you have to go to the movies. People now have the information they need to want to buy a book.”

 

p://www.livemint.com/2008/03/29010245/Publishing-phenomenon-film-st.html

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