Kishore Singh: Copy rights and wrongs

PEOPLE LIKE US

Life, any way you look at it, is unfair for some, and pretty darn good for others. "The muck," says my wife sagely, "is always this side of the fence." "But money," I tell her, "finds pickings on trees the other side of the fence."

The reason we're deconstructing proverbs is the envy-gnashing rumour that Sanjeev Saith, low-profile publisher of Messrs Arundhati Roy & Co (also known till recently as IndiaInk, and hereafter as the lucky bloke who got a hefty advance for hawking his author's published works to Roli Books) has managed to get himself Rs 50 lakh in the bank, and a permanent job in the bargain.

Saith is widely acknowledged as the flute-playing, Himalayas-photographing chappie who turned reluctant publisher with good pal Tarun Tejpal of the Tehelka blunderbuss.

The duo set up their publishing house with the silver-spooned success of Arundhati Roy's bestseller that came their way by happenstance, and left them flush for no reason other than friendship. A few others "" I Allan Sealy, Manju Kapoor "" stopped by as authors, but even before they could finish counting the green bucks, Tejpal upped and quit to launch his eponymous website, leaving Seth laughing some more on the way to the bank.

Now, the further adventures of the bloke etc: Saith refused, according to hearsay, photography commissions from Roli's Pramod Kapoor in the past on account of a disagreement on prices, but sold IndiaInk to him in India's first ego merger, while remaining editor for the publishing house within a publishing house.

Happy times for Seth, but what of Kapoor, widely known as publisher most likely to pay you in generous ounces of the finest Scotch than in the sliding rupee? "Has he always had that kind of money?" query former Roli authors who complain of being Scotch and soda-ed into signing chicken-feed contracts on the premise there's no money in publishing, despite newsbytes of author advances to the contrary.

"Maybe he'll up his prices if we say we're publishers, not writers," says a wide-eyed author whose first manuscript was bought by Roli for the princely sum of Rs 4,000, and continues to be re-issued a score years later with no material benefits to its originator.

"Maybe," adds another hopefully, "Saith will pinch us as authors from Roli, and share some of his loot." "Or," adds the cynic in the group, drinking wine at the party Roli has organised to mark the event, "maybe Saith will also start paying in Scotch, now that he's a Roli partner publisher."

At the party at Olive, unused to being mobbed, Saith is knee-deep in ardent writers who're "just finishing a book you must look at". Kapoor, who has to his credit the most glamorous book launches in the industry, is on the lookout for new talent rather than his own, jaded stable of coffee-table book writers, so say frustrated fictionists making discreet enquiries about vanity publishing just so they can see their name on a book jacket.

But Kapoor says he hasn't paid Saith the kind of money being talked about: "where's the money in publishing"? Yes, right. (At this point another wannabe author, six glasses of wine down, says it's entirely feasible he took money from Saith to be part of his lexicon of quick-fix marketing that's got greater currency than authors-that-matter, but that can be put down to a case of sour grapes. Or bad wine "" take your pick.)

As it happens, I do have a potential book up my sleeve, and so if the bloke-who-bought-from-the bloke-who-sold won't buy it, I can always offer it to the bloke-who-sold-to-the-bloke-who-paid-him-Rs 50-lakh, for a couple of pegs more. Watch this space for details.