Seth and Banker: The fine print

Speaking Volumes

If there is no truth in advertising, there is even less in the hype over book advances. Vikram Seth picked up an advance of £ 1.3 million (roughly Rs 9.5 crore) this week for Two Lives "" the highest in memory for a literary memoir.

According to Mid-Day Mumbai, he's been outdone by Ashok Banker. A July 18 report by Mayank Shekhar says, "As the literary circuit pops champagne corks over author Vikram Seth's recently signed Rs 9.5-crore deal for his forthcoming novel, a lesser-known writer from Byculla is in the process of drawing a larger booty from his upcoming literary effort.

In what's likely to be one of the highest money-fetching book deals in the history of Indian literature, author Ashok K Banker's seven-part series on the Ramayana is expected to notch up contracts valued at 'over Rs 10 crore' with publishers worldwide."

I have no doubt that Shekhar genuinely believes his story is accurate "" it's not his intentions that are at fault, but his information. The confusion in the Mid-Day piece between a book deal and a book advance is echoed in the minds of most laypersons.

A royalty is a payment made to an author for each copy of his work sold; an advance is a payment made ahead of time on future royalties, on the presumption that the book in question will sell a certain number of copies. The book advance can be for world rights, or for specific territories (the UK, the US, India) dealt with as separate payments.

The book deal encompasses the total advances paid to the author, plus additional payments such as translation rights or film rights. So Arundhati Roy's £300,000 advance was merely an upfront payment on royalties subsequently earned by her book in a specific territory. The total book deal ""with translation rights, advances from other territories et al "" must have added up to considerably more.

Seth's a legend whose restless talent has taken him from rococo poetry to wry travelogue and calligraphically detailed fiction. He picked up a £ 200,000 book advance for A Suitable Boy, which earned its keep, and a £ 500,000 advance for the more disappointing An Equal Music from Orion.

He is not the first major-league author to shift publishers (from Orion to Little, Brown) for the sake of a bigger advance "" Martin Amis and Charles Frazier did that too "" nor will he be the last.

Two Lives, due out in 2005, is about Seth's great-uncle, who met Henny, a German Jewish woman, in Berlin during the War. They managed to escape to England, where Seth lived with them as a teenager.

A few years ago, rumours circulated that Ashok Banker was working on a modern retelling of The Ramayana. Banker is best-known for his columns, though he has authored several books previously "" thrillers, and what he billed as India's first Internet novel. An early rumour that Banker had picked up a six-figure sum for his new multi-volume was floated, hastily scotched, clarified and finally forgotten.

In a recent interview to The Week, Banker has clarified a few things: his Ramayana series is a seven-volume work, the advance from Little, Brown (yes, he and Seth have at least a publisher in common) is less than £ 20,000, but if you take other rights (everything from the US and the UK to Germany, Bulgaria and India), the deal adds up to a lot.

He told Shekhar: "Someone threw the rumoured figure of Rs 10 crore at me and all I have to say is that it could exceed that sum by the time the dust settles."

How much exactly Banker doesn't know "" and neither does the Indian media, really. Where did the Rs 10 crore figure come from? No one knows, really. Let's hope for the Byculla Boy's sake that it's true.

Even supposing that Banker earns Rs 10 crore off his book deal, does that mean he's done better than Seth? Scan the fine print again. Banker's book deal covers seven books. Seth's book advance pertains to just one book "" it's not split seven ways.

Then again, the media has focused on Banker's book deal in toto "" the total sum of advances paid in different territories for rights to publish his book, or at any rate, the estimated total.

Mid-Day quotes him as saying, "Unlike most Indian authors, my agents are negotiating each country's rights separately, not selling world rights to one publisher." Publishing sources confirm that this is true for most debut Indian authors, but say that more established authors usually negotiate territories separately.

Seth's book advance is for royalties the publishers expect to receive from the British and Commonwealth rights. Seth sold the Indian rights separately and will no doubt sell US, Canadian and other rights to other bidders "" so the total book deal is likely to work out to far more than just the basic advance!

It's a Rs 9.5 crore payment for one book's earnings in one territory as opposed to an unconfirmed Rs 10 crore payment for seven books' earnings across several territories "" with extras thrown in, since we're not counting translation rights for Seth, but we are for Banker.

What Seth has earned for the as-yet-unpublished Two Lives is the Eminence Grise advance, slightly corporatised. (This is, incidentally, completely different from what is dubbed the Boy B (and/or Spice Girl, depending on gender) Advance, handed out to some young debut author on the basis that if you make enough noise about the book "" think Zadie Smith, Hari Kunzru, Monica Ali "" so will the media. What Banker has is the Deal Hypothetical, being misrepresented by the media as the Advance Actual.

Death of a poet: Reetika Vazirani borrowed a Bible from her neighbours, met a priest and sent a final SMS to a friend. A few hours later, the bodies of Vazirani and her two-year-old son were found in a pool of blood. It appeared to be a murder-suicide.

She wrote once, "Poetry is where I go because it's too difficult for me to be without it when I look around and see domestic violence, environmental catastrophe, and the wild-dog commerce of the Dow Jones. Poetry is as close as I get to the concepts of yoga: awareness and breathing, clarity and release." It is cynically said that every writer who dies young was an unsung genius, but Vazirani's talents were neither overstated nor unsung.

Browsing, I came across these lines, from Three Poems: "I'll live to be eighty, I'll be ninety/ Like those would-be Braganzas in my line./ Shopkeepers, they pinned our names to a rented door/ and lasted a century each." Reetika Vazirani was just forty when she died.

nilroy@lycos.com