An elevator pitch of your unpublished book at a literature festival? Why not, if said literature festival is in Bangalore, the city considered to be the country's startup capital. The third edition of Bangalore Literature Festival, to be held on September 26, 27 and 28, will thus host "LitMart", a platform where unpublished writers get to pitch their work to a panel of editors of reputed publishing houses, literary agents and consultants, just like any startup entrepreneur would to a panel of venture capitalists. "We were getting a lot of inquiries from fledgling writers and there is definitely a lot of aspiration to get published, even in these days of self-publishing. Since we have all the stakeholders here, we thought why not make it a forum," says Vikram Sampath, co-founder of Bangalore Literature Festival. The inspiration, he says, also came from the Cannes Film Festival which has a similar platform for filmmakers.
Having the partner of a seed fund as a co-founder of the festival also helped. "We wondered how we could create a platform for authors to get "seed funding", in a manner of speaking," says Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, partner at Unitus, which invests in social enterprises. While similar forums exist in festivals abroad, this is the first of its kind at a literary conclave in India. "We hope this will help find the next gem," says Ramamoorthy.
The format is simple enough. Writers had to submit a 250-word proposal with the idea and/or a plot summary as well as a 250-word excerpt from the manuscript by this weekend. The jury will shortlist 25 entries from this, and another 10 will be put on a "wait list". The shortlisted writers would then have to "pitch" their scripts in any form they would like (storytelling, video or other ways). "But in classic elevator pitch style, this has to be done within three minutes," says Ramamoorthy. If that sounds too restricting, Sampath turns to the quote by Michael Korda of Simon & Schuster that's displayed on the festival website: "If you can't describe a book in one or two pithy sentences that would make you or your mother want to read it, then of course you can't sell it." Shinie Antony, writer and the third co-founder of the festival, said she hopes LitMart will become the "shaadi.com of publishing." This year, manuscript submission has been restricted to English.
Unlike other literary festivals, the Bangalore Literature Festival is also "crowdfunded", after a fashion. As former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai pointed out at the launch, the funds came not from any corporate, but from well-wishers, under the umbrella of "Friends of BLF". "A very big chunk of the funding came from 50-60 individuals in the city. This also means that we did not have to sell our souls to corporates," Pai had remarked. "People contributed Rs 1-5 lakh. This helps the festival not to be agenda-driven, which I think is very relevant," Ramamoorthy adds.
This year's edition will be bigger, with nearly 150 authors, both well-known and others, in English and regional languages. With the motif being to "look east", there is a sizable contingent from the North-East, who will not only talk about literature but also social, political and cultural issues. There will also be sessions where aboriginal writers from Australia discussing issues of marginalisation with Dalit writers and poets in India. Literary luminaries from India include Ramachandra Guha, Nayantara Sahgal and Chandrashekhara Kambara. Also attending will be K. Natwar Singh, Arun Shourie, Chetan Bhagat, Vinod Rai, Shobhaa De and Sam Miller, among others. Talks are on to live-stream the sessions.
The 2014 festival, say the organisers, is dedicated to literary giant UR Ananthamurthy, who passed away last month, and one of the sessions will comprise tributes to him from writers who were friends and admirers of the late Jnanpith awardee. There will also be documentary screenings at the venue, another first for BLF.
Even though the festival is now in its third consecutive year, and growing bigger with each edition, Sampath says it still feels like a startup. HIs co-founders agree. "I think we survive on love and fresh air," laughs Ramamoorthy.
The full schedule is available at http://bangaloreliteraturefestival.org
