Buy me before good sense insists/ You'll strain your purse and sprain your wrists," Vikram Seth wrote in his Word of Thanks to the reader, when A Suitable Boy came out 20 years ago. In 2009, when he and his publishers sealed the deal for the "jump-sequel", A Suitable Girl, good sense insisted that £1.7 million was a fair price. There was, at that time, no evidence of strained purses at Penguin imprint Hamish Hamilton. His previous advances-an estimated £1.4 million for Two Lives, for instance-had pointed the way for the 2009 deal.
Then the news became public this week that the newly formed Penguin Random House was negotiating with Vikram Seth and his agent, David Godwin, asking for the writer to return the advance, as he had overshot his June 2013 manuscript delivery deadline. Since this is one of the first public actions taken by Penguin Random House, the product of one of the largest mergers in recent publishing history, Seth's fate has implications for authors, and lessons for a swiftly churning industry.
Seth's growth as a writer has been steady, from the time when he'd taken longer and longer breaks from his (uncompleted) Economics PhD to write the early poems and books. If there was little in the way of advances - the sums publishers pay to an author as "advance royalties", anticipating sales of the book - for his first few works, that was a reflection of the times. The Golden Gate, for instance, was published for a then-typically low advance, selling at Rs 55 in 1986.
Seven years later, the 1993 advance for A Suitable Boy seemed staggering - £250,000, which Seth said would keep his father in whiskey for life. He had written the 1,349-page novel over eight years, but that long gestation period was not considered abnormal at the time.
As legendary science fiction writer William Gibson tweeted this week, some authors need: "A certain kind of writing day, like wandering an unfinished structure when the workers are away. Noting plumbing installed. Making lists. These are rare, crucial, however seemingly unproductive."
Seth took a lot of those "seemingly unproductive" days to write the tale of Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra and the India of the 1950s. His editor, David Davidar, was said to have coaxed the book out of the author, with Seth moving into Davidar's spare bedroom at one stage.
Seth gives his publishers fair warning of what to expect. Amit Chaudhuri, the fictional writer in A Suitable Boy, says: "I've always felt that the performance of a raag resembles the kind of novel I'm attempting to write …first you take one note and explore it for a while, then another to discover its possibilities…and then the more brilliant improvisations and diversions begin…and finally it all speeds up, and the excitement increases to a climax."
Some UK editors have suggested that Penguin Random House could have let the 20th anniversary of A Suitable Boy pass. Instead, they might have prepared for a 25th anniversary celebration of A Suitable Boy and tied A Suitable Girl in with that date instead. In old-school publishing, a delay of a few months - or even a few years - is not unusual: it was understood that the writer's muse was not a signatory to the agreement. Good publishers waited; great publishers knew when to nudge the muse along and when to let their authors get on with it.
But for a certain kind of writer, the norms of traditional publishing may no longer apply. When the Penguin Random House merger was announced last year, several publishing insiders speculated about big changes, possible layoffs and cost-cutting measures. The merger comes at a time when online retailer Amazon.com dominates the English-language market, wielding more clout than the Big Six (now the Big Five) publishing houses combined. The bestseller lists in both the US and the UK for the last decade have changed - instead of the easy and lazy division between "commercial" and "literary" writers, the lists indicate layered complexity.
The last 10 to 15 years have seen the rise of the genre bestseller (Stieg Larsson, J K Rowling, Suzanne Collins), as well as the traditional pulp fiction bestseller (Stephen King, Dan Brown). There's room for a certain kind of intelligent, astute mass-market writer - Jeff Kinney, Elizabeth Gilbert - along with the occasional self-published success (Fifty Shades of Grey). The traditional publishing world has changed beyond recognition: some predict a massive gap between large conglomerates and "indies" (small, independent publishing houses), with virtually no mid-size firms left once the dust's settled.
When you have at least three groups of professionals - not counting India's potboiler-specialists - who are trained to deliver on time, expect the traditionally-built creative writer to be increasingly beleagured. The attempt by Penguin Random House to recover advances from writers who've overshot their deadlines makes accounting sense, given the sheer number of undelivered manuscripts that such a large corporate entity usually carries.
It does, however, set new rules for those authors whose creative instincts are not deadline-friendly. Would A Suitable Boy have been as great a book if Seth had taken only three years over the writing? It's a tempting, but unanswerable, question.
The final outcome of the negotiations could affect both A Suitable Boy and A Suitable Girl (Penguin Random House owns rights to both). But Seth has some consolation - his legions of fans will wait for as long as it takes. And he had, as far back as The Golden Gate, a healthy understanding of the vagaries of publishing:
"An editor at a plush party·
(Well-wined, provisioned, speechy, hearty)·
Hosted by (long live!) Thomas Cook·
Where my Tibetan
travel book·
Was honored - seized my arm: "Dear fellow,·
What's your next work?" "A novel…" "Great!·
We hope that you, dear
Mr Seth - "·
"In verse", I added. He turned yellow.·
"How marvelously quaint," he said,·
And subsequently cut
me dead."
(Disclosure: Nilanjana S Roy's The Wildings is published by Aleph Book Co, and is due out from Random House, Canada, in 2014; her agent is David Godwin. This column represents her personal opinion.)
