[KatG]

Samit, I'm still getting rather confused on titles, especially as some of the work you all are doing is based on Indian myths as well. When you get a chance, could you put up a thread here with the title of your book (or titles) and some info about it? Your work might not be readily available for awhile where I'm at, but I'd like to have the info for my list. Thanks!

[manticore]

Sorry I’ve been away so long, and great to see so much has happened. Will just take this up where it is now…

KatG: The sf/f genre publishers in the U.S. don't necessarily have an interest in foreign fantasy that has no clear appeal to the genres' core fan audience.

As I have found out, alas. But don’t you think there are enough people now who’ve overcome their hang-ups about genre fiction to actually try speculative fiction from elsewhere? I know my work would never sell enough in the US to compete with the really big boys, but I do know a number of Americans who’ve read my work and claimed to have liked it. Of course, I have to say they were saying that to ME…

We have no literary magazine culture here, alas. While there are many, many people who read books in English, they usually, and logically, choose to spend their money on world lit, not Indian lit. Which makes sense because most of Indian literature in English is addressed to the reader, and the marketplace, outside the country.

KatG: If Indian writers' work is exported to the U.S. and reprinted by sf/f genre publishers, then India will be seen as having a genre market and that may result in a small group of genre publishers in India too.

Highly unlikely, alas. Small publishers in India have it really tough, and simply don’t have the resources to try anything like genre. Or so they say. The market in Indian writing in English exists overseas – in India, writers like me are just fighting for scraps. And if you’re a writer in India, it just makes infinitely more sense to try your hand at mainstream writing if you’re looking to make anything approaching a living from it

And Prohasta, I do NOT write fan fic !!

[KatG]

I was away too, so it's fine. :)


KatG: The sf/f genre publishers in the U.S. don't necessarily have an interest in foreign fantasy that has no clear appeal to the genres' core fan audience.

Not necessarily, but not necessarily always opposed to it. Publishers are cautious creatures, like woodland deer, but if one woodland deer takes a chance and doesn't get shot, the rest will usually come out into the meadow. It used to be that there wasn't much interest in any type of foreign fiction -- now foreign writers are a major force in western contemporary fiction and frequently bestsellers, especially if they win major book awards -- book awards that nobody used to pay any attention to at all, but in the last twenty years have been used in marketing like baseball stats. It also used to be, when I started out in publishing, that publishers preferred thrillers with an American lead or main character (or at the least, a Brit,) but titles like "Smilla's Sense of Snow" and other foreign mystery writers, plus the Brits of course, changed that radically.

Yes, I do think there's interest in the genres fan audiences to bring in foreign writers. And I'm not the only one, obviously. Because Betsy Mitchell didn't buy Banker out of the goodness of her heart. She did it, with a crossover plan, because she thought there was potentially a lot of interest. And if she thinks that, chances are other editors and publishers are considering it too. They've already had great success with Australian fantasy authors -- they'll try to replicate that, especially if they feel the American writers are stagnating. That non-genre Indian fantasy does very well in the mainstream offers an attraction. And the promotion of Nalo Hopkinson, Octavia Butler, and some other sf writers means publishers are trying to get some multicultural juice going in sf.

That you don't have even a small genre market in India is probably one of the problems, though, in getting you exported. If Penguin India has the foreign rights, I would suggest trying to talk them into doing a British publication through Penguin, where there is a decent Indian market. That might eventually lead to States interest or Penguin could export to the States. If you own the rights, you could try to market to Britain, or to small U.S. presses that are doing interesting things like Gary's Windstorm or Prime Press. You could also, depending on your work, go outside the genres and try to publish in Britain or the States as non-genre sf -- general fiction. I don't have any clear solutions for you, but it's worth looking into. If you can coax that deer into the meadow....

But I'd still like to know the exact title and more about the story. :)

[manticore]

news:

The Simoqin Prophecies and its sequel, The Manticore's Secret, have been picked up by Piper publishers, Germany. They'll publish a German translation, which means Id better brush up on my basic German.

As for The Simoqin Prophecies,
Here is the blurb (http://penguinbooksindia.com/Books/BookDetail.asp?ID=5501).
And here are some of the nicer (http://www.indianexpress.com/print.php?content_id=39625) reviews (http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20040126&fname=Books&sid=1).

[KatG]

Aha, so it's fantasy, not sf. And now I have the titles, so maybe later on, as the foreign territories get sold, I'll be able to get it.

Now was that so hard? I swear, getting all of our official authors to be clear about their works, even on their own websites, is sometimes like pulling teeth. :)

It's interesting to see how you seem to be building on cultural myth, as Banker does in his "Prince." Which province of India's mythology did you most draw from?

[manticore]

sorry for being so sporadic...fully deserve the reproach from you and the snide comments from Ashok, but am just very internet-deprived at the moment.

The Indian myths Ive used are mostly out of our two major epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and a few tales out of Bengali folk tradition.

[Nimea]

news:

The Simoqin Prophecies and its sequel, The Manticore's Secret, have been picked up by Piper publishers, Germany. They'll publish a German translation, which means Id better brush up on my basic German.


Uh, nice! Piper is really doing good things with fantasy, picking up a lot of interesting stuff. :)
But, I somehow doubt I will wait for the German translation . . . :D

[Muaddib]

Did you know that in the Dune series, the Prana -Bindu excercises literally translate to, Part of Life, in Hindi.

[menaka]

Prana bindu translates to Point of Life