http://www.hindustantimes.com/Chetan-gets-pricey/H1-Article1-513664.aspx

Chetan_Bhagat_Anusha_2_States_thumb[2]Bhagat was in news lately and again for the wrong reasons ( or maybe the right reasons according to his publisher). He demanded 5 lakhs to endorse twitter tweets for some lakme or wills fashion week. Why not – I have quit my job – my books are cheap, why shouldn’t  I ( said Chetan). Jesus – he could not even come up with proper choice of words to put forward his point, that if ShahRukh Khan can demand 5 crores to endorse a 5 day event, he can ask atleast 5 lakhs. He should have said some thing, nothing, any thing better than – my books are cheap. So how come someone so awful is so successful.

There must be something good about his books that make them sell so much. What exactly is that something and who would know what that is. People who try and decipher this something for a living are the publishers and the editors. But if you look at their record, you would realize that they are god damn awful at predicting a writer’s commercial success. You would have heard the story that J K Rowling was rejected by ten publishers and Stephen King by twelve. Does that suggest that there is no such “quality”. Had it been there, publishers would have been better at picking authors.

But then Chetan Bhagat has made enough money to retire ( let’s face it – he is retired for all pratical purposes – working writer?! -give me a break !!!) while my fellow Mandevian, Sachin Garg is still a corporate stooge after writing Sunny Shady Life. Is there really any difference in literary merit in Five Point Someone and Sunny Shady Life. It cannot be economics since both were priced at Rs 95/-.

Let us for argument sake suppose that both Sachin and Chetan had released their books at the same time. Both get the same response from the critics ( both are bashed unanimously) but Chetans book is picked by twice as many people in most book stores as Sachin ( it is expected  since one is about IIT Delhi and other is about DCE ).

So the next week, publishers decide to gradually reduce the backing to Sunny Shady Life and in its place ask for more copies of Chetan’s Book. Now it is picked by four times as many people and is becoming more and more visible. People who walk in, see Chetan’s book on the shelf where hot sellers are put and Sunny Shady life is lying somewhere in the shade in the back shelfs. This goes on and on till Chetan is attending filmfare awards show and Sachin is attending PPTs at MDI Gurgaon.

The publisher who backed Five point is being congratulated for a publishing triumph and the one who backed Sunny Shady Life had added one more to his long list of failures. But if they go back in time, they would have always had a very hard time choosing one over the other. The thing is, Chetan’s book might have been only marginally better than Sachin’s ( so marginal that it is easy to miss the merit ) but this advantage adds up over a series of events to generate dispropotionate success for him.

And it is happening because we do not make our decisions about entertainment as independently as we think. There are hundreds of books on campus life and thousands of sentimental blogs on the same subject. But since Chetan’s name is getting flashed in the media more, you are more likely to experiment with his books, to see what the genre is all about. So the most popular guy has a dispropotionate advantage and this makes writing a winner takes all business.

This theory is not made up by me but called the effect of cumulative advantage. Some control experiments in choice of music, revealed that people start picking music which is getting picked by others. So the one who has a slight advantage in the beginning may end up hogging all the attention towards the end.

So you see every time Chetan gets media coverage for whatever reasons , his publisher is grinning in his office – as a bihari tv actor said on a reality show – jo dikhta hain wo bikta hain

-          Amaresh

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