Book Makers

At a busy Big Bazaar in Gurgaon,recently,there was more than the usual clanging of shopping trolleys.

Written by Sharon Fernandes
September 16, 2010 07:58 AM IST

2 min read

Publisher Rupa & Co completes 75 years of cracking the mass-market formula

At a busy Big Bazaar in Gurgaon,recently,there was more than the usual clanging of shopping trolleys. In one young mans purchases,you could see toothpaste,a ketchup bottle and,right on top of it all,a copy of Chetan Bhagats The 3 Mistakes of My Life and Kishore Biyanis It Happened In India . Kapish Mehra,Managing Director of Rupa & Co,smiles as he narrates this incident,which comes as no surprise to the publishing house which has an alliterative tagline: Reach,Range and Reading pleasure. As it celebrates 75 years of publishing books,Rupa also has an enviable mass market appeal. Books now are an impulse buy. We have titles in fiction,non-fiction,biographies,self-help,sports,religion and business management,and these are at a price that people are comfortable with. You have to be happy to pick up a book,and that works for us, says Mehra,of the companys pricing mantra for the last seven-and-a-half decades.The story of Rupa has a humble beginning Mehras late grandfather Daudayal Mehra started the business in 1936 by publishing two volumes of Bengali poetry and Herman Hesses Siddhartha. Today,of course,with a Chetan Bhagat Five Point Someone available across the globe,the publishing house has some of the highest figures in the Indian publishing industry. When in India,an English bestseller is one that sells 10,000 copies,we have been getting sales figure of one million copies for all of Chetan Bhagats books, says Mehra . He talks about how identifying new genres is a part of publishing success. Ten years ago,we looked at books as fiction and non-fiction,but now there is dude lit,chick lit,campus fiction and corporate fiction among others, says Mehra. Besides,a good book can work despite its genre. Last year,Jinnah:India Partition Independence,a biography,was also one of our bestsellers, he says.