While celebrities turning authors is not a new trend, Indian publishing today is increasingly looking at children of stars to write the next bestseller
Urvashi Bahuguna (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 28, 2020)

Step through the doors of a bookstore in India today and chances are you will see a prominently displayed title or two by a celebrity. With the presence of a wildly popular film and television industry in the country, it is unsurprising that publishers seek out actors and stars for memoirs and the occasional work of fiction. But a less obvious publishing practice, we’ve seen of late, is the commissioning of books written by the children of celebrities.

Some recently published titles include Shweta Bachchan-Nanda’s collection of short stories, Paradise Towers, Aishwaryaa Rajnikant Dhanush’s Standing On An Apple Box: The Story of A Girl Among The Stars (right), Shaheen Bhatt’s I’ve Never been (Un) Happier, Soha Ali Khan’s The Perils of Being Moderately Famous and Esha Deol Takhtani’s Amma Mia: Stories, Advice and Recipes from One Mother to Another.

While publishing celebrities is not a particularly new phenomenon, Mirror spoke to a few publishing houses, industry veterans, book critics and writers to get a sense of why a name matters, what drives this trend and what place it may or may not have in our burgeoning reading culture.

Art of selling
“Most people assume publishers will publish anyone who has a famous name,” laments Gurveen Chadha, a senior commissioning editor at Penguin Random House India, “While celebrity books are an easy sell, it has to be a compelling story at the end of the day — whether written by a celebrity or non-celebrity. Of course, selling a celebrity book is a tad easier, but if there’s no story to tell in the first place, the book will eventually tank.” Diya Kar, a senior commissioning editor at Harper Collins India, agrees that the talent of the person in the limelight is what eventually draws publishers to these deals.

Shaheen Bhatt (daughter of filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt), who wrote a candid memoir about her struggle with depression, says she recognised that her privilege provided her with a platform. She felt compelled to use it to reduce the stigma around mental health. “When I first began talking about mental health publicly in articles and on social media, the response I got was far greater than anything I could have anticipated,” she shares. “I was flooded with hundreds of messages from people telling me that they were going through their own trials with mental health. I saw the difference sharing was making.” When Penguin approached her, she chose to go forward because a book could potentially reach far more people than a social media post. But I’ve Never Been (Un)happier wasn’t easy to write. She would work on it for a day before having to step away from it for several days because of the toll of “forcibly reliving bad memories”. Ultimately, she is glad she did it because she says she is “much more at ease” with herself and the world around her, “now that I have been able to lay my heart bare. There is nothing to hide anymore.” She was inspired by her father who never held anything back in his writing.

Esha Deol, who is the mother of two young daughters, intends her book to be a “helping hand” for new mothers. In what she describes as her “first clueless year of motherhood” she encountered surprises every day. As she overcame them, she realised she wanted to share her experience with other mothers. She wanted to convey that “if I am able to do all these things, so can you.” Writing in the middle of the night, she spent a year-and--a-half working on Amma Mia as she went through the pregnancy and birth of her second child. Experiencing the emotions of pregnancy and the early stages of being a mother all over again was really helpful as she wrote. She’s penned down everything she went through alongside recipes and advice, and she hopes Amma Mia is everything a new mother is looking for.

A number game
Shobhaa De, Mirror columnist and the author of multiple books, suggests that a significant social media presence is a key determinant in these publishing decisions. On Instagram, Soha Ali Khan has 2.3 million followers, Esha Deol has 1 million, Shweta Bachchan-Nanda has 3,40,000, Shaheen Bhatt has 2,32,000 and Aishwaryaa Dhanush has 1,68,000. On Twitter, Ali Khan has 2.1 million, Deol has 3,56,694, Bachchan-Nanda has 42,983 and Dhanush has 1.7 million. Referring to social media’s impact on sales, Chadha says: “I believe we tend to buy books that have already done the rounds on social media and there are very few readers visiting bookstores looking for new writers or a new book. Most come with their minds already made up.” But like Kar, she sees this as only one of many factors that help sales.

While sales numbers for these books were not disclosed by the publishers, sources within the industry are not convinced that each of these books necessarily turns a profit. A publishing house employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that in these cases, the investment from the publisher is substantial in terms of advances and marketing budget.

Kanishka Gupta, a literary agent and author, stresses that in addition to the above there are hidden costs for the publisher such as editorial trips to work with the celebrities, launches at top hotels and ghost writer fees, which are expenses they don’t normally encounter with other authors. With these steep costs in mind, he believes the profit margins may not be significant. Moreover, he has found in his experience of promoting books that there is no guaranteed correlation between social media following and book sales. He believes that the number of followers is less important than the quality of the celebrity’s content and the level of engagement of the followers.

Westland Books’ publisher Karthika V K believes that exceptional success stories within this genre keep publishers interested. She says, “It’s not as though every book written by a celeb becomes a hit, but there are enough success stories for us to know that the offtake from retail is quicker and more positive. Whether the celeb is connected to entertainment or politics or sport or self-help, there are existing channels of communication and marketing, which are already open and can be effectively leveraged.”

Aditya Mani Jha, a former commissioning editor at Penguin Random House and book critic, believes that even if each of these books is not profitable, a publishing house may take them on because they can risk “a small loss in the short-term so that they are in the good books of the celebrity whose family member wrote the thing and are well-placed to represent the ‘actual’ celebrity later”. The aforementioned anonymous employee also says that nepotism is a driving force where offspring of eminent personalities have easy rides to publication.

Some star power
Both De and Gupta see this publishing practice as an extension of society’s obsession with celebrities. Chadha appears to agree to an extent stating, “We’re a celebrity-obsessed country and there’s a vicarious thrill in reading about the lives of your favourite stars in books. It’s a sneak preview into their lives that you may otherwise not have access to. The interest in such books is massive and they generally tend to do well. In fact, some of the biggest bestsellers today tend to be celebrity books. It’s a very dependable publishing trend.”

According to Kar, the honour of being an author, and having a published book on the shelf, is what motivates celebrities to try their hand at writing. Chadha finds that for non-established names: “it’s a way to reinvent themselves, to use books as a medium to showcase a part of themselves with the world that they might not necessarily have otherwise.” Karthika imagines that “it’s a matter of legacy as well as brand extension, depending on where they are positioned in their careers.” De says, “Star kids have nothing to lose and a lot to gain by lending their names to books. They get invited to book fairs and literary festivals, where they even get mobbed.”

The question of quality is harder to assess. Gupta argues that both Bhatt and Ali Khan deserved to be published on the merit of their stories alone, though he qualifies this by saying that even good celebrity writers are often overrated. The quality of the books does affect sales, according to both Kar and Chadha, who state that in the long run, word-of-mouth endorsements and the book’s calibre are what sustain sales. Chadha further stresses that “a lot of these books are original, ambitious in scope and writing and really, really good.”

Debarati Sen (BOMBAY TIMES; December 18, 2018)

Bollywood has seen star kids following their famous parents’ footsteps into the industry. However, Shweta Bachchan is an exception. Despite growing up in the public gaze — as the daughter of Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan — Shweta, by her own admission, was a painfully shy girl. Talking about this at the Times Litfest at Mehboob Studio (Bandra), she said, “The cameras, flashes and the paparazzi — it was something I was terrified of and I was always hiding behind my parents. I wasn’t social either — I had become very tall early on, so I was this awkward, gawky girl. In school, I would audition, but would be made to play a tree or be part of a choir, while my brother (Abhishek Bachchan) would always bag the main lead roles. So, we all knew early on that acting and the stage was not for me.”

‘AS A KID, I DIDN’T KNOW MY MOTHER WAS AN ACTRESS’
Her parents might have been the biggest names in Bollywood, but Shweta recalled how they never brought work home. She shared, “We had a protected childhood and we were not exposed to the industry. My father would never talk about work at home or come back with make-up on; we didn’t have film magazines at home. In fact, as a child, I didn’t even know that my mother was an actress. I was introduced to Hindi movies much later in life. Once, I saw my brother watching a film in which my father was being beaten up. I was so terrified that I began screaming and refused to watch it.”

‘I REALLY WANTED TO HAVE ‘BUILDING’ FRIENDS’
Shweta, who has always lived in a bungalow, said that as a kid, she wanted to stay in a ‘building’. Perhaps, it’s not surprising then that her first book, Paradise Towers, is also based on life in a building. She shared, “As a child, I led a sheltered life in a bungalow. However, Mumbai has always been a city of high-rises and that fascinated me. My friends in school would talk about their ‘building friends’ and I never had any. So, I would feel left out and I really wanted building friends.”

‘I DON’T WANT TO PLEASE ANYONE’
Interestingly, it’s in her forties that Shweta started two careers — as a writer and as a fashion entrepreneur. In fact, the 44-year-old believes that 40s are the best decade in a woman’s life. She added, “I am definitely more comfortable in my skin now. In your forties, you know yourself, the things that count and the people who matter. I feel that teens and twenties are the toughest because you are sensitive to everything people are saying. At 40, I don’t want to please anyone anymore.” 

There’s something endearing about Shweta Bachchan-Nanda. It’s a Sunday afternoon, and the newly published author of Paradise Towers walks into a room at Janak, the Bachchans’ office in Mumbai’s Juhu. Dressed in a loose tee and slacks, her hair heavily oiled, she asks with childlike curiosity: “Did you really like my book?” Rarely known to give interviews, the statuesque daughter of Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan is expressive and often self-deprecating in person, as she tells Mohua Das about writing a light-hearted book of fiction, being shy, and starting a new life at 44
Mohua Das (THE TIMES OF INDIA; September 23, 2018)

Congratulations on your debut as a writer with Paradise Towers. How did you manage to spin a tale on people in a Mumbai high-rise, given that this world is removed from the kind of home you’ve lived in?
This is something that I’ve been asked before. In fact, the first time I was asked this was by my own mother because she’s the only one in my family to have read the manuscript. Please allow me this flattery, but she said, ‘How do you know so exactly what happens in a multi-storeyed building? That’s not your life’. And I said ‘Yes mama, but I have eyes, I’ve had enough friends growing up who lived in buildings, and I observe.’ She felt that there are a lot of characters and a certain milieu of society that I’d got bang-on. I think it’s one of the benefits of being born into a family of actors. They observe. Wherever they’re going or whatever their interactions are, they observe the characteristics and quirks of someone’s nature… the more pronounced the better, and I think I’ve just inherited that. It’s something I do actively whenever I’m meeting someone or out at a party. What I love doing is just sitting and watching things unfold. And today it’s not just passive observation, I also make notes.

You mean, active eavesdropping!
No no! (Laughs) I was a very shy child while growing up. Always hiding behind my mum, hating being pushed forward… I’d sit quietly and observe things and I think that has become second nature. We lived a very protected life, growing up. My parents were from UP and MP — they came to Bombay to work and make a living, it was the ‘70s. My father worked hard and made a name for himself but back then it was all very new. My brother and I were the first inheritors of what my father had made for himself. And of course as a parent you don’t know how this recognition can affect your family, so the first instinct is to be protective. We were also part of a very big joint family — my chacha, my cousins were always together. My grandparents lived with us. But there was always this curiosity about life in buildings when friends in school would say, ‘I’m going to my building friend’s birthday’ or that magic hour between 4 and 6 in the evenings when they’d all go down to play. The grass is always greener on the other side and Paradise Towers is born out of that observation and desire, for ‘building friends’ you can access at any time, and interactions between people in different flats. It’s come from 44 years of keeping my eyes open, being shy and looking at what everyone’s doing.

Your parents must be proud because you’re carrying forward the legacy of both your grandfathers — Harivansh Rai Bachchan (noted poet) and Taroon Coomar Bhaduri (journalist and author).
They’re happy — proud they will be after they read the book when it releases next month. No one apart from my mother has read it yet because she’s direct, honest and if she didn’t like something she’d tell me. I’m not the only one who writes though. My cousin brought out a book of poems. I’ve been a writer for myself, I’d write short stories and they remained in my journals or got torn up and thrown away. It was only when I started putting some of my writing out in a column and got a compliment or two, that I found the confidence. Then one day I just woke up with this story in my head and it took me a year to put it together.

Why take a risk with fiction when you could have rustled up an authentic account of India’s most famous film family?
Fiction was a conscious decision because my father has said many times that he doesn’t want his biography done. I also feel that actors’ lives are shared with the public on such a large scale, that sometimes you have family memories or moments you may want to just keep to yourselves. Their lives are so vast that I wouldn’t even attempt or know where to start because I’d be biased and not be able to look at either my father, mother, brother or sister-in-law’s lives objectively.

Are you nervous about living up —or writing up — to expectations?
I am, but I hope it’s enjoyable and it gives people a couple of hours of feeling good. It’s not a heavy book or one fraught with darker issues. It’s a light book that my mother feels one can pick up and finish reading on a flight from Delhi to Bombay.

You’ve been famously media shy. Suddenly we’re seeing a lot more of you in the public eye… You’ve been writing columns, you faced the camera for an ad film and you also launched a fashion line. Has the last year given you a newer perspective on life?
It’s actually not that thought-out but I also believe something I read somewhere that every seven or eight years, your life, outlook and many things about you change completely. It’s almost like a snake shedding its skin. For me that happened when I hit 40. Both my children were out of home in boarding school and suddenly I was sitting there with nothing to do. I thought I’d go crazy just looking at the walls or going to visit my children and sitting on their heads. Which teenager would want that? It would have caused a lot of teen rebellion and friction. I am shy, I am an introvert and I’m trying to push myself out there, so I’m not in my comfort zone even as I sit here talking to you but it’s just out of a desire to do something. I feel good about starting a life at middle age. It’s fun and I hope more women do that, especially if you’re a stay-at-home mom and you find yourself in that space when children have their own lives, husband’s away at work and you’re wondering ‘what am I doing with all this free time?’ Women are famous multitaskers. I’ve always heard that said, seen my mum do it, and now suddenly I’m doing it. Be it designing or writing, they’re all different aspects of creativity and it’s keeping me busy.

You must be tired of being asked this but does acting still not interest you?
I have no potential as an actor, let’s get that sorted!

But your father insists that you’re the real actor, a mimic par excellence in the family…
I think there’s a very fine line between good mimic and good actor and I don’t think I’m crossing any of those! Even this ad I managed to do because I had him right by me. He asked me to behave with him the way I do at home. My Dad and I have that equation so it was easy but I don’t think I can do it otherwise. I have complete respect for those who face the camera every day and manage all those emotions they share with us. I’m happy to hide behind my words.

Does the public gaze bother you more now? You maintained a certain normalcy while growing up but how do you shield your children today with so many more cameras and paparazzi following star kids around?
In a certain way, yes but I also understand that this is the way the world is now. They haven’t lived in India for so long and have been away from the film scene here but yes, there’s a constant gaze and they’ll have to learn to balance and make their peace with it. They’ve also made my job easy by not being the kind of children I need to be constantly watching over. I also had an internal dialogue and made a conscious decision to take a couple of steps back when they turned teenagers. Of course I’m always there for them. My son Agastya is in England, my daughter Navya Naveli is in the US and they’re fed up of me asking them for pictures even if it’s from their geography field trip! (Laughs)

And, how would you define the Bachchans in one line?
I think we’re very, very tight knit as a family.