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Penguin Books Ltd - Rahul Saini

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131 pages

English

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How low will you stoop to fulfil your dreams? Jeet Roy, a college Casanova, has published a book by unfair means. All he wants is to earn loads of money and have hot girls chase after him wherever he goes! Rohit Sehdev, a one-book-old popular fiction writer is furious when he finds out that his publisher has cheated him out of his royalties. Karun Ahuja is a highly ambitious schoolboy who wants to win the heart his lady love by writing a novel about it. And he doesn t mind playing dirty to get to the top. Ruthlessly exploiting these ambitious young men is their unscrupulous publisher. Sometimes funny, sometimes shocking, Paperback Dreams is the story of a new breed of young writers who will do anything to get famous, fast.

Informations

Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	15 décembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789351185680
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Rahul Saini

PAPERBACK DREAMS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright page
PENGUIN METRO READS
PAPERBACK DREAMS
Rahul Saini is the bestselling author of three hugely popular novels Those Small Lil Things , Just Like in the Movies and The Orange Hangover . Formerly an architect, he has a keen interest in photography, film-making and fine arts. Currently he serves as a visiting faculty member for an art and design program at a prestigious university in India. He takes an active interest in the wellness of his students.
From the small Punjabi town of Jalandhar he is a high-spirited young man who spends much of his time travelling, mostly to parts of Himachal Pradesh. He loves spending time with his family and friends.
For the monkey, who teaches us how to jump.
Here s to you free souls, you firefly chasers, Tree climbers, porch swingers, air guitar players, Here s to you fearless dancers, shaking walls in your bedrooms.
There s a lot of wonder left inside of me and you, Thank God even crazy dreams come true.
-Carrie Underwood, Smash , Callbacks (S01E02)
When love beckons you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep.
- The Prophet , Khalil Gibran
1
One hot summer afternoon, when reality pinches him in a busy market street at Connaught Place, New Delhi
-Rohit
This is not how it is supposed to be. I am an author. I am supposed to be rich, have a huge mansion for a house somewhere in the mountains, drive around in a luxury sedan and have a playful golden retriever named Friend. My life should be glamorous and most of all I should not have to think twice before buying the new boxed set of the hardback editions of A Song of Ice and Fire .
I am at the Universal Book Store in CP, holding this luxury boxed set in my hands. The books inside have that golden paint on the edges of the pages and the whole effect is hypnotic. I need to buy this! I turn the heavy box around and look at the price tag and get a jolt. It costs ten freaking grand! Without another thought I put the lovely box back on the shelf and start to walk away. I run my eyes through the books on the shelf and see two copies of my own book meekly stacked towards the end. I pick up one and open it. The first thing I see is a hideous picture of myself beaming back at me goofily. I look like a monkey. No, truly! Why did I even decide to put my picture in the book? I am sure it has affected sales by at least 40 per cent. I leaf through the pages and remember why I came to the store in the first place-I needed to investigate the sale figures for my book. And I can t simply march to the cash counter and demand the details. I know all shopkeepers hate that. So I take the book over to the counter, ask the man behind to bill it and casually say, How is this book doing by the way?
Who does that? I mean who does that ? My thoughts are almost jammed as I can t think of words to express myself.
Would you just calm down, Rohit? Just take a deep breath
Take a deep breath? Take a deep breath! My publisher is cheating me. He has swindled me out of more than 40 lakh rupees and you are asking me to take a deep breath? God! I cut Nisha off mid-sentence as I yell into the phone.
You are a national bestselling author, Rohit. This behaviour does not suit you.
I take a deep breath and look around me-there are actually some people who have stopped moving and are gaping at me. One of them looks as frozen as the ice cream she is holding in her hand. It is a marketplace. I must control myself. I have been roaming around the crowded colonnade of CP for over three hours now on this hot summer afternoon, hopping from one bookstore to another. I have been suspicious about the royalty figure my publisher has been giving me for the past two years and today I decided to come and do a sort of market survey myself to check the sale figures of my books. Having written a book that frequently appears in various bestsellers lists, I believe I should get a decent royalty at the end of each year. But I don t.
How do you know for sure he is cheating you? What proof do you have? Nisha asks, sighing tiredly.
I hate it when she does that! She always takes the other person s side. I have known her since college. She is smart and usually gives good, rational and unbiased advice.
What do you mean, how am I sure? I have visited twenty-three bookstores in the past three days. I took the monthly sale figures from each of them for my books, added them up, multiplied the sum by twelve and arrived at a figure that was one-third the total royalty my publisher has given me. My book sells nationally. Now, if one market is selling these many books, imagine what the total amount would be. God! I feel like infesting his whole office and warehouse with mice. That would destroy all the stock and the black money he has stored there!
Don t be foolish! How do you know that he stores all his black money in his office?
Damn it!
Silence
What should I do? I ask
File a law suit against him, she says easily.
I can t do that, I have no proof.
The words come out almost as an honest reflex and I can see her smiling at the end of the line.
Try threatening him. Try telling him that you have found out how he has been cheating you and that you will file a case against him if he does not pay you properly.
I don t know why she always does that. I don t know why she asks me to do things that I am incapable of doing. I am not a a threatening kind of a person. If she told me to run into his office, scream for a few good seconds about how I know he isn t giving me the money he owes me and then frantically run out I could do that. But that s not what she is suggesting. Moreover, that would only make him more sure and confident about the idea that he can pay me even less than what he is paying right now.
Write a mail then, she says.
Hmm, yes, a mail might do, I think.
There is silence for a moment and I can sense something coming from her.
I don t know why you don t understand that you cannot earn a living from your writing, she finally speaks up.
And I don t know why she is so negative at times. We have had this discussion (argument rather) so many times in the past and I am just not in the mood for it right now.
It s not a question of earning a living out of my writing but getting what is rightfully mine, I say.
The question is also when are you going to end this sabbatical you are on and start thinking maturely about responsibilities like supporting yourself financially for example.
Silence.
She is right. It has been over four months since I quit my last job hoping that the royalties from my books would be enough to support me. (And also because my boss was the most disturbingly wicked person ever, which was actually the main reason why I left.)
I need to take up a job. Maybe I can take up a job for what I like doing second best-teaching.
2
Flying high in the sky, on his way back from Bangalore, he is living his dream
-Jeet
The airhostess looks beautiful and has the most beautiful voice too. I can t take my eyes off her as she makes the announcement that the flight is ready for takeoff. I buckle my seatbelt and take a deep breath. Another city covered, another event done-only six more to go for this year now.
It has been over nineteen months since my debut novel was released but it feels like only yesterday that I signed the contract with my publisher. The plane is in the air now and gaining altitude. I pull out the magazine section of the Indian Times from the sleeve below the foldable tray in front of me where I had kept it. They have done a good job again-they have given full-page coverage to my event at the Red Bookstore, Bangalore. They re carrying a big picture of me with my killer smile and there s surprisingly not even one negative thing about me this time. It s the truth, dude-paying the PR pays. Besides, how could they have written anything bad about me? The event was a huge success. All the people working at the store acknowledged that it was the biggest crowd that any event had pulled in in the last three years. They didn t even have enough chairs to accommodate the crowd. So many of them were standing there, only to see me and to listen to what I had to say. God, it felt great. After reading the article once again from beginning to end, I fold the paper and put it back in the sleeve. All this is good but how long will it go on? How the hell am I going to get another novel out with my name as the author? Getting my first book published and becoming this phenomenal success is a miracle. I may or may not deserve all this success and all this recognition, but it is mine for now and I have to find a way to retain it. I have to find a way .
I look outside and I see the people, the roads, the houses, the trees, all shrinking in size as we climb higher. The whole world looks like a toy game, easy to play with. Soon we reach cloud level and the view is lost. I turn my head to see if there are any beautiful chicks inside the plane. I spot a cute girl sitting in the aisle seat one row ahead of me on the opposite side. She is looking directly at me. I stare back at her and our eyes meet.
Okay, man! This is no unintentional, casual look she is giving me. She is thr