Campus Novel - Big League

Campus novels join the big league

17 Nov 2007, 0124 hrs IST, Sushmita Mohapatra & Savitha V, TNN

BANGALORE: In a market where a book is considered a bestseller if it sells 3,000 copies, Chetan Bhagat’s Five Point Someone — a novel set on the

IIT campus and based on student life — broke records when it sold over 50,000 copies. It might also have earned itself a place in the history books as the trigger for a trend that might have shaken up the Indian publishing industry.

That trend is the campus novel. Books like Bombay Girls, Bombay Rains; Keep Off the Grass; Anything For You Ma’m; Everything You Desire and Joker In The Pack are now trying to replicate the success of Five Point Someone.

“Demographics also boost the popularity of such campus books, with half the country below the age of 25,” says Crossword Bookstores head, operations and marketing, Aniyan Nair. Six out of 10 such titles have done an average of 3,000-4,000 copies, making the genre well worth betting on for publishers.

Economic Times