Marketing holds tremendous importance in the publishing industry and ensures a book doesn’t become a sinking stone, says Cyrus Mistry, the reticent author of “Chronicles of Corpse bearer.”
“Like all other industries, marketing plays a very crucial role in the publishing world as well. Even though good research, story line and editing are the primary factors for success of any book but marketing just can’t be ignored,” Mistry told PTI in an interview.
The playwright, journalist and author says he believes his first book “The Radiance of Ashes” published in 2005, could have got more attention with more active marketing.
“My first book is an equally good book like my second ‘Chronicles of Corpse Bearer’. Both are set in Mumbai and have a Parsi as central character. But the second book has been much better marketed,” says Mistry who has been longlisted for the USD 50,000 DSC South Asian Literature Prize.
Mistry says he belongs to the old school thinking that writing a good book should suffice to draw readers. “But I have realised that marketing a book with book tours and attending book launches is crucial and its importance can’t be surpassed.”
Mistry who began writing at a young age had won at the age of 21 the Sultan Padamsee Award, a prestigious, international playwriting contest for his first full-length play, “Doongaji House.”
The author who has been longlisted for the fourth edition of the USD 50,000 DSC South Asian Literature Prize for ‘Chronicles of the Corpse Bearer’ says the book is a story of marginalised community and looks at larger questions about life and death, which makes it a different read.
Set in the city of Mumbai, the book revolves around the lives of a hardly heard of and rarely-seen set of people, corpse bearers or Khandhias within the Parsi community. Their job is to carry bodies of the deceased to the Towers of Silence.