Amrit Hallan, 33-year-old Delhi-based mathematics grad, never dreamt he would be an author some day. Or maybe he did in his wildest dreams. But that was before he co-authored The Motive, India's first collaborative e-book.
Read by over 100,000 people all over the world, The Motive began eight months ago in January 2001. The very notion of a collaborative e-book, then, probably had you laughing you head off or clucking in dismay. "How far will they carry this Internet thing? How absurd!" you muttered to yourself, in all probability.
Hot off the presses
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is being offered as an ebook for $1. The catch is you’ll have to finish reading it within 10 hours. After that, it will self-destruct!
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If you did, this would be good time to eat your words.
The response from readers has surpassed all expectations, with over 102,000 page views and 13,000 PDF downloads.
Lead author Tara Deshpande set the ball rolling with a first chapter on Mehr Pagedar, Feroze, Teju and a host of characters. Hundreds of readers took up the challenge of carrying the plot forward. "It was a tremendous task. Luckily, there was a board of editors who sifted through the entire lot. I read about 50 final entries and selected the best," says Tara, film star and author of 'Fifty and done'.
Though she selected the winner, all characters came to life after consultations and with the approval of firstandsecond, the book's 'virtual' publishers.
G B S Bindra, CEO, firstandsecond, adds: "Tara belongs to the same generation as the target audience of the e-book store. Since this book was about interactivity, we wanted an author our target audience could identify with. She fitted the bill." He is so thrilled with the response that, once the book is complete, firstandsecond is set to unveil a full-fledged e-bookstore. "We will release a few e-books, shortly. The Motive was a platform to popularise this concept, and more than 100,000 people read its first chapter. I guess it is already one of the most read pieces of modern Indian fiction."
Tara adds, "It has been a difficult but exciting project, and will be released as a paperback on completion. We have already selected a publisher. A collaborative novel is an experimental and untested concept, and I loved the challenge."
Both Tara and Bindra are quick to dismiss the e-book as simply a fad that will fade out quickly. The author points to the fact that "e-books have a huge future. They are cheaper, portable and more accessible. Storage is also simpler and they last forever." Bindra, ever the businessman, agrees: "It will democratise publishing and bring down the cost of acquisition of a book."
Time will tell if both author and publisher are right.
More Like This:
-- The Last Word- Part 1: Is it the end of the printed word?
-- The Last Word- Part 2: Ebooks in tommorow's world
-- C Book: Tara Deshpande on India's first online book