“It hurts a lot if I’m not able to get a good deal for my authors”

An Interview With Mita Kapur

Illustrated by Shyamli Singbal

In a publishing landscape that often feels chaotic and is constantly evolving, the role of a literary agent is always becoming more essential. Siyahi is amongst the first and most established agencies in the business, founded by Mita Kapur nearly two decades ago. We sat down with Mita to talk about changes in the industry, what she looks for in new books, and the upcoming Siyahi Writers’ Retreats.

As one of India’s most established literary agents, I wanted to start off by asking about your journey and how you built Siyahi. 

Siyahi started way back in 2007. It was a serendipitous moment over lunch, with a senior editor from the UK. He told me that what I was doing at the time was essentially what a literary agent does, but there weren’t really such roles in Indian publishing at the time. I was helping writers edit, giving feedback, being part of online creative writing forums, and to quote him, he said - you’re being an idiot! I knew that what I was doing was basically the role of an agent and I thought it was time to formalise that. 

I took a couple of weeks with a friend to come up with the name and decided on Siyahi. Initially I wanted to call it Rejection Note, but people said that kind of humour wouldn’t work in India. So we stuck with Siyahi, created a website and I sold my first three books in the first couple of months. One was a two book deal for literary fiction and one was a poetry book. We grew organically, I don’t believe in chasing numbers or in brandishing how many copies sold or how many authors represented, but rather in really believing in the work I represent. 

What do you look for in the works you represent?

Do you want the idealistic or the realistic answer? 

Both! 

Of course, it has to be gritty, edgy, interesting - I want to be able to imagine myself in a bookstore being willing to pick up the book. I look for things that don’t feel like ‘oh, I’ve already read something like this before.’ And I want to have the greed to finish it, to keep reading to the end. 

But, reality also teaches you other things. Whether books will sell, how they will be positioned - that is a significantly important factor to ascertain the market and it also comes from an immense sense of responsibility and commitment. An author comes to you with the faith that you’ll sell their work, they are trusting you with years of their work. So if you have taken on this responsibility, then you also have to look at the commercial side of things. It hurts a lot if I am not able to get a good deal for my authors or if their work is not getting the attention it deserves.

The genre is also something to consider - whether it’s non-fiction, a memoir, an exemplary biography of someone significant, new fiction - I have to be aware of the market. The first question I ask myself is whether I think I’ll be able to find a publisher, given what publishers and readers are looking for. That is something we have to be aware of and keep in mind too. 

That’s a good bridge into the next question I had. You’ve been in the Indian publishing world for a long time, so what are the big shifts you’ve seen over your career in terms of what works, what people are reading or what gets the most attention or demand? 

Well, I have definitely seen a massive change over the last twenty plus years. Maybe not an overnight change but it has been relatively fast. There is a much broader spectrum of genres and sub-genres and things that hardly existed twenty five years ago. There are sections of the market that have been created in recent years, all sorts of new books being written that are driven by many different things. The thrill comes from all the experimental writing that we get to read.

I think in the time we live in today, where so much of our lives are driven by social media and the online world, making your book a product is also a reality. I have been telling my authors for a long time that you have to look at your work not just as an expression of yourself but also as a marketable product. So whether it’s image management, brand building, online presence, and so on - all of this is a big part of book sales today. Given where we are, I think that we have to adapt or we will fail miserably.  

Do you see these changes in social media and technology impacting marketing or also influencing the whole process of publishing and writing?

There are a lot more people creating a persona around themselves, who have a public image or online image to sell their book. Purists might object to this but I’d say to each their own. At the end of the day, the royalty statements have to show something positive for my authors. There are people who are able to sell themselves very effectively online and manage their own marketing, and there are others who stick to the pure joy of writing literary tomes or well-researched books, which have their own kind of longevity. I think both exist and they can co-exist. 

Then, of course, there is so much more to consider beyond just marketing because technology is also impacting everything from writing style to contracts to technical production to distribution - there is no escaping it. Some people use AI to edit or to write their stories. Obviously, as someone who has been reading professionally for so long, you can tell when you read something if it’s been done by ChatGPT. I am still old-school and I prefer not to represent works that are AI-generated but this is the direction we are going in. But I still like to believe in the imagination and use these tools for more practical tasks.

Fair enough. Another question I had was about the books you’ve represented over the years - do you have certain favourites or pivotal books that pushed the agency forward? Or is that impossible to choose? 

One thing I always tell my team is that we’re here to do the best we can for our authors. New, old, acclaimed or popular, fiction or nonfiction, we have to see them all as the same. Of course, there are authors I’ve had really long-term relationships with or there are different ways to deal with authors according to their personalities and demands, but that is just human nature. 

Today we received the proofs of this new book coming out and the excitement is always there, regardless of how many books have come out. But in terms of things that do well or progress, I think it’s tough to say. I often feel that some books fall through the cracks because there is so much stuff coming out all the time, and there are many times I feel that a book deserved more accolades or awards or attention. But when books do well, I just say ‘woh toh hona hi tha’. I’m like that with my kids too, if they achieve something I am matter of fact in saying ‘what else is expected, of course you should do well!’ 

Another thing I was curious about was the role of the agent after publication - in terms of a book being pushed more or being submitted to awards or being marketed and so on?

I think the role goes on always, it’s always been part of the job. We are always pushing and nagging publishers - which festivals are authors appearing at? Why is the book not at this or that bookstore? What’s happening with interviews? We know when the prizes or submission periods are so we write to them to request them to share submissions for a certain prize that we think fits. It’s just a natural corollary to what we do, doing right by our authors. 

Very fair. I also wanted to ask about international deals. I don’t know if this is just my perception but it seems like the Indian market is more insular these days, that the books that do well abroad and at home are extremely different and often not even published in other countries. Do you think this is the case, and have you seen things change on this front? 

It has been tough, certainly. Things were better for Indian authors earlier, and I think it’s certainly getting tougher. It’s a question mark for me too. But definitely when I travel or am in other countries the presence of Indian books seems more limited. I think Covid was a big change, and people are penny-crunching far more now.

I don’t think there’s a change from our end in that we are always pushing to try and sell world rights for our authors, talking to publishers or our co-agents or going to Frankfurt (Book Fair). But there’s a shift also because it makes more commercial sense for a small independent publisher in the UK or the US to publish a British or French or American book rather than an Indian one, for a variety of reasons, so it is tougher to place. People want to invest in their own authors. On the other hand, there has been a big rise in interest in terms of translations, and there have been more deals for those. Having said that, we are still managing to make sales, you have to keep moulding your strategy and seeing what works in the international marketplace. 

That makes sense. A final area I wanted to touch upon was author development and the Siyahi Retreats, which are coming up in a couple of months. What was the inspiration for these, and what do you hope to achieve with them? 

This idea has been nascent in my mind for a couple of years. Maybe even more, but now is finally the time we are doing it. There is this consciousness that we can help authors who are coming up, who aren’t yet represented by us. At the risk of sounding boastful, having been inside festivals and literary prizes and the publishing world for decades, we knew that we can program a workshop that is truly helpful for writers, and we can schedule things to truly maximise their experience. 

We know what’s great, we know what’s lacking, and we have planned each and every day of these retreats to be intensive, to ensure that all the participants are impressed and will leave refreshed and enriched. I’m not one for tall claims, but I know that we have a passion for the written word, for these sorts of programs, and we decided to do the retreats because we know that what we have planned is going to have a real impact. 

What led you to select the formats of one for romance writing and one for the art of storytelling, as well as the mentors? 

As I said, being in this industry for so long, we have a sense of what the market needs and what we are looking for. If you ask anybody in this industry, I have the reputation of being hard to please, so everyone who I’ve selected is someone I really respect and admire over the years. I’ve followed Anuja’s rise over the years since her first book, and seen her trajectory. I’ve seen Karthika’s journey as one of the finest publishers in the country, I’ve seen Nona’s rise as a new-age romance writer and her skill at building her reputation so quickly. We selected these people because their work is substantive, because each of them brings something different. 

And when it comes to the second retreat, it’s the same. Aanchal is exceptionally good with fiction and nonfiction, she has absolutely lucid, lyrical prose and excellent research skills. I’ve seen Prem as an editor of fiction and nonfiction over the years, Prateek as someone who stands by his authors and is a great marketer. So each of the people we’ve chosen to work with and the way we have curated these retreats is truly going to be something special. It’s not just because I know these people but because I’ve interacted with and worked with them many times over the years, and they are the best possible guides for writers who want to hone their skills and evolve. 

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The Siyahi Writers’ Retreats are a collection of two curated workshops. Chapter One (26 May to 2 June) is about Crafting Unforgettable Romantic Stories. Chapter Two (16 June to 30 June) is titled the Art of Storytelling. Learn more about the retreats here. 

Mita Kapur is the founder and CEO of Siyahi, India's leading literary consultancy. Her first book, The F Word, is a food book, memoir and travelogue.

Abhay Puri is a writer and the founding editor of Hammock Magazine.