T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Should non-Ph Ds write books?

LINE & LENGTH

For some time now, some kind and well-meaning people have been importuning me to write a book. Flattering though the idea is I don't think I shall.

Here are three reasons why not.

First, having started my working life in a publishing house as an editor, I am afraid I know how the racket works. The reality is very far removed from the public perception of publishing, which in spite of its pretensions, publishing is a business, and a volume business at that in two distinct ways.

One is the hope that a book will become a bestseller, which is volume of one sort. The other, since the publisher doesn't know which book will become a bestseller, is the need to generate volume in terms of the number of titles published every year.

It is the latter that worries me. The pressure to publish so much means that three quarters of the books get remaindered""the polite word for being sold as kabadi""and end up on pavements.

Since no book written by me is ever going to become a bestseller""defined in India as a mere 3,000 copies""I know where I will end up. Better men and women than me have bitten the dust.

Second, the effort-reward ratio is very poor. Royalty, even at 10 per cent of the full list price, rather than of the discounted price which has become the custom, can at the very best come to about one lakh over three years""that too for a high-priced book, which mine will never be. Not a good enough rate of return, I would say, especially after you have paid tax on it.

Third, and most importantly, I think it is a bad idea for journalists to write books. They should stick to their knitting. Let me explain.

In the final analysis, there are three ways in which a book is judged. One is by the number of copies sold. The second is by the sort of reviews it gets. And the third is how often it is cited in bibliographies by others, notably academics.

The first two are ephemeral and don't, in the end, add up to much by way of an endorsement or recognition. Books with rave reviews don't sell; and books that sell well get poor reviews.

The worst off are those that neither sell nor get reviews, good or bad. Most books fall in this last category.

So it is the third judgment, namely, recognition by the academic world that is the most important. And therein lies the rub because a journalist can't get it merely because he is a journalist. A bad book by an academic is more valuable to academics than an excellent one by a journalist.

Indeed, as a rule, almost, academics don't acknowledge books by journalists. In fact, the worst insult an academic can hurl at a colleague is to call his or her work journalistic.

Not rigorous enough, is the term employed, I think, to condemn. This, even as they liberally borrow ideas and insights provided by journalists. (Well, here's a thought. I could write a book on this form of plagiarism.)

There is, of course, a perfectly rational reason for this turning of the blind eye. Academics gain nothing by citing journalists. Indeed, they may well lose as a result.

Funnily enough, in books on international relations, news stories are cited at the drop of a hat to bolster an argument. But if a journalist writes a book citing those very news items, the book will not be cited.

And the reason for this is that the business of academics""in the social sciences at least""is very much a "I-scratch-your-back, you-scratch-mine" thing. This means that if I cite you, you are expected to cite me. Out of cite, if you like, is out of sight.

Since academic reputation depends on how many times a book or paper has been cited, the practice works in a nicely mutually reinforcing way. In fact, so intense is the network aspect of it that even older academics, because they have become "has-beens", are not quoted very much.

This, by the way, is in complete contrast to the way journalism functions. Journalists seldom quote other journalists, never mind how credible another journalist might be. That is simply not done in the profession.

In contrast, academics quote only one another because academic preferment depends on being acknowledged by the peer group alone, and not by a wider audience. To quote non-academics is simply not done and can even be the kiss of death.

Even when they are writing newspaper articles, academics quote only newspaper articles by other academics. They ignore even the area experts who write columns.

The real problem is that journalists and others are not regarded as being the "real" experts""never mind that many of them know more about the subject than most academics do.

For example, I know of two journalists who have become academics, in as much as they now teach in universities. They are now quoted often by their academic colleagues but when they were writing as journalists, they never were. What has changed?

My colleague Surinder Sud knows more about Indian agriculture and agricultural markets than most agricultural economists in India. But you will never see his writings cited. Never, not once.

In the same way, Strobe Talbott, Fareed Zakaria, Shekhar Gupta, Swaminathan Aiyar, M J Akbar, to name just a very few, have more contemporary knowledge and superior insights than most campus pundits.

But it is rare for an academic to quote any of them. Akbar's latest book (on Islam) was reviewed by an academic, along with four or five other books, in the New York Review Books and dismissed in a few lines as a glib journalistic account.

I find this truly extraordinary. Perhaps, the term "expertise" needs to be redefined. Perhaps intellectual worth needs to be judged differently.

Anyhow, what does this have to do with my not writing a book? My friends say I should not worry about academics ignoring me but just go ahead and write one.

But if one is going to get neither money nor recognition, what is the point of writing a book? If someone can answer this for me, I will write a book.