‘Artificial Intelligence has still a very long way to go before it can tell interesting stories’

Bhaskar Chattopadhyay is an author, screenwriter and academic. He is Professor of Cinema, York University, Toronto. He divides his time between writing, publishing, teaching and research. He has written sixteen books and one feature length film. His popular mystery series featuring the astute detective Janardan Maity and his friend and chronicler Prakash Ray have six novels, with more to come. Bhaskar has translated veteran Bengali authors including Rabindra Nath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Satyajit Ray. He has novelized Satyajit Ray's iconic 1961 film Nayak, and written a book titled The Cinema of Satyajit Ray that is taught in universities and film schools around the world. Bhaskar's first feature film released to packed theatres and was received well by audiences and critics alike. Bhaskar has an MFA degree in Screenwriting and an MBA in Marketing. He had a long corporate career during which he worked for such companies as GE, Cognizant and Capital One. Bhaskar is based in Toronto, Canada.

Recently, Bhaskar Chattopadhyay launched his own imprint titled Cipher Books (see logo). It is registered in Canada. The first book to be published under this imprint is The Wings of the Nike, which happens to be the sixth book in the popular Janardan Maity mystery series. So far, he had been published by traditional publishers such as Penguin Random House India, Harper Collins India, Hachette India, Westland Books etc. But the idea of creating his own imprint had been with him for several years now except that he couldn't get around to doing it. Now that he has, the plan is simple. Ambitious, but doable. In fact, the launch of his first book has proven that he with the first book that has been published in this new model he has “already earned significantly more than what [he] had earned in all the previous books combined through traditional publishing”.

Janardan Maity (without the H) is the Bengali 'bhodrolok' detective from Kolkata, although he hates being called a detective. He reads widely, relishes the finer tastes of life - good food, good coffee, music, cinema - and has an unshakable ethic that can sometimes go beyond the law. His dear friend and chronicler is an author named Prakash Ray, who is several years younger than him. Maity is in his early 50's, Prakash in his early 30's. The two men travel a lot, and seem to get entangled in baffling mysteries. Sometimes, people come to Maity to ask for his help in solving a 'case', Maity agrees to help if the case appeals to his intellect, or if he feels the request for help is genuine. Even Kolkata Police come to him for help in certain complex situations.

He plans to publish all his Maity novels (including the previous five books in the series) under the imprint of Cipher Books. This will include short stories, novellas and plays, all featuring Maity and Prakash. Alongside, he plans to publish translations of Maity novels in Indian and non-Indian languages. The first translation is ready and will be published relatively soon. It is a Hindi translation of his novel The Disappearance of Sally Sequeira, by Dr. Sneha Pathak. Sally has been one of the most popular Maity novels, and it is only fair that it reaches a larger audience. French, Swedish and Korean language translations are planned too, as are books in accessible formats. Working with a team of believers, translators who adored his books and the approached him, is like hitting the jackpot. They will help lift the Maity stories like it has never been done before.

The overall idea is to create an entire ecosystem of stories around these two much-loved characters that readers seem to be waiting so eagerly for — at least that's what the reviews say. The previous books in the series are (Maity novels can be read in any order, without loss of information):

Penumbra
Here Falls the Shadow
The Disappearance of Sally Sequeira
Best Served ColdAperture

The following interview with Bhaskar Chattopadhyay was conducted via email over a few weeks. It was not done in a hurry as there were so many interesting titbits that he was sharing regarding the expansion of the publishing space. The conversation has been lightly edited. 

1.    Your enthusiasm for the future of your books is infectious. You are super-excited, as it should be. Nothing else will keep you going through the highs and lows of publishing.

Thanks for the kind words, Jaya. To answer your questions, I am planning to take Maity to various readerships in India, hence the translations. English language readership is but a fraction of all the books read in India, and I would like to take my stories to this vast reader base. Similarly, I want to take Maity global, hence the non-Indian language translations. I now live in a small town in the suburbs of Toronto, which is a pretty cosmopolitan city. Many of my friends, colleagues and neighbours have read my books, and I was quite surprised to discover that the stories seemed to have crossed the boundaries of milieu. Every story has its own milieu. My Maity stories, for instance, are quintessentially Indian. They have been written with the Indian reader in mind. So, I was surprised to find that people from all over the world enjoyed reading these stories. I can only attribute this to two facts: a) the puzzle at the crux of every single one of these stories is an extremely interesting one (baffling, and yet, interesting), and b) the themes I cover in these stories are universal in nature, the themes themselves are not confined to a specific milieu.

Even the nuances of Indian writing didn't deter them. It was this unexpected discovery that led me to think of this plan. But I also know that my primary readership was, is and will continue to be India. These are Indian stories, and like Satyajit Ray never ever made a film without keeping the Bengali audience in mind (despite being such a global figure), I wouldn't stop writing stories that are quintessentially Indian.

I will fund the entire project myself. When it comes to recovering costs, the books will pay for themselves, and hopefully gather traction. That's the goal. Of course, my main profession is teaching cinema, and I will continue to do that, alongside my screenwriting. Now that I have a degree in screenwriting, and now that my first feature film did so well, I have run out of excuses for not writing more and more films!

2.  Why have you been keen to launch your own imprint?

The first and foremost reason was to have better control - editorial, marketing and commercial. For instance, I would want to publish one Janardan Maity adventure every year, but that may not be the publisher's vision. I wanted to have total control over how and where my book was being marketed. Similarly, I wanted to take Maity stories beyond the novel format - to short stories, novellas, screenplays and even plays. This wouldn't have been possible with a traditional publisher, as their focus is primarily on novels. 

3.  You mention that you have written sixteen books so far, have all the rights reverted to you? Why am I under the impression that you wrote for theatre too?  

Out of the sixteen books I have written, there are translations, non-fiction, novelizations, and my original fiction. Among these, I have taken back the rights to only my Janardan Maity series, all other books are with the respective publishers. As for theatre, I have not written a play so far, although I intend to. I did translate a play once — Abhishek Majumdar's Dweepa.

4.  Which feature film did you write recently? Are the themes of your feature films different to your books?

I wrote Tekka, and it was directed by Srijit Mukherji, who made it in Bengali. It tells the story of a wrongfully fired janitor who takes a little girl hostage in the same office building he was fired from. It is a spiritual sequel to my novel Patang, part of a city trilogy that I have planned. Although the themes of the two stories are different, they are both set in the heart of urban metropolitans, and talk about the cracks and rifts in contemporary city-centric civilization.

5.  When you create a series, do you first develop a series arc or do you work from book to book?

I work book to book, story to story, I don't have a series arc in mind, I would rather let the stories take the two central characters forward in their lives. Having said that, I did plan to create my series in such a way that the individual books (or stories in other formats) can be read and watched in any order. I did this so as to not have any constraints of following a specific order in order to enjoy the stories. 

6.  How will your publishing programme recover its costs? Why are you not keen to explore crowd funding as Brandon Sanderson did? There are so many income generating possibilities now. What is going to be your bouquet offering? 

To be honest, I haven't thought that far ahead. I know I want to do this, because this is the right thing to do, and that's all the reason I need. I do know that if anything, I won't lose money. With the first book that has been published in this new model (The Wings of the Nike - the sixth Janardan Maity mystery), I have already earned significantly more than what I had earned in all the previous books combined through traditional publishing. But like I said, it's not about the money, I just want to have better control over my stories. I want to do what I want with my stories. I have an immense amount of faith in my readers. I know that they will read my stories irrespective of who publishes them - a big brand, or my own tiny brand. It simply won't matter to them.

7.  Please elaborate on your translation initiatives. It is an incubation and innovative process that sounds utterly fascinating. How will you assess the quality of translation in the destination language if you are unable to understand it?

It's a simple model, really. Through my friends, I reach out to translators from all over the world. I send them the original and ask them if they'd be interested in translating it. I offer them 50% of all revenues earned. If they agree, I have their translations read and edited by a second person who my friends have vouched for, and who knows the language. Then I publish them and do my marketing. It's a very simple model; I like to keep things simple.

8.  How did the Hindi translation happen? You commissioned it or was the translator keen to work with you?

The translator reached out to me (many translators do, Hindi, Bengali, Odia, Marathi...) I liked her approach and encouraged her to go ahead. I have a royalty sharing arrangement with my translators. They earn the same amount as I do. All my translators are part of the Cipher family; they literally live and breathe the Maity stories. I would love to have Maity stories translated in several Indian languages.

One of the things I liked was that she came to me with a sample chapter that she had translated. Not only did it make my job easier, she instantly had my attention. I thought that was a very professional thing to do. The other thing I liked about her is that I have known her to be a long-standing diehard fan of the Maity novels. That passion itself is worth its measure of prowess, of which she lacks not one bit. As for the other translators, I am not in a position to talk about those projects at the moment, because we are still in discussion. They are equally passionate too.

 9.  Has the first Hindi translation of your book been published? What has been the reception so far?

Not yet, it has been written and is being edited now. The cover has been released; the book will be published by the end of this year. It is titled 'Ret' (sand), and is the translation of the third book in the Janardan Maity series - 'The Disappearance of Sally Sequeira' - in which Maity and Prakash have gone to the picturesque little village of Movim in South Goa to spend a few days of rest and recharge, but are soon embroiled in a bizarre mystery: the father of a young girl has received a ransom note asking for a huge sum of money in return of his daughter. But the girl has not been kidnapped at all, and is safe and fine in her home. Since I have deliberately designed the Maity series in such a way that the books can be read in any order without any loss of information, I decided to release the third book first.

 10.  The foreign language translations that you mention were brokered by you via email / cold calling or did you travel to specific book fairs? 

Mainly through my friends’ network. Since I don't know the language, I usually look for TWO people who do: one of them translates it, the other reads it and gives me honest feedback. This process takes time, but the translations will be published soon.

11.  Are your publishing initiatives completely human driven or will there be some reliance on AI? 

I am not a big fan of AI when it comes to creativity. Artificial Intelligence has still a very long way to go before it can tell interesting stories. So, to answer your question, no, there would be no reliance on AI at all.

12.  How do you propose to create "an entire ecosystem" around the two characters? Is it possible to share some more details?

By that I mean I would like to have the stories told in all kinds of formats — novels, novellas, short stories in print, but also audio books, audio plays, theatre, television and of course — the cinematic format too. In other words, everyone should be able to enjoy the Maity/Prakash stories, they mustn't remain confined to any single format. Similarly, I would like to do this entire thing in multiple languages — Indian and foreign.