Barefoot In the head

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Friday, November 06, 2009

The curious case of TMH

In 2006, I published my first and only single author book, 'The Hole In The Wall'. It was published by Tata McGraw Hill. They said I would get a royalty if my book was sold. They sent me 4 copies and I was delighted. That was the last I heard from them. I never saw the book in any book shop. After a year or so, I got a mail from them. Congratulations, they said, your book has won the best book award from the Indian Society for Training and Development. I joyously asked them how many copies had been sold. They said none so far. What about the 20 or 30 copies that friends of mine have bought? I asked. We don't know about that, probably rejects, they said. I went to the Newcastle University library and found 4 copies of the book. The University of North Carolina had a reference to it, maybe they got a reject copy too. Someone wrote from Japan. I bought your book, he said, but it is not available from India, I got it from Singapore. Three days ago, on a free day in Brasilia, I went into a book store and typed my name into their computer. Out popped a portugese translation of my book. I bought a copy.
I am so proud of my book. It has never sold a copy.

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11 Comments:

Blogger Dr. Ritu said...

gosh,doc, did you not confront the publishers?? obviously, they are eating all the money. This is absolutely not done!! I think you should confront them.

November 6, 2009 at 3:12 PM  
Blogger Venkat Narayanan said...

Lesson is: If the content has proven value, self-publish.

November 6, 2009 at 4:11 PM  
Blogger Mabel Quiroga said...

One of these days, you will pop into a bookshop in Spain or any Latin American country and you'll find a Spanish translation of your book. Then you could write to Tata Mc Graw Hill and tell them "thank you very much for providing me with a very profitable marketing strategy. I certainly couldn't have done it without your help"

November 6, 2009 at 5:48 PM  
Blogger Suneeta said...

Well....not just elsewhere in the world... but even some libraries in Pune have a copy. I must grant that they were not easy to get after the first few... and follow ups with TMH proved futile.... I wonder why? But then again, no matter what they do to keep it off the shelves and out of the bookstores.... information on your work continues to spread!

November 6, 2009 at 9:00 PM  
Blogger John Dayal said...

Welcome to the club, Sugata

November 7, 2009 at 6:15 AM  
Blogger Kandan said...

Doc, it is quite strange to see such a breach of contract from companies like Tata McGraw Hill!

Nevertheless, I am happy to learn that the book is available in major university libraries abroad; and also available in Portuguese language.

It looks like you have signed the royalty contract for Indian editions only; and that’s why they are promoting the book only abroad but not in Inida :-)

I think you should give a copy of the contractor to an attorney and sue the publisher.

November 7, 2009 at 7:53 AM  
Blogger prasanna said...

oh but I bought a copy , but now i dont see it. There is no way we can keepatab on that . one of book developed At the SnDT dept by me was choosen for operation blackboard for all india distribution , but the publisher claimed he had sold only 30 copies !:)

November 7, 2009 at 8:21 AM  
Blogger elizabeth_anne said...

We are everywhere :-)
Such injustice hurts
amitiés from France

November 22, 2009 at 1:02 AM  
Blogger the Hanna said...

Van Gogh never sold one painting. Yet, they are worth so much now.

The story of your book, prooves the content of it. Brilliant!

Your work is revolutionary, and hopefully, education will catch up with your findings.

September 8, 2010 at 8:28 AM  
Blogger Opspin said...

Seems you can buy this in India (but they only ship to india unfortunately)

I wish hardcover books in Denmark only cost Rs. 260! ($6) with shipping, I don't even think I can ship a book for that!

Amazon says the book is out of print and Google Books doesn't have a preview, if you want the book to be known, put it on Google Books, for the world to see, since its out of print it won't cost you anything and the world will have benefitted from it, plus Google could probably then translate it into indian on the fly and all those Pink Floyd kids of yours could read about themselves!

October 2, 2010 at 1:04 AM  
Blogger Douglas Blane said...

How about we write another book together, bringing it up to date, and try to get it published in England? I'm Douglas Blane, the TES Scotland features writer who interviewed you ahead of the Scottish Learning Festival. Article here: http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6058263
You can find my email address at the Glasgow University link on this website: http://www.realscience.org.uk/newcontact.html

October 3, 2010 at 7:42 AM  

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