http://www.newkerala.com/news.php?action=fullnews&id=21877
Rahul, Priyanka reap returns of best-selling author Nehru By Liz Mathew, New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru's literary works, turned over to private publishers last year, have emerged bestsellers. And the books, re-born with a more stylish and contemporary look, are bringing rich returns for their two main royalty owners - his great grandchildren Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. Books written by India's first prime minister, divided equally between Congress president Sonia Gandhi's children, would continue to bring them royalty for 20 more years - thanks to amendments in the copyright laws by Indira Gandhi. The copyrights of Nehru's writings, published for decades by Oxford University Press and the National Book Trust and funded by Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund and Children's Book Trust, were handed over last year to Penguin India Ltd. At a time when the Congress party was not doing so well in predictions ahead of last year's general election and the Nehru-Gandhi-family bashing was at its peak, Penguin secured the rights to publish three of his most celebrated works. According to Penguin, the books have remained in the bestsellers' list for more than a year. Informed sources said Sonia Gandhi was not "happy at all" with the way the books were doing in the market at the time. "People close to Nehru felt that the books did not get the treatment they deserved. They were printed on inexpensive paper and the presentation was very bad. They looked so boring," said a source close to the Gandhi family. Besides, the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund had to spend a lot of money on publishing them without few returns but huge losses. Penguin officials say they revamped the look. "We gave the books a more contemporary look and made them more attractive," V.K. Kartika, executive editor of Penguin India, told IANS. "In 'Letters from a Father to His Daughter', we added illustrations and it became attractive to a new class of people. We actually re-invented the product," said Kartika. "Now they are seen as classics." The publishers are happy at the response to the new editions from across the country and abroad. "They are doing wonderfully. In fact, we found it difficult to meet the demand initially," Kartika said, adding that it has helped the Nehruvian works to return to popularity with a bang. But the Penguin editions of "The Discovery of India", "An Autobiogaphy" and "Glimpses of World History" are much more expensive than their previous avatars. For example, Nehru's autobiography was available at Rs.100 till last year. The listed price of the Penguin edition is Rs.350. Penguin sells the hardback edition of "Glimpses of World History" at Rs. 1,250 while the book used to cost less than Rs.500. But Kartika said that the price of the books was commensurate with the quality and packaging and perhaps less than the standard pricing of Penguin publications. "But the huge demand has offset our costs," she said. After the success of the books, Penguin published "Two alone, Two together: Letters between Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (1922-1964)"(edited by Sonia Gandhi); "Letters from a Father to His Daughter" (with a foreword by Priyanka Gandhi Vadra) and "Before Freedom: Nehru's Letters to His Sister (1909-1947)" (edited by Nayantara Sahgal). The copyrights of these literary works have been divided among Rahul and Priyanka. While the copyright of "Two Alone, Two Together" belongs to both, the text copyright of "Letters from a Father to his Daughter" rests solely with Priyanka. The copyright of "Bunch of Old Letters - Being Mostly Written to Jawaharlal Nehru, Some Written by Him (Selected and edited by Jawaharlal Nehru)" belongs to Priyanka. The copyright law deems that literary works of authors would come to the public domain 60 years after their death. Although international copyright laws restrict the time for the author's family to hold the rights to 50 years, rules in India give 10 more years, thanks to the amendments made in them by late prime minister Indira Gandhi. She had amended the Indian Copyrights Act to enable Santiniketan, her alma mater, to hold on to the rights of the literary works of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore longer. Tagore's literature thus came to the public domain in 2004, instead of 1994, which would have happened had the act not been amended. "So the Gandhi siblings will continue to get 10-15 percent royalty on the sales of these books till 2024," an official in one of the previous publishing groups commented. "Although the Gandhis were well within their rights to change the publisher, it was not proper for them to make the works of a nation builder so expensive," he said. -- Knowledge is power... share it equitably! http://www.gnu.org
