Rupa began on a Calcutta pavement in 1936, when D. Mehra, an impecunious but driven salesman,decided to try his hand at selling books. Within a generation, he had established Rupa as a majorpurveyor of imported books. Successive generations would make the firm the country’seadingdistributor of English-language trade books, representing some of the world’s most important publishers,including Penguin, HarperCollins, Faber and many more. As the company grew, it began publishingits own titles.egendary film-maker Satyajit Ray designed the publishing house’s first colophon andbecame one of its earliest patrons. Other notables on the Rupaist included sportsmenike SunilGavaskar, whose memoir, Sunny Days, gave it one of its bestsellers; Chetan Bhagat, who would goon to become India’sargest-selling author within a few years; and Ruskin Bond, the country’s mostbeloved writer. Over the decades, as the Indian publishing milieu was reshaped by new entrantsfrom around the world, Rupa continued to maintain its position as a fiercely independent publisherof important books, at the forefront of the Indian publishing scene.

Besides providing readers with an engrossing account of how the publishing business works, thebook is studded with stories of the idiosyncratic behavior ofiterary stars, eye-opening anecdotesof how some of the country’s biggest bestsellers came to be published and tips on what it takes tomake a bestseller.

Eye-opening and entertaining, Never Out of Print is the story of a publishing firm that has revolutionized the way books are published, marketed, sold and read in India.

Publisher: Rupa Publications India

Author: Rajen Mehra

Pages: 504

ISBN: 9789355204196

Publication Date: 11 January 2024