Autobiography writers
Chronicling a lifetime
To learn from in a few hours.
Indian stories are suddenly of interest. The IIT Alumni Council is supporting over 300 of them. They even have a Generative AI tool to accelerate their creation. Yet, most of them need an author to do it better, write it faster and most important – to get it to a best seller. Every second day, I get a call from a author seeking a meeting to share details of my personal interaction with the protagonist. I usually avoid such meetings unless the subject calls me himself, I do have something worthwhile to share and most important – if I am comfortable with the authors. And whenever I see a new author on the horizon, I myself reach out to them to get to know them.
I believe autobiography authors do a great service to society. They painstakingly create something that can be a catalyst of change, a textbook of knowledge and a repository of information. The moment goes away – the picture stays, the story become immortal. What is particularly heartening is the willingness of corporate leaders to take time out, read the manuscript and give their testimonials.
Two of India’s best autobiography authors are Geetika Saigal and Priya Kumar. Both are passionate, articulate and put in months of effort to get the story right. Priya works as an external author thus sparing the protagonist of legal complications. Geetika works as a co author. Both models are good.
Human time of a celebrity author is no longer cheap. Our 300 book series for IIT Alumni has a budget of Rs 250 crores. And this is after using AI. It takes a year to put it all together. You would also need to arrange for travel for the co author or author to meet various people who crossed paths with the protagonist.
And book sales will not recover these costs. Selling OTT or video rights will. One of our IIT Alumni autobiographies has just been contracted for over a million dollars. The IIT Alumni stories when completed – 300+ of them – will probably generate a billion dollars in viewership revenue. About the same as Avatar – which is the largest grosser on the history of Hollywood. The more unseen and unheard – the more valuable.
Everyone has a story to share. Few are OTT material. Some are priceless for a select set of readers. Stories have to be seen in the backdrop of their times and context. A good author can explain a very complex subject in a very simple, easy to understand way. Geetika and Priya are not engineers or sportsmen. Yet they have done such a brilliant job of sportsmen autobiographies. Geetika’s book on polo and Arjuna Awardee Col Garcha hit the best seller list in no time. Priya’s book on Gopichand did brilliantly as well.
