Amish Tripathi

Amish Tripathi
Tripathi in 2015
Born	(1974-10-18) 18 October 1974 Mumbai, India[1]
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, IIM Kolkata
Genre	Fiction
Notable works	The Immortals of Meluha The Secret of the Nagas The Oath of the Vayuputras Scion of Ikshvaku
Notable awards	Society Young Achievers Award for Literature[2] India's New Icons[3] Celebrities Top 100 list[4][5][6][7] Communicator of the Year Award 2014[8] Man of the Year 2013 by Radio One[9] Pride of India 2014[10] India's First Literary Popstar 2015[11] 50 Most Influential Young Indians[12]
Spouse	Preeti Vyas
Children	Neel Tripathi
Website
authoramish.com

Amish Tripathi (born 18 October 1974), is an Indian author, known for his novels The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras. The three books collectively comprise the Shiva Trilogy.^[13] His debut work The Immortals of Meluha was a bestseller, that broke into the top seller chart within a week of its launch owing to his creative marketing strategies.^[14][15] The Shiva Trilogy has become the fastest selling book series in the history of Indian publishing, with 2.5 million copies in print and over Rs 70 crore in sales.^[16] Forbes India has ranked him among the top 100 celebrities in India four times in a row, in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.^{[17][18][19][20][21]} Amish was also selected as an Eisenhower Fellow, an exclusive programme for outstanding leaders from around the world.^[22]

Early life

Amish Tripathi grew up near Rourkela, Odisha.^[23][24] He is an alumnus of St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.^[17] Although originally he wanted to be a historian, he chose a career in finance because he couldn't afford the former.^[25] He worked for 14 years in the financial services industry, in companies such as Standard Chartered, DBS Bank and IDBI Federal Life Insurance, before starting his writing career.^[26]

Career

The Immortals of Meluha, Tripathi's first mashup novel and the first in the Shiva Trilogy, was published in February 2010.^[27] The second book in the series, The Secret of the Nagas, was released on 12 August 2011, and the third installment, titled The Oath of the Vayuputras, was released on 27 February 2013.^[28] The trilogy is a fantasy re-imagining of the Indian deity Shiva's life and adventures.

The movie rights of The Immortals of Meluha were purchased by Dharma Productions in early 2012.^[29] Also The Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas have been released in UK through Jo Fletcher Books (an imprint of Quercus Books) in January 2013 and November 2013 respectively.^[30][31]

His latest book, Scion of Ikshvaku was released on 22 June 2015. It is the first book in the Ram Chandra Series.It is a fantasy re-imagining of the Indian epic Ramayana. It follows the story of Ram and is a prequel to the shiva trilogy.

Awards

Amish Tripathi has been awarded the Society Young Achievers Award for Literature in 2013. He has recently been listed as one of India's "New Icons" by the DNA newspaper in its eighth anniversary special.^[32]

Other Notable Awards include :
Communicator of the Year Award 2014^[33]
Man of the Year 2013 by Radio One^[34]
Pride of India 2014^[35]
India's First Literary Popstar 2015^[36]
50 Most Influential Young Indians ^[37]

Forbes India has ranked him among the top 100 celebrities in India four times in a row. In 2012,2013,2014 and 2015.

Book Adaptations

Tripathi in 2012

The Shiva Trilogy books have been translated into English (South Asia), English (UK), English (US), Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Assamese, Malayalam, Kannada, Estonian, Spanish, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesian and Oriya^[38]

The Immortals of Meluha is available in 16 languages: English (South Asia), Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, English (UK), Tamil, Malayalam , Marathi, Kannada, Estonian, Spanish, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesian and Oriya^[38]

The Secret of the Nagas is available in 14 languages: English (South Asia), English (UK), Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Assamese, Malayalam, Marathi, Spanish, Portuguese, English ( US ) and Tamil ^[39]

The books have been translated into a number of local languages ^[40] with the author believing that publishing as a whole is gradually being embedded in the Indian business sensibilities.^[41] Further explaining his thoughts, Tripathi said "I genuinely believe those five years from today, we will have a situation when other languages will account for higher sales of books than in English. That is the big change happening in publishing—it is taking pride in its own culture than knowing other cultures like in television, where regional language channels have more TRPs."^[41] Other than the local versions, the books have also been released in the Amazon Kindle version, available in India and UK.^[42]

In addition to the Indian movie rights sold to Dharma Productions, the international movie rights to The Immortals of Meluha are under discussion. Tripathi is represented by Creative Artists Agency, a top Hollywood based talent agency, for movie deals on the Shiva Trilogy.^[43][44]

Influence

All of Tripathi's books (released and planned) are on religious topics since he is a devoted worshiper of Shiva.^[45][46][47] Amish was initially an atheist^{[48][49][50][51]} and believed in Charvaka Hindu philosophy.^[52] His grandfather was a Sanskrit scholar and a Pandit in Benares. Tripathi says that he gathered most of his knowledge of Hindu theology and religion from his grandfather and his very religious parents. He believes that religiosity and liberalism go hand-in-hand in India.

Sandipan Deb writes of the philosophical depth of Amish's books: "Through all Amish’s books flows a current of liberal progressive ideology: about gender, about caste, about discrimination of any kind. And what I believe separates him from the horde of Indian writers who have jumped on to the mythology bandwagon after Shiva’s success, is his historical research."^[53]

Marketing

In the Indian market where large sales volumes of books are rare, Tripathi's books have been enormously successful. His marketing skills and strategies have been widely credited for the success of his novels.^[54][55] He has stated, "It’s a fallacy to think that a good book sells itself. I can give you a long list of books that I think should have been bestsellers but nobody’s ever heard of them. My management background along with marketing experience helped me devise effective strategies for promoting my book."^[54]

Weeks before The Immortals of Meluha hit the bookshops, Tripathi printed sample copies of the first chapter and persuaded bookshops and chains to give them away free to anyone who approached the cash counter, creating a buzz.^[14] He also made presentations to big retail chains, visited smaller retailers, met local distributors and regularly sent email updates to various stakeholders. He targeted social media websites for promoting his debut novel, and made a trailer film with a background score reportedly by Taufiq Qureshi and uploaded it on YouTube.^[55]

For promotion of his second book, Tripathi created video trailers of film production quality,complete with visual effects and screened them at multiplexes before^[56] movies such as the Shahrukh Khan starrer Ra.One.^[54] He believed that this would work as the audience that visits theatres is the same that read his books.^[57] Three other trailers were released on YouTube.^[58]

In 2013, a music album called Vayuputras, an original soundtrack based on The Oath of the Vayuputras, the final book of the Shiva Trilogy, was released. The album featured songs by artists such as Sonu Nigam, Taufiq Qureshi, Palash Sen, Bickram Ghosh among others. This was the first time ever that an original soundtrack was made for a book series.^[59]

References