The Industrial Complex of Words: A Treatise on the Commodification of Literature

Remember when books were written by - people who actually wrote them? Those halcyon days before every C-list celebrity with a publicist suddenly became a "New York Times bestselling author"? Welcome to the golden age of Commodification of Literature, where the actual writing of literature has become perhaps the least important aspect of "being an author."

In 2022, Penguin Random House India reportedly paid Bollywood star Kareena Kapoor Khan ₹5 crore for her pregnancy memoir "Kareena Kapoor Khan's Pregnancy Bible"—a book almost certainly polished, if not substantially written, by a professional ghostwriter. The ghostwriter, meanwhile, likely received a flat fee amounting to pennies on the rupee compared to the celebrity advance. This isn't an anomaly; it's the business model.

The Ghost Economy and Class Warfare in Publishing

Let us begin with the most damning evidence of literature's complete surrender to market forces: the normalization of ghostwriting. No longer a shadowy industry secret, ghostwriting has become the accepted standard for celebrity "authors" who wouldn't recognize a semicolon if it tattooed itself across their foreheads.

What does it say about our literary culture when the names on book covers function merely as branding devices rather than designations of creative origin? The celebrity memoir, the politician's manifesto, the influencer's "life guide"—these aren't books so much as they are merchandise, content widgets extruded from the great publishing machine with assembly-line efficiency.

The publisher says to the celebrity: "We'll give you seven figures, and in return, you'll lend your name to a book you'll never write." The celebrity says: "Where do I sign?" And somewhere, a literature professor sheds a single, perfect tear.

This ghostwriting industrial complex reflects a broader class stratification in literary production. According to the Authors' Guild of India, the average Indian author earns less than ₹30,000 ($360) per month from their writing—barely above minimum wage in metropolitan centers. Meanwhile, in South Delhi and Mumbai publishing offices, seven-figure advances flow freely to cricketers, Bollywood celebrities, and politicians who already possess wealth, fame, or connections. The thoughtful Indian novelist is dying; long live the celebrity brand extension.

The pattern repeats throughout the literary ecosystem. Unpaid internships at prestigious publishing houses in Delhi serve as gatekeepers to publishing careers. English-medium education—often inaccessible to the majority of Indians—becomes the de facto credential for "serious" writers. A 2021 survey by the Indian Literary Review found that over 70% of authors published by major Indian publishing houses were graduates of elite institutions like St. Stephen's, JNU, or foreign universities. Is it any wonder, then, that Indian literature being produced reflects increasingly narrow slices of human experience?

From Cultural Artefact to Quarterly Earnings Report

Publishing houses once functioned as cultural gatekeepers, curating works based on some semblance of literary merit. Now, they operate more like hedge funds, assessing manuscripts not for their contribution to human understanding but for their projected ROI. The question is no longer "Is this good?" but rather "Will this sell?"

Since the 1990s liberalization, when independent Indian publishing houses began their gradual absorption through corporate acquisition, the industry has transformed. Today, just five major

publishing conglomerates control approximately 75% of the Indian English-language book market. These aren't publishers in the romantic sense; they're divisions of massive media entities with shareholders to please and quarterly targets to hit.

This consolidation creates an inherent conflict between publishing challenging ideas and serving corporate interests. When Penguin Random House India considers a manuscript criticizing crony capitalism or media monopolies in the subcontinent, it weighs not just potential sales but potential embarrassment to its corporate overlords. The invisible hand doesn't just guide the market—it occasionally covers the market's mouth with a firm "Chup!"

These market pressures produce what critics call "airport literature"—books designed for frictionless global distribution, stripped of cultural specificity that might limit their marketability. As one anonymous senior editor at a major publishing house confessed to The Guardian in 2021: "We're not looking for the next James Joyce; we're looking for the next James Patterson."

The Platform Imperative: Content Without Context

"But what's your platform?" asks the weary agent to the brilliant new novelist. Translation: "Your work could resurrect Shakespeare and make Proust seem like a hack, but without 100K Instagram followers, darling, you might as well be shouting into the void."

Literature has become the domain of the pre-famous. The quality of your writing matters infinitely less than your pre-existing claim on public attention. Publishers now function less as talent scouts and more as talent poachers, circling the realms of politics, sports, and entertainment, ready to offer lucrative book deals to anyone with a built-in audience.

This explains the bizarre phenomenon of books by people who clearly have nothing to say but enormous platforms from which to not say it. Meanwhile, writers who have devoted their lives to the craft languish in obscurity because they foolishly focused on writing well rather than building their "personal brand."

Consider the case of influencer books: Instagram star Kusha Kapila's debut reportedly received an advance ten times larger than critically acclaimed writer Janice Pariat's latest novel. The message to aspiring authors couldn't be clearer: dance reels > decades of literary apprenticeship.

This platform obsession intersects perniciously with questions of who gets to tell which stories. Publishers may claim interest in "diverse voices" but primarily when those voices speak in ways that are easily packageable for mainstream consumption. A 2020 study by the Bombay Literary Society found that only 8% of English-language books published by major Indian houses were translations from vernacular languages, despite Hindi, Bengali, Tamil and other Indian languages having rich literary traditions. The industry wants narratives of marginalization that satisfy voyeurism without demanding structural change—Dalit trauma as entertainment rather than catalyst for social transformation.

Digital Feudalism in the Kingdom of Words

As Amazon and Flipkart capture nearly 60% of all book sales in India (and an even higher percentage of e-book sales), authors and publishers alike have become vassals in a new feudal system. These platforms control access to readers, dictate terms, extract surplus value, and reshape literary production to suit their business models.

Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform exemplifies this dynamic—offering "freedom" to self-publish while simultaneously devaluing written work through predatory pricing structures and

encouraging a content treadmill that prioritizes volume over quality. Indian authors find themselves producing not at the pace of artistic necessity but at the velocity demanded by algorithms designed to maximize engagement.

This accelerated production schedule creates its own environmental consequences. The Indian publishing industry pulps approximately 30 million books annually—unsold copies destroyed rather than distributed to the country's chronically under-resourced public libraries. Celebrity memoirs with built-in obsolescence and trend-chasing novels contribute significantly to this wasteful cycle. The commodification of literature leaves literal mountains of waste in its wake, from Delhi's Ghazipur to Mumbai's Deonar.

The Attention Economy: Literature in the Age of TL;DR

Literature increasingly competes in an attention economy where all media forms battle for finite cognitive resources. Publishers respond by favoring shorter works, more sensationalistic content, and books designed for "discoverability" rather than depth.

Average reading times have declined precipitously—a 2022 study by the National Book Trust found Indians spending just 7 minutes per day reading books, down from 20 minutes a decade earlier. Meanwhile, the average Indian smartphone user spends over 5 hours daily consuming digital media. Publishers have responded by treating books less as extended arguments or immersive experiences and more as content snippets competing for fragments of attention.

This has profound implications for democracy and public discourse. As social commentator Santosh Desai warned, "A society that communicates primarily through viral WhatsApp forwards gradually loses its capacity for complex thought." The celebritization of authorship accelerates this problem—readers engage with books as consumer products or extensions of celebrity culture rather than as interventions in serious public discourse.

Resistance in the Margins

Independent publishers continue their valiant struggle against market forces, championing writers whose primary qualification is the quality of their prose rather than the size of their Twitter following. Literary journals persist in publishing short fiction that will never trend on BookTok. Small bookstores continue recommending works of genuine merit rather than just the front-table monuments to celebrity.

Take Delhi-based Yoda Press or Chennai's Kalachuvadu Publications, which continue publishing acclaimed literary works despite operating on a fraction of the budget of major houses. Or consider independent bookstores like Atta Galatta in Bangalore and Trilogy in Mumbai, which have shown surprising resilience—creating literary communities despite steep competition from online retailers and shopping mall chain stores.

But these outposts of literary resistance operate at the margins, while the center is increasingly dominated by product rather than art, by content rather than literature. They persist through a combination of nonprofit support, cultural prestige, and the stubborn dedication of people who simply refuse to accept that literature should be reduced to its market value.

Epilogue: The Reader's Rebellion

Perhaps the final hope lies with readers themselves. The market responds to demand, after all. If we refuse to purchase celebrity ghostwritten memoirs, if we seek out and support authors of genuine

talent regardless of their platform size, if we demand substance over marketing—perhaps the tide can be turned.

Until then, we watch as literature is reduced to content, as authors are reduced to brands, as books are reduced to products, and as reading is reduced to consumption. And we rage against the dying of the literary light—one snarky blog post at a time.

Because in the end, words still matter. Writing still matters. Literature still matters. Even in an age when the book business seems determined to forget that fact.

With Rage, Akhand Yaduvanshi