Amish Tripathi

Early life

Amish Tripathi was born in Mumbai and grew up near Rourkela, Odisha. He is an alumnus of St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Although originally he wanted to be a historian, he chose a career in finance because it was the pragmatic thing to do in those days. He worked for 14 years in the financial services industry, in companies such as Standard Chartered, DBS Bank and IDBI Federal Life Insurance, before beginning his writing career.

Career

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

The movie rights of The Immortals of Meluha were purchased by Dharma Productions in early 2012. 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.

Scion of Ikshvaku was released on 22 June 2015. It is the first book in the Ram Chandra Series. Like the Shiva Trilogy this one is also a fantasy re-imagining of the Indian epic Ramayana. It follows the story of Ram and is a prequel to the Shiva Trilogy. Scion of Ikshvaku won the Crossword Book Award for Best Popular Award.

On 18 October 2016, Amish Tripathi announced that he will be releasing two new novels in 2017. One will be his first non-fiction book while the other will be the sequel to the book, Scion of Ikshvaku, from the Ramachandra series with name Sita: Warrior of Mithila which was released on 29 May 2017.

Translations

Tripathi's novels have been translated into a number of languages, including Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Estonian, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Polish and Oriya

The reason the books have been translated into a number of local languages is because the author believes that west-focused Indian publishing as a whole is gradually being embedded into the Indian cultural sensibilities. Further explaining his thoughts, Tripathi said "I genuinely believe that 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 where readers are taking pride in their own culture. Another comparative example would be television, where regional language channels garner more TRPs.

In addition to the Indian movie rights sold to Dharma Productions, the international movie rights to The Immortals of Meluha ( and The Shiva Trilogy ) are under discussion. Tripathi is represented by Creative Artists Agency, a leading Hollywood based talent agency.

Influence

All of Tripathi's books (released and planned) are on religious topics since he is a devoted worshiper of Lord Shiva. Amish had turned into an atheist in his youth but returned to faith while writing his first book. 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 ( former Executive Editor of Outlook and Editor of Financial Express ) 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 ( Shiva Trilogy's) success, is his historical research.". In an interview Amish said that the secret behind his success is by visiting Shri Mahadev Mandir. He requests his true fans to do the same.

Sandipan says that Amish's books, like Scion of Ikshvaku can either be read as "a thrilling series that will bring Ram and Sita closer to a lot of Indians, or as an honest analysis and a very intelligent man's musings on everything from Manu Smriti to Milton Friedman, all presented in the garb of a series of adventure novels. That is what makes Amish very special among the few Indian bestselling authors we have"^[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. 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."

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. 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.

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

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.

The innovations in marketing continued with launch of Scion of Ikshvaku in 2015 where again a teaser trailer was launched on YouTube, followed by another book trailer, like in the case of the Shiva Trilogy. In fact, TV advertisements were released during IPL to promote Scion of Ikshvaku, perhaps a first for any book.

In 2016, the author also uploaded another film on YouTube to give readers a perspective on how all books written by him are interconnected, with clues to all futures having been placed within the Shiva Trilogy.

Awards

Amish Tripathi has been awarded the Society Young Achievers Award for Literature in 2013. His most recent awards have been Raymond Crossword Popular Fiction Award for his book Scion of Ikshvaku and the Dainik Bhaskar Readers Choice Award in 2016. He has recently been listed as one of India's "New Icons" by the DNA newspaper in its eighth anniversary special.

Other notable awards include :

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