I was at a coffee shop in Mumbai. In tables around me sat about 30 of the city's young and cool, guys with gals, dudes with prudes. My friend Sumit, a self-made brand marketing guru, told me that these were the real audience for The Book of Answers, my first novel, which was recently shortlisted for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize. "They read Chetan Bhagat," he said. "And they would love you."

I did a spot poll right there, going to each table and asking the following five questions —

1. Have you heard of Chetan Bhagat?

2. Have you read his novels?

3. Do you like his writing?

4. Would you read his next novel?

5. Have you heard of C Y Gopinath?

All 28 people at the café had heard of Chetan Bhagat, and about 60% had read his books. Every one of them thought his writing was terrible, but added that they would still buy his next novel. None of them had heard of C Y Gopinath.

The Chetan Bhagat of the west for the moment is E L Jones, whose Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy is a runaway best-seller. Variously called mommy porn and Twilight fan fiction, the book — a non-stop paean to sexual submission and domination and pleasure through pain — seems to appeal to young and successful single American women in their 30s. Apparently what they like more than anything after a hard day of making profits and laying off men, is to get spanked by their stay-at-home husbands. Jones, like Bhagat, is candid that the writing is mediocre and neither has literary pretensions.

I am best described as a struggling author, despite my fifteen minutes of fame last week when my novel was shortlisted for the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize. I wonder — why must a serious writer struggle so much more for so much less than an E L Jones or a Chetan Bhagat? And why, despite all their labors, will they never sell, while much less competent authors sell in the millions?

I have a theory about why bad writing sells more and faster than 'good' writing. Today's reader is a turner of pages who reads in the train and on the potty. He or she needs a story that can be read staccato, where even skipping a few chapters will make no difference. A book that does not need a companion dictionary, does not make allusions that require eclectic knowledge to understand, and one that is not built on nuances and hints. Broad strokes, easy English, straight talking, no literary handstands or somersaults. Above all, a book that does not talk down to the reader but stays poised at his or her reading and speaking level. These seem to be the requirements.

Come to think of it, wouldn't Hemingway's best writing fit that description? Why is he a master and Bhagat an imposter then? Is unpretentious straight writing necessarily poor? How are E L Jones or Chetan Bhagat different from Hemingway or Jhumpa Lahiri? Or me, for that matter?

Do writers who want to survive through writing need to dumb down their work and cultivate a line of sellable trash?

Talk to me.

The Book of Answers