Interviewer:

You have worked with many publishers. Can you tell me about your experience with publishers?

Surender Mohan Pathak (SMP):

“In India, there is no publisher that is perfect. No, no publisher. The [international] publishers… keep their business transparent and your royalties will come to you. But the local publishers, they cheat… That is why I had to frog and jump from one publisher to other. I cannot get along with any particular publisher for a long time. There is always a problem that arrives and forces me to stop writing for them and I go for another one. It is not like what happens in other countries.. [where an author] will have only one publisher for 60 years…. I have a pattern of going for maybe 50 different publishers. I cannot get along with anybody. I cannot tolerate the rough treatment that a publisher gives to a writer. The writer is not important for them. They try to belittle Hindi language writers, treating them as lesser than English writers… [But eventually,] you can go find somebody else. What to do? I have to write. I cannot become a publisher myself.

…Sometimes I have to compromise with a lesser publisher. Even if there are complications, they are getting the book published. I will even write a book [for] free--if [the publisher] earns [from the book], then they pay me something, otherwise I will not charge them. Why? Because I'm writing for a cause: that people should not forget my name.”

Interviewer:

Tell me about the covers of your books.

SMP:

I am not concerned with covers. That is different trade, absolutely different. And one more thing that is very interesting: it is not necessarily that a cover is related with the text. It will be entirely different, not related at all. There may be a woman on the cover and in the text, you find there is no woman character. The cover is a separate department. They have to see that it is attractive and good for the book. They are not concerned with what is written inside... Any cover will do. It can be same cover on this book or, it can be on [another] book also… I see the cover only when the book comes. I don’t even know what the cover is. They don’t show me. It is a surprise for me but mostly I am happy when the book is published on time.”