initiative the word to screen market at the mumbai film festival mami the 2018 edition saw 27 publishing houses participating and over 200 books being pitched the books optioned so far include sagarika ghoses indira indias most powerful prime minister and shashi deshpandes strangers to ourselves the success story is that we made two worlds which were not really speaking to each other meet says smriti kiran creative director at mami in the west it is a norm to mine literature for cinema the oscars even have a category for best adapted screenplay in india the relationship has been sporadic now everyone is hungry for storiesand its not just bigticket authors like salman rushdie whose midnights children is going to be turned into a series who are on the radar earlier producers and directors used to consider just a bestselling author like anuja chauhan or chetan bhagat now even unpublished and selfpublished books are getting picked up says literary agent kanishka gupta who recently sold a debut novelists book for rs 20 lakhthis also means an additional source of income for writers and a shot in the arm for the publishing industry authors make no money out of books unless youre a chetan bhagat and sell 50000 books gupta says most books sell only 20003000 copies but an author stands to earn anywhere from rs 10 to 50 lakhs for film rights and some exceptional deals have even crossed rs 1 crore compare this to book advances which usually amount to a lakhadaptations also give a new lease of life to an old book according to nandan jha svp product sales penguin random house india the sales of sacred games rose five to six times after the netflix series the book was reissued in two volumes with new covers from the series anuj bahri of bahrisons booksellers in delhi says this format encouraged people deterred by the length of the original 968page book to buy at least one volume a hindi version sold well toowriter madhulika liddle whose historical mystery series on the 17thcentury detective muzaffar jung was optioned for a tv series by a major studio in october says the trend can help book sales in the long run if someone whos keen on movies and tv shows likes something based on a book that increases the chances of their buying the book as well says liddle where a book is originally a different language theres the possibility of a translation into the language of the screen adaptation she says as a result authors increasingly ask their agents to pitch their books to production housessome are even writing books with screen adaptations in mind anand neelakantans new novel vanara the legend of baali sugreeva and tara was picked up within two days of its release by dar media which has produced the lunchbox and ugly the book will be made into a multilingual film and the author calls it the biggest single book deal in film adaptation