hetan Bhagat's One Night @ the Call Centre (ON@TCC) has been a sensation in Indian publishing history. The book, thanks to some smart marketing initiatives and slick promotion, sold an unheard-of - for an English novel published in India - one lakh copies within a month of its launch. The book is already into its ninth reprint, though the pace has slackened - it has just crossed the two-lakh mark.

The first Indian book to have a TV commercial pushing it when it was released in October 2005, One Night @ the Call Centre has pushed even bestselling authors like Shobhaa De to the background. Just like the collective global marketing hype helped J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince sell over one lakh copies in India in a single day, the comparatively unknown Bhagat's book managed to achieve that figure within a month. "These are," says Kapish Mehra, managing director, Rupa & Co, "reasonably big numbers for the Indian market. What is important to note is that the time period within which these sales have been achieved." Rupa & Co is the publisher of the book. ... more