When Influence Trumps Talent: The Bitter Truth of Indian Publishing
5/31/20253 min read


I am personally torn on this particular topic. Been on the fence for a while but I guess one has to pick a side on this one. It doesn't matter if the one you choose is right or wrong. One cannot always be and remain at the crossroads.
So recently there was one book release that caught my attention. It was Too Good To Be True by social media influencer Prajakta Kohli. I was amazed to see Harper publishing this below-average, more-than-a-cliché rom-com. And that’s where I really felt hard for the talented writers out there crafting epic story after another, some of whom never get a chance in their lifetime to be noticed and picked up by a publisher, let alone someone as established as Harper itself.
I ask a simple question. Let go of her main career, her brand as a content creator, her die-hard following she has built who will blindly follow her to that desert as well. If she did not have an established audience and a platform on social media, would Harper have given a second look at her manuscript? Would someone even pick her draft and finish till the end? The answer, I believe, is a resounding no.
Amazon went a step ahead and garnered her Winner of the Amazon India Popular Choice Debut Book 2025 Award. Another feather equally questionable, suggesting that popularity, rather than literary merit, is increasingly becoming the metric for success.
I checked out of curiosity. While she had managed to get more than 1000 reviews on Amazon (I presume it's mostly coming from her PR and Instagram followers, given the speed and volume), the Booker Prize winner ‘Heart Lamp’ by Banu Mushtaq had received just 150 reviews. Of course, I agree both belong to different genres, meant for different audiences, but this stark contrast just says a lot about our society and our insane desire to be associated with something that is already shining.
Prajakta Kohli might be many things. But one thing she certainly is not: a talented writer. It’s the hard truth – her debut book would not have got a second glance had she not already established a fan following and audience. I honestly have my doubts if she even wrote the book herself. At least Ankur Warikoo has openly accepted his books are written by a ghost-writer (after a few dramatic revelations). It’s a difficult pill to swallow and buy into the story that they have the time (or discipline) to create something of that magnitude alongside their demanding careers.
Influencer publishing is on a steep rise in India, and publishing houses are not leaving any stone unturned in tapping existing audiences to sell books. Fashion Bloggers, Fitness Coaches, Finance Experts, Comedians. Pretty much anyone having a decent following on X, YouTube, Instagram, and publishers are knocking on their doors and saying: Let’s make a book, baby!
Where does this leave authors who are, well, let’s call them real writers? People who learned the ropes of writing, who can actually string a sentence without AI or a ghost-writer or a team of editors.
A majority lot of influencers use ghost-writers to achieve their vision of adding ‘author’ to their bio. Why? It helps them enter the world of so-called respectable voices online. They also get to post some cute snaps of them ‘working hard’ on their ‘manuscript’ and showing their inner poet. Don’t even get me started on their ‘Top 5 Book Recommendations’.
Yes, it’s a free world. They could print an empty book for all I care. And one might argue that these books introduce a new demographic to reading, which is a positive. However, this influx of average books suddenly flowing into the market makes it incredibly difficult for lesser-known authors to be noticed, precisely because they do not have an established audience – they spent their time doing guess what? Writing.
The success criteria of a bestseller book are drastically challenged. It also puts severe pressure on authors to do much more than writing. They need to work and establish an audience before their books can hit the market. This raises an important question: If writers are forced to establish a brand and create a following online, does it impact their creativity levels? Does it dip into their artist's time, bringing down the quality of their writing? Let’s face facts, books written by influencers have a very low chance of becoming a classic. They will make noise and slowly fizzle out (not without minting the needed money, of course).
Influencer Publishing is undeniably changing the writing dynamics. For publishers, it’s a tempting shortcut to guaranteed sales, but for the integrity of literature, it poses a significant threat. We will need to wait and watch if talented writers can find a way to pierce from this influenza crowd and make their written art sell solely based on their writing. Influencers may have the audience, but they certainly do not have the talent to spin good story after story. Eventually, an authentic and original story is what the audience will keep coming to, and it is this truth that will ultimately determine every writer’s genuine success.