As I strolled out of my hotel room into the vast expanse of the Juhu Beach, I could not for a moment stop and stare at the Ragpicker who was scanning the sand and the beach for broken plastic bottles and bits of trash as she went about her daily chore collecting rubbish from heaps of sand. There were stray dogs dancing on the thin waves that lapped the sea as men and women strutted on the beach walking briskly, some jogged in their t-shirts and shorts others just did their morning exercise.

The beach was clean today much cleaner then it has been on previous occasions, there was a stall where a coconut seller went about selling coconut water as the young and the old walked casually on the beach some barefoot trying to soak in the moisture in the sand. The rains of July are well and truly in place and Mumbai sees heavy showers the temperatures have dropped and the atmosphere is good and more conducive to fun and frolics.

Enjoy the morning snaps of the Juhu Beach.

The eerie serenity continues as streets of Mumbai remain desolate especially at night. I decided to venture out at 3 am to find some smokes for myself and managed to catch the eye of two cops coming on a motorbike from the other side as I ventured out of the gate of my large and spacious hotel which has kept me safe in its bosom for the past few months. The Pandemic is not receding as yet as more and more people become sick due to the virus. I was told to go back and was given a warning for not wearing my mask at night. The cops checked my bag and then with a warning asked me to go back into my hotel room. It is safe to say that people are still being asked to stay indoors a friend has been trying to come to Mumbai from Punjab but is still stuck as he is trying to get all the paperwork done so that he can take an interstate taxi to come to the maximum city as flying has its own hazards and that is quarantined for 14 days. No one wants to end up in a hospital or a public ward coughing and spluttering for an unknown virus that has no cure.

The atmosphere in my room is tranquil as I am feasting on good food and my hygiene situation is A grade, so I feel safer than most in this country, but then the virus can strike anyone at any time no one is totally safe from its impact.

Went for a walk on the beach in the morning just to get the blood circulating in the body, Juhu Beach did have some crowd but it was minuscule as people were taking brisk walks in the morning. But the state of the beach was pathetic and tardy with litter and garbage all across the sandy beach as the sea waves lapped up everything, I walked for a few minutes but the dirt was an eyesore and I decided to walk back to the safety of my room.

Ashish Parasher my buddy these days landed up in the evening to give me company if it wants for him my days in Mumbai would have been slow and boring. We did our occasional banter and trash talk and managed each other’s egos. I was especially intrigued by the new money chants that Ashish shared with me, these are chants that focus your mind on money and how to invite wealth in your life through visualization and affirmations. Something that does work if done in a focused and dedicated manner. But for most, it is just a mind fuck one other way of fucking your head. It is like chanting a mantra and wishing that the object of his chant will manifest in your life.

This is an age-old technique of applying focused attention, though, and affirmation to will something and make it appear indoor life. It works for some but not for all as it requires a lot of brainpower and intense feelings directed for something.

I still await the sale of my next two books as I move to make bundle packs out of my ebooks.

So now what is a release agreement you ask? Well, every platform gives its consent that they do wish to release a certain piece of content or digital movie. It is an in-principle agreement that one needs to get signed from a platform or the film distribution company these could be like Eros or Fox Star. The release agreement states that the production house and the distribution company both agree in principle that the project or the Title will be released by them and that the production house can in Principle begin work or could have already begun work on the said uninterrupted movie project. It is an assurance that they back the project, but this is not the stage when the. Money is released.

The release agreement has a project’s confidentiality clauses and other such jargon that indemnify itself from any damages due to the nonexecution of the project.

The format contains a place where you can place the Bible, in this case, the book along with the concept note, the screenplay of the project. It also has clauses that make sure that the production house or the Studio has not done any other deal for the said IPR with any other third party.

As per the release agreement, it is an in-principle agreement that the production house can begin work on the project.

Now a new and innovative way of selling your books as an author is through bundled deals. Here you can make bundles of your books and sell them as packages. As a pack of three or four books of different genres. These are bundles that can have a higher price but since they are sold in bundles they will have greater appeal to the reader and may add better value as he is getting books of different tastes and styles.

This way bundled deals are a great way to push your books off the KDP shelf. Try Bundled deals as a way of promotion to push further and get more customers. That way you can charge a premium for the bundle. You can also sell them as Anniversary or Celebration Packages. So with my books, you can make a few bundles.

OTT Bundle: Rs 500

 yes, sir, I killed my Dad, I also slept with Rashmi Verma, Party Girl

Self Help Bundle: Rs 500

Survival, Blogging for Gold, Nad, Blogging fro Diamond

Travel Junkie: 500

Travelthon Tales, Out of Africa, Antarctica Diaries, Yeh! Hie India, Russia With Love

It is a great development with the innovation of the Right to Sell Contract By Ashish, which I had hailed as a new innovation in my previous post. Now the main thrust of this contact is that it binds the seller of the book into a long term relationship and if you bundle it into a two or three-book deal it further solidifies the relationship with the author who holds the IPR. Now let’s look at this contract from the perspective of both sides.

The Buyer: The buyer gets the right to sell the content over an extended period, the contract is an announcement to everyone in the industry that the user is the single window source from the rights of the content, so now no one else in the market can peddle the rights of the book. That is a definite advantage if the contract is for a longer period the buyer feels assured that he has enough time to profit from the IPR property. The IPR can then me sold further like a mutual fund or a bond that sells I the stock market. It is not necessary for the buyer to make a film. Or any content out of the IPR or the Book, he can just sell it to the next production house or studio ate a premium make his cut and not produce the project. In that way, IPR’s can be traded in the market like Bitcoins and it may never make it to the halls, but the buyer is profiting from it nonetheless by selling it forward. So it is like a three-year mutual fund all linked in and the buyer might not see it through as creative product.

The Sellers: The seller, in this case, the author of the book would want a contract that is of shorter duration and a money schedule that gives him his money as fast as possible.The longer it takes for the money to come to him the less liquidity he has and the more time the buyer has to sell. For adherence to a payment schedule, the seller can add a penalty clause if the payment is not made in time. That way he can safeguard his liquidity if he enters a long term deal with the buyer. Bundling two or three books is also a way to take advantage of the buyer’s grace that way you have two or three books that might move faster off the shelf as it is being sold through a single window.

The  Lock and The Key: As of every contract in a relationship in life there is a lock and key system there are clauses that bind you into a long term contract but at the same time there are ways of getting out of the contract. You can give notice to the buyer and return any amount with interest accrued. This situation will arise if the buyer has taken a long time to sell the IPR or Someone else approaches you with a better deal. In that case, you can ask the new buyer with a better deal amount to loan you some money which you can pay to your first buyer with interest and free yourself from these obligations.

So you see at the end of the day in true reality contacts are nothing but toilet paper they just give the buyer and seller phycological peace that they have an obligation to each other. But at the sometimes both parties know that they can at will at any time exit this obligation. More then contracts meeting of minds and hearts is important once that happens the IPR can further develop into a digital movie or piece of content that further enhances its value. If the buyer and seller share a common vision and have the required momentum and passion to see things through then the project will make it to the cinema halls, otherwise it.

Now that I have written many books the most fun thing about being an author is trying to sell the books so that the stories can be adapted into a digital format. I have for the past three months understood and learned a lot about the sales process and people involved in selling the content, something I hardly paid attention to during my first stint In the city as an actor. I learned about IPR rights contracts and deal structure after selling the rights of my first book ‘ Yes sir I killed my Dad .” Ashish and I spend endless hours trying to derive a process and methodology of putting an uninterrupted movie project together, how to structure and finance the creative team, and the movie-making project.

One interesting processor contract that Ashish has been able to build is the Right to Sell contract. Here the author gives his consent to a prospective rights buyer to sell the adaptation rights of the book in the market to a digital platform exclusively. This way the production house which is generally the buyer agrees to sell a tiger book in the market for a stipulated period of time if till then they are not able to sell the story the author gets his rights back and can look for someone else. This contact also has a payment plan with the amount and stipulated time frame when the payment will be released.

The advantage of this for the author is that the market knows the single window they need to approach to buy the rights of the book. With a PR announcement that can be made clear to the public and the digital platform community at large.

The author doesn’t have to run around every production house in Mumbai with his book, he can relax and concentrate on what he knows best and that is to write new books and search for new stories.

The Production house that signs the right to sell agreement knows that Tehri is no multiple entities running around the market selling the rights of the same book. They have in a way locked up the author’s content for a stipulated period of time till the production and the movie go on the floor.

The lock-in period can vary from one year to 3 years depending on the scale and production value of the content that is being made on a tiger adapted book. The right to sell is a great way to professionalize and solemnize a partnership between the author and the rights buyer. Here you can look at bulk deals also where you pitch the buyers a package of two or three books bundled together and a fair price or at a discounted price. That way the books will move faster off the KDP select list.

I came to Mumbai four months back armed with a bag full of 23 books packed with good stories from all around the world. I had 6 books on travel 1 in poetry 5 self-help books 1 book on food and travel 3 fiction stories on spirituality, home dispute, and Aghodi cult. Out of all the books in my KDP select repertoire the books that buyers and prospective buyers have shown most interest on is Yes sir I killed my dad, this has already sold to Day-tee Productions. The other two in line to be sold are Party Girls and I also slept with Rashmi Verma.

Needless to say that the primary content themes that are most desired by the youth and the platforms fall under murder, drugs, sex, and decapitation. This seems to be the primary content theme that people want to watch today and the people get what they want. The market in this space is driven by this predominant theme. Which is a reflection on what the audience in India and to some extent the globe binge on?

Our minds are driven by dark themes we want to fantasize about things that have been forbidden to us by society at large. Serial killers, hacking, and murders ignite our visual appetites, all of us have a dark side, and these themes in a way help us to connect with our dark side in a harmless way though the OTT visual medium.

We as people fantasize about sex all the time and that is a major theme of content that sells along with violence and gore most web movies or specials carry these predominant themes and these are the easiest to sell for new authors like me who have just jumped into the market. So if you want to sell your books and stories make sure you have a huge dose of content that revolves around these themes.

These are exciting themes that add some rape, transgender angle, child molestation, and Psychotherapy with twisted shrinks and burnt of coke whores  , you guessed it you have a perfect cocktail of an uninterrupted web movie. The more bizarre the better it will sell and the more it will stick in the mind of the viewer who has your undivided attention.

So young authors make sure you keep your content around these themes they will sell well and sell fast in these times.

Nineteen my new book that is positioned as a pandemics tale has just been officially released on amazon.com and through the KDP select program, priced at Rs 299 it is a steal with an esoteric and vibrant cover. Nineteen is a Novel that traces the journey of Four main characters Yamini Kaul the head of a startup BioTech company called BioFizz as she struggles to find a vaccine for the COVID 19 virus. The story is based on the backdrop of the COVID -19 Pandemic in Mumbai. Zubeda Parker an upright and ethical reporter who covers the pandemic through her unique story angles at grave personal risk for her news Channel GoodMorning news. Sanjeev Gupta who is a co-founding partner in the company grapples with his own inner fear and claustrophobia as he attempts to take Bio Fizz to an IPO after the pandemic is over. Above all it is the tale of Danpani the Srilankan Mystical monk who is out on a quest to save humanity, but as his master told him his fate is such that his Glory goes hand in hand with his doom. Will the company BioFizz find the mercurial vaccine cure and above all will the prophecy of Dalpani’s master Kalpani come true. Read on and find out as city and the entire world grapples with a disease that has no cure and the nearest cure is at least a year away. As humanity stays locked indoors and contemplates its fate, will the species survive the virus attack, find out more as you flip the pages of this exciting novel.

The Chinese symbol for the number 19 is the art design I have used as the cover symbol of the book it is Nineteen written in the Chinese language. The coronavirus strand is at the background of this symbol more or less like a faint watermark.

I will be running a free one week offer where you can download the book for free and enjoy reading it through amazon.com and kdp select, you can also download the kdp app and read the book on kindle on the mobile itself. The book has been edited by Sankalpita she is the top book blogger on the planet running her own book blog called bookgeeks.in

It is also one of my longest novel with 37,000 words long it is 132 pages in length on KDP. Their edit quality will be far more superior than my previous books as great care has been taken to edit it and improve the copy and the story format.

Dreaming is what I do all day making bubbles in the air or sandcastles as I walk on the beach in the morning. The boundaries of what is real and what is surreal have diminished or probably never existed in the first place except in the mind which was always reflecting my past something that has gone by. As I go about making stories into digital content I feel as if I am at the right place at the right time as if things are just happening the way they should, seamlessly without any effort or strain. The virus situation has further added to the quiet serenity that seems to have decided upon my mind and soul. It is a feeling of fuzzy warm energy that seems to have surrounded me giving me a sort of a halo, a feeling of being protected by a higher force.

My friend Ashish keeps me occupied with further dreams as we try and crack the digital OTT code trying to build a system and method that will help us build and generate high-quality digital content at an affordable price, using technology and analytics data we can create a seamless process and structure that can churn content out with ease as we sign to tell our stories to the world at large.

Digital content is here to stay and the virus has opened up the digital space wide open with so much of binge-watching at home, new content is required every day as platforms load their stories for all of us to watch in our homes, this is the cheapest and most effective way to deliver content to the homes. One after the other OTT special movies are being announced and lunches with huge stars.

There is talk of training new writers to write more books that can be seamlessly made into an entertaining film. My head goes tizzy just thinking about the large unexplored opportunity and creative space that stares me in the face.

There is talk of the two-book deal and three-year lock-in contracts, I am learning about IPR and contractual obligations. All I want is now enough money every month to keep staying in this lovely hotel and keep writing my stories. Without this, I will go mad and insane, but yes I have well and truly sunk into this Bollywood space and my hotel is a testimony to that. It is the favorite of the Bollywood crowd and being in Juhu it’s close to Bandra and Lokhandwala. After three months of meandering and groping around OYO rooms and the other hotels in the city I have, I feel found a more permanent abode in room 562 of the Marriott. For I how long I am yet to find out, but one thing is for sure Mumbai has cast its spell on me and I wish to stay back here much longer much much longer. Till then I will keep making castles in the sand and then erasing them again to build new ones.

The Marriott Juhu has been my abode in Mumbai for the past month or so and I have been building dreams in my room for endless days and nights. At times just blankly staring at the wall paintings in my room, just in front of me is a large acrylic painting of young monks with their bald heads wearing the orange robes staring at the Buddhist wishing wheel which swirls around, Tehri is Buddhist scriptures painted in Pali as the painting is full of orange and yellow hues. The painting to the left of my bed is rectangular and another work of art done on acrylic with brush paints. It shows the face of a man, a large red face staring away the background is grey and tinted with orange color with a brown texture to it.

There is a smaller square painting that is almost a replica of the rectangular painting here to the face of a man appears with a jagged nose, the face is painted light Red with an orange tint to it. The painting is hung over the pot but stands out in the ambient lamp lights that light up the bathroom and the shower cubicle. The white marble with grey and black grains reflects the orange light of the lamps and illuminates the bathroom even more.

This coupled with slow-moving travel videos on the HD TV in-front of me, along with tiger sounds of vibrating meditative music which I listen too often as I connect my laptop to the Bose speakers in the room, really make the room very peaceful and serene. It helps to focus, think, and above all just be.

When I get bored of writing or just watching videos on the net I stare right in-front at the large window that looks into the sea, which adds to the tranquility and stillness that prevails everywhere in the room as it slowly seeps into my soul and then into my creation.

My imagination and my words twist and turn as images and moving scenes from the past and the present invade my mind as I try to focus on the content creation task in-front of me every day. Little by little, bit by bit page by page I move forward, some times stopping to think, sometimes just contemplate.

My days mingle into nights and the afternoons turn into deep siesta’s as I spend endless hours just staring at the ceiling with my eye closed as I try to go into myself and read out to the stillness in my soul, where there are no knots or twitches. I have no fixed routine but do get a lot of idle time to just be with myself, occasionally being disturbed by phone calls and visitors, but then that is only on weekdays.

Most of my time is spent on building dreams, Bollywood dreams, dreams of making movies and web-series, based on my book. That keeps me going strong and motivated, I get a sort of rush every time my new book is released or a new interview gets published or a new contract or book deal I sign. I am satisfied that Marriott and the endless bubbles of dreams are just what I want at this point and everything looks and feels just perfect.