Namesake the movie also pushes book sales

If the movie is expected to do well why should the book lag behind?

With Mira Nair's Namesake released across India on Friday, retailers are stocking up on Jhumpa Lahiri's Pultizer prize-winning novel of the same name that serves as the script for the movie.

With a brand-new cover jacket featuring Tabu, Irrfan Khan and Kal Penn, leading characters of the movie, publishers hope to cash in on the anticipated heightened public interest in the movie.

The publishers, HarperCollins, India, the book's publishers say they are excited with the release of the film as there has been an upsurge in demand for the novel. "With the movie being released, we expect there would be renewed interest in the book and thus repackaged and re-released the book as a film tie-in edition," says Harper Collins CEO P M Sukumar.

The book which first entered Indian market in September 2003 has already been a bestseller in the country averaging about 15,000 copies a year, he says. The publishers are also upbeat with the response that the film has received so far in the US.

"The film has been received very well in US and we expect the same here. The book has already been a bestseller here, we are expecting a huge response, we have already sold about 8,000 copies of the movie tie-in edition just released," adds Sukumar.

Manpreet Ahuja of Oxford Bookstore agrees with the anticipation around Namesake. "The sales of Namesake has accelerated over the last few days and it happens whenever a movie releases, the books related to the film witness a rise."

However this is not the first time that book lovers have made haste in buying books. "It happened recently with Nishabd, just around that time when the movie was about to be released, Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov did very good business.

The new covers with film stars just make the book more eye-catching and you have to expect it is also about presentation." Harry Potter books sell more whenever the movie is about to be released.

However, it is for the Namesake, the story is a bit different. The book store owners are already very happy with the kind of response the book received so far. "The book has been doing very well already, the movie release has not done much since the book itself is a bestseller and it will continue to be," says Dolly Sabharwal of the Full Circle book store.