I’m a hustler, baby
I just want you to know
It ain’t where I been
But where I’m ’bout to go

–Jay-Z, ‘I Just Wanna Love U’

British author Preethi Nair self-published after her first novel was rejected everywhere (thanks, Punjabi Boy). She invented a PR persona out of whole cloth so publications wouldn’t catch on she was a one-woman band. She landed a three-book publishing deal, and the Beeb is filming one of her novels. Here’s the kicker: her fake PR persona was shortlisted for Publicist of the Year. Not content, Nair then turned her fictional life yet another novel. Meta, shameless, impressive!

Preethi Nair was born in Kerala, South India in 1971 and came to England as a child… she worked as a management consultant but gave it up to… become a writer… Jobless and having been rejected by most publishers, Preethi took the deposit out of the flat she was about to buy and set up her own publishing company… Not having enough money for a PR agency, she… appointed… Pru Menon (her alter ego) to shamelessly hype the book… she signed a three-book deal with HarperCollins. Preethi won the Asian Woman of Achievement award for her endeavours and Pru was shortlisted as Publicist of the Year for the PPC awards.

“100 Shades of White”, her first novel with HarperCollins has been bought by the BBC for a television adaptation and her third novel “Beyond Indigo” will be published in August, along with the reissue of “Gypsy Masala”. [Her own bio, natch]

Yes, but how are the books? One reviewer wasn’t impressed:

The cooking metaphor is so overused that, at times, the novel threatens to turn into a recipe-cum-therapy-book; Nair seems unable to mention any foodstuff without ascribing mystical properties to it. [Guardian]

Like Water for the Spicy Mistress in the Guava Orchard, anyone? What is really impressive is how she circumvented the terrible economics and low success ratio of publishing a first novel:

I have a very inquisitive mind and I wanted to know how books were published, why certain books made the bestsellers lists and some underground, obscure books that were brilliant never saw the light of day… there were so many factors based on luck and chance (if someone came across it in the “slush pile,” if a publicity budget would be allocated, if the publishing company were on the same wavelength etc). I decided that only I could do the best job publishing and promoting it… at the end of the day I just didn’t want to leave it to chance.

I set up NineFish in Northampton (where the printers were based) and also to give it a different PO BOX number so it was no way associated by a London address. I sat with the printers and spent a lot of time with them on design work etc, etc. My first print run was 3,000…

I knew at some stage I would promote my own book so I couldn’t use my own name. So I used Pru (this is what my brother calls me) and Menon (my mother’s maiden name). The Creative House because it is such a small bedroom but so bright and filled with ideas….

It was a nightmare. Two of everything. Phones, emails, voices, attitudes, personas. You have to remember, people always thought that they were speaking to the PR woman and they can say things to her that the PR chooses not to relay to the author. Sometimes very hard stuff. [3 AM]

Changing voices, making weird sounds in the background so people would think they were being connected through the offices of the multinational that was my back bedroom, we heard all sorts of comments about the book. A few commented on the similarity of our voices…

The first print run (all my savings) arrived with page 179 missing, the first page of Chapter 13! Press were waiting for review copies and things got so desperate that I had to give them copies with p179 glued in. “Thank you for your proof copy. Awaiting final version,” they emailed.

When press articles finally appeared, there were no books in stores… I learned the art of door to door selling and, armed with a travel card, pounded most of the bookstores in London and pleaded with them to stock the title. Some took the sample copy and put it safely under the counter. Others actually read it and placed orders. Then finally when press interviews and supportive bookstores coincided, there was the oil protest. The creative saboteur had sent a lorry blockade so that the books could not move from the warehouse as orders came in…

The store manager at Books Etc, Finchley had read the book and made it her staff choice. In that one branch it sold in excess of 2000 copies, outselling every major title including the Booker Prize winner and from there it was promoted to other stores… I expected every major publisher to be clamouring at my door but it didn’t happen… I let everything go and began writing again. My second novel poured out of me in six weeks. [Purple Feather]

I don’t know yet whether Nair can write, but she sure can spin a bio.