Chicken Feed for the Writer's Soul

An amazingly bizarre bunch of interactions over the last some months proves one more of my favourite points. We Indians are our own worst enemies. We can shout ourselves sick about how the white man exploited/exploits us - but put a certain type of Indian in a position of even a little bit of power and he will try to dabaav anyone he can.
Let me start at the beginning - over 2 years ago, a whole bunch of us writers (many of us published) were asked by representatives of Westland Publishing India (related in some way to the Tata Group and Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing LLC.) to contribute a story or piece for a proposed book Chicken Soup for the Indian Teenager’s Soul. For free! Yes, I kid you not, these women representatives of this Indian wing of chicken, asked for the stories for free. Just like that. Plain begging. I swatted them off saying no way. After a while, one of them writes again, saying pretty please, with sugar on top, can you do one for us...ok we will give you Rs 500. Now I’m not good at being firm with beggars, and since the offer was sweetened slightly by a) allowing me to use the piece elsewhere too b) the writer’s name and email ids appearing at the end of the book (which could mean that other publishers or nice people may contact you by the millions, since the book promised to sell by the millions) – I said ok – here’s a piece.
I got a grand little email saying Dear Ms Dange your piece has been accepted...etc. After that, utter and complete silence for almost 2 years. Whenever I saw one of these women online, I would ask her what happened, and she would make a saddy-waddy face (the opposite of the smiley face) – in lieu of any explanation. So I just let it go at that.
One fine day, all of us get this breezy email asking for contributions for ANOTHER book – Chicken Soup for the Indian Army, or some such. That’s when some of us saw red.
One of the writers sent a mass mail to all the writers of Teenage Chicken, or whatever that first one is supposed to be, and to the publishers, saying what the hell, guys. When and where is our book? In reply to this, he got some airy and most unapologetic reply from one of the women, including a rap on the knuckles for ‘invading the privacy’ of the other writers. That’s when quite a few of us descended on these morons, and told them what was what. In all this, please note, neither the mother nor the father company whoever they are, have ever bothered to intervene. I wonder if they even know what is going on.
Anyway, a few days later, Westland India nonchalantly sends us all a contract to sign. In that contract, for the Chicken sh** amount of Rs 500 that they were going to give us, they wanted us to sign off every right under the sun, inter-galactic rights and possibly our mothers thrown in too for free. It was a hilariously exploitative contract, seriously. We were to gift them rights to this edition, foreign editions, TV rights, film rights, translation in all Indian language rights and the right to use our bathrooms whenever they wanted, or some such thing.
Of course some of us said Arrey? To which there was no response from them, and then the offer to only amend the contract very slightly, which didn’t change its exploitative and comprehensive nature at all.
Many of us have seen many contracts in the publishing world before – and this one takes the cake. The representatives of course keep claiming that it is a most ‘common’ and ‘standard’ contract. Well if nothing else, they have a good sense of humour, these women at Westland India.

Now some of the writers who contributed were not at all keen to take any panga, as they were very very keen to see their name in print, bobbing around in all that chicken soup. Understandable, but dangerous and unprofessional. And begging to be exploited again and again. (Maybe then there will be a Chicken Soup for the Exploited Writer’s Soul). As one of the smart people amongst us pointed out, by signing that document, we would not only by giving away a lot for nothing, but opening ourselves out for all kinds of future liabilities.
Anyway, to cut a long story very short, expectedly, Westland simply ignored all our mails about behaving more professional and fair, and proposes to simply go ahead and publish this book without our pieces.
Some of us have withdrawn our stories, and that’s that – happy not to scratch around in the dirt like silly chicken. However, a word of warning to anyone who gets carried away looking at the big ticket publisher name, if they ever contact you for your writing. Stay away. The Indian Westland people seem to be a law unto themselves – they will not honour what on the Chicken Soup site is clearly written: $200 for your contribution and 10 copies of the book (we were offered one, yes one copy of the book - I get more copies of books that I edit!). And they will be rude, sarcastic, go to sleep for many months, and finally do what they please. Seeing your name in print is always good, and I’m sure the book will be launched with much hoopla, but you really don’t have to be so needy as to pick up the crumbs that publishers like this throw in your direction.