And the success of Asokan brought many more publishers into the market. Soon there were hundreds of them published every month - Dhina Boomi monthly novel, Malai Madhi from
Kumudam, Kunkuma Chimizh from Kunkumam, Navarathnam from Makkal Kural, Crime Novel, Novel Leader, Novel
Ulagam, Ungal Junior, Mekala, Idhayam, Kalpana, Detective Novel, Sathya, Sujatha,
Nandhini, Super Novel……… the list of the most popular ones is not complete as yet!
But the demand became so high that with the passage of time, it became difficult to find newer novels for publication every month under a plethora of brand names vying with each other to pull the reader to its side. The necessity arose to dilute the standard, to add masala to capture particular slots of readers. Novels by a few readers were selling like hot cakes. Devibala, Rajesh Kumar, Pattukottai Prabhakar, Balakumaran, Indira Sowndhararajan, Suba, Prabanjan, Anuradha Ramanan, Tilakavathi, Vimala Ramani, Ramani Chandran, to mention a few.
The phenomenal growth of this new segment attracted newer and newer writers who threw their lot into the fray. Many became 'adapted children' of a specific publication. For instance Balakumaran became the favourite of Pon. Chandrasekar. His novels were published every month under different banners from the same house - Palsuvai Novel, Novel neram and Crime Novel.
Rajesh Kumar became the 'the most favoured' writer with Asokan. Rajesh Kumar soon completed a thousand novels - a record, going by the numbers. Writer(s) Suba started their own publication. And then, the periodicity was reduced. Monthly once became fortnightly and even weekly.
It was convenient for the writers. You do not stop with writing a short story. Just add a little more dough and bake it a little big. And You can sell it as pocket novel. More remunerative. You can get about Rs.10,000/- per pocket novel. Why waste your efforts in short stories that do not even fetch one-twentieth of that amount?
The reason for the success behind the pocket novels was the racy style and varying categories for targeted audience. Feminist writing - shut your eyes on quality - for office-going women; family drama for the housewife; a mixture of crime and soft-porn for youth…… Soon a pattern emerged and the publishers started applying pressure on writers to write particular types of stories to attract the targeted segment. And that was the last straw that broke the camel's back. The tedium of reading the same kind of stories again and again caused a fall and publishers found an easy solution - to increase the pornographic content. At a particular point of time, it was difficult to distinguish pocket novels form porno literature.
And with the advent of satellite TV, the sale of pocket novels fell further down. The writers who were supplying the grist to the mill turned their horses towards the satellite channels. There are serials and mega serials!
Despite all this, the pocket novels still have a sizeable share of the market. Novels by Balakumaran, publications of Asokan and a few others like Malai Madhi still have a good market. There are 37of them in the market, to be precise. And still a few make their entries and exits. And the pocket novel enthusiast is always ready to turn his eye towards them!
