Ever since the uncontrollable spread of the pandemic of COVID-19, the Authors across the world and especially the Budding Authors are facing some huge challenges, which are indeed very similar to the “Challenge of Existential Crisis” in many ways!

Well, the first and the ultimate challenge, which the Authors around the globe faced in past and the current year consecutively (2020 & 2021), is the challenge of being published after the mass spread of COVID-19 Pandemic throughout the world. As most of the publishing houses suspended their operations, while the printing presses were not allowed to function due to the working restrictions of the lockdown, which occurred almost in all the countries of the world. This whole scenario badly affected the authors and particularly the budding authors who were looking forward to make a space for themselves in the literary world.

The publishing houses became more choosy and much fewer manuscripts were selected in the year 2020 and 2021 to be published. As now, the publishing houses are having only the window of few months to get the books printed, since the lockdown restrictions are keeping the printing presses closed for a lot of months.

Moreover, this is something, which has affected the Indian Authors much more than the Authors of the other countries. As most of the other countries where the Publishing Industry is huge, got their COVID-19 Cases controlled by the end of 2020 or by the beginning of 2021. While in India, where the COVID-19 cases were in much controllable state in the year 2020, faced tragic second wave of the corona virus in the year 2021. The corona virus cases suddenly were spiked in India (Second Wave) in the first half of this year and again the lockdown restrictions were ordered by the government in order to prevent the spread of the disease. However, these restrictions also prevented the dreams of the various budding authors, who are constantly looking to make their debut as an Author ever since 2020.

In the mist of the COVID-19 Pandemic the publishing industry got affected very adversely, as a result of that the Authors are paying the price!

Another huge challenge, which the Authors are facing nowadays, is the suspension of the various literary events like, Book Fairs, Open Mics, Poetry Recital Shows and Other Major Literary Events. These kinds of events, plays a huge role for the writers, authors and the poets but their cancellation in the lockdown days is snatching away a very large platform from the young writers and authors and putting a question mark on their existence!

Moreover, due to these back-to-back lockdown restrictions, only the essential stores like grocery and medical stores remained opened throughout so that the basic human needs could be fulfilled. Well, this surely made us focus only on the basic necessities, which are required by the human beings to survive. We paid more attention in storing up of the food and medicines to deal with any kind of emergency than any other thing. These things certainly diverted our attention from the world of arts and literature; Majority bookstores remained closed in these months of the lockdown and nobody actually cared about the new releases or even the classic best sellers ones!

Well, with all these factors affecting the work as well as the lives of the Authors, there is no denial that the Authors around the globe faced some real hard challenges to make their space in the literary world. Especially those Authors who were going to make their debut in the past couple of years are facing the ‘Challenge of Existential Crisis.’ Nevertheless, we can hope that in the coming days and years things will get better and all those Authors who surely carry the potential to make it big can come out and shine with their incredible contribution into the field of literature!

Written By NEEL PREET – Author of the Books, Voice From The East (2016); Journey With Time Place And Circumstances (2018) & Indian Defence Files (2021).