One Sachin Tendulkar Opus to cost $ 350,000
With or without a bat, Sachin Ramesh Tendukar continues to make records.
For the first copy of the Sachin Tendulkar Opus, the most expensive book ever on cricket, someone has already bid a whopping $ 350,000 while the tome's Facebook site has five million members - India's second most popular individual page after musician A R Rahman's.
For the uninitiated, the Opus would weigh a cool 37kg, comprise over 700 pages of 18x18 inch dimension each, and more than 1,000 photos - many of them rare and unseen from Tendulkar's personal collection - and it'll have three gigantic gatefolds, each measuring an incredible 79x20 inches.
Besides, Tendulkar, 38, has participated in special photo-shoots for the first-of-its-kind magnum opus on a cricketer that will have limited copies, each of which will be hand-bound and encased in a fine leather and silk cover. Besides the 10 marquee copies, the Opus will also come in different editions as well as in a digital version.
Opus Media Group CEO Karl Fowler said that about 95 per cent work on the ambitious project has been completed and that they are waiting for Tendulkar to hammer his 100th ton, of which he is just one short.
"A few years ago, someone had bid $ 250,000 for copy No. 1. We're beyond that. It's gone up, above $ 350,000. Copy No. 1 we are going to do something special with. We've people who pre-ordered the Tendulkar Opus four years ago," Fowler told Mail Today in an interview in New Delhi.
"Also, we are going to do something with the first 10 editions. We are still thinking what the price will be. They'll be special for certain reasons. They'll come with some added features. They may come with some memorabilia from Sachin's playing career," he said as a teaser.
Two years ago, Fowler had told Mail Today that Tendulkar "... has given us eight of his bats that he has used. We're splitting the wood from the bats and inlaying the scripts of the wood in between two pieces of red leather. So you can see the wood, a long strip, and that'll be inserted into the book as a page marker. Every time you touch a page you are touching history."
Fowler is equally excited by the heavy traffic inflow on the Sachin Opus Facebook page. "It's now surpassed five million members. To go from zero to five million in six months is unheard of. That's something that allows us to connect with millions of Sachin fans in an equal way. It's actually, officially, the second largest Facebook site in India in terms of members (after musician AR Rahman's). We are taking 1,50,000 new members every month. We estimate that when we get to February it'll be No. 1 in India," Fowler said.
"In terms of sites for individuals, rather than groups, the Opus Facebook is in the top 50 in the world at the moment. It's phenomenal. We're giving bits on Facebook about the progress and the making of the Opus."
Fowler said within a few months of Tendulkar scoring his 100th century the book would be ready. "Certainly within 60 days. It'll be one of its last major elements. All Opuses are hand-bound; we don't use machine binding. We're one of the few publishers in the world who still use hand- binding because of the quality that we need in size and scale," he averred.
Besides the write-ups by a variety of people, the photographs will be the backbone of the Opus. "We've done a number of exclusive and special photo-shoots, both in India and in London," Fowler said.
Tendulkar has also been shot with a seven-foot tall Polaroid camera, one of the world's largest that takes seven men to manoeuvre it.
Fowler said that Xenon Texeira, one of the world's leading photographers, was commissioned to shoot Tendulkar. "He actually joined when Sachin came to Wimbledon men's finals two years ago. We shot Federer half an hour after we shot Sachin, and it was a day of greatness in many senses," he recalls.
