Writing a book is a serious endeavor. A book can be considered to be of one of three categories: fiction, non fiction, scholarly. Fiction is a product of one's creative imagination and the ability to express the feelings and thoughts in words. It is the result of specially gifted people. Hemingway , Steinbeck, Kafka or Kalki Krishnamurthy had no PhDs but they created works that will be read and re read as long as humanity exists. Non fiction is based on one's experiences and observations. This is like expanding one's diary into a readable format. What it takes is the ability to record one's daily experiences and a reasonable expressive power in one's language of choice. For example, I could write a book on what my experiences were over the past 30 years in USA. I would take the case of V.S Naipaul as a reasonable example, at least based on his celebrated book The Area of Darkness. That leaves us with scholarly books. These require a fundamental level of scholarship in the field. For instance, I could write a non fiction on my life in USA,. but I cannot write about how USA was created, the Pilgrims, the native Americans, the impact of World War 2 on shaping USA etc. I do not have the scholarship to justify my book. Good examples of scholarly books are those by Feynman on physics, Pauling on The Nature of the Chemical Bond or Chandrashekar on Black Hole. They had the necessary scholarship to write what they did. I do not know to what category the myriad books on Carnatic music that have emerged recently belong. If they are intended to be scholarly, especially when names of Western Classical musicians or musicians of other genre are freely quoted, one assumes that they have satisfied themselves that they have the necessary scholarship that is not limited to “Google search” and “Wikipedia’. After all "extra ordinary" claims call for "extra ordinary" proof. I wish all the authors best of luck.
Professor Rama Krishnamurthy