Indian writer Amish Tripathi has been paid a whopping $1 million in advance for his upcoming epic trilogy, setting a new record.

Indian writer Amish Tripathi set a record of being paid the highest amount of money in advance to an Indian author when publishing house Westland paid the author $1 million in advance for South Asian rights to his Shiva trilogy.

Tripathi's latest work, "The Oath of the Vayuputras", which is the last of the mythological fantasy series the author has just completed, has sold half a million copies in just the opening day of sales.

The new trilogy has not been given a name yet but Westland's chief executive Gautam Padmanabhan is sure it will do well. The deal was made Monday.

"The offer was made on the basis of not only the past sales record but also in our belief in Tripathi as a writer and his ability to deliver another blockbuster trilogy," Padmanabhan told AFP. "The advance we have paid is the largest by an Indian publisher for South Asian rights alone."

The deal has made headlines, especially in the Indian publishing industry, which has increasingly become a productive market for English-language books.

"The success of his books is empowering for other Indian authors. They need to create their own success story and the deals will follow," Shobit Arya, founder of Wisdom Tree, another publishing house, told AFP. "Even for Tripathi, money followed success, and not the other way round."

Tripathi, on the other hand, confirmed that he has not yet started working on the new trilogy but has a few ideas in mind.

"I have four or five ideas and I'm not sure which one I'll develop. But my first three works have now sold over 1.5m copies and brought in more than 400m rupees in sales (£5m), which I'm told is pretty good," said Tripathi.