She's sometimes called the Jackie Collins of India. Or the princess of porn. Or even the maharani of mush.

Either way, author Shobhaa De doesn't give a damn.

Fifteen years after she was panned by critics for her first novel, the glamorous author has created publishing history in India: her latest book, Spouse: the Truth About Marriage, sold 10,000 copies within three days of being released.

In a country where it takes authors writing books in English months -- sometimes years -- to sell even 5,000 copies, almost all of De's so-called sex-and-shopping books have been big hits.

"Reuters even did a story on my first book because it had the maximum number of bad reviews in India," laughed the stunningly beautiful author during a recent discussion on her latest book organised by a women's publishing house, Zubaan.

"I could have crawled back into the woodwork then but then I was already three-quarters of the way through my next work. My next book became the mother of all bestsellers. So who cares about bad reviews?"

Certainly not her faithful readers.

De's new book breaks away from her usual formula of sex and high society lives, and instead offers a glimpse on how and why marriages work -- or don't.

Part Agony Aunt and part sex therapist, De dishes out advice on issues central to most Indian marriages such as relations between mothers in law and daughters in law, the travails of a traditional extended family home and arranged marriages.

Her advice to brides who will live in a house with large numbers of her groom's relatives: "Don't buck the system. Subvert it subtly instead. Live in peace, live with a smile on your face."

In a country where urban marriages are under strain, Indians are lapping up her tips.

Written in chatty English with Hindi film songs and titles for chapter headings, she talks about the importance of the "dhak dhak", or heartbeat, factor in a marriage or how an arranged marriage is not for leftovers but an intelligent choice.

"Shobhaa can arguably stake a claim to almost single-handedly creating the Indian mass market segment and emerging as its strongest brand," said Thomas Abraham, president of her publisher, Penguin India.

"All of her recent books have crossed the 10,000 copy mark in the first year of publication. This one has done it again, with one difference. It's crossed 10,000 copies in just three days."

De, one of a growing crop of Indian writers in English, has rarely been away from the spotlight.

The 56-year-old former model first burst into the media about 30 years ago as editor of a Bollywood magazine, Stardust, where she struck a chord with movie-mad Indians with her own brand of Hinglish -- a chatty mix of Hindi and English.

But her real brush with fame came when she dared to write about a subject that people in the land of the Kama Sutra had quietly shoved into the closet: sex.

With titles like Socialite Evenings, Strange Obsessions, Sultry Days, What Women Want and Starry Nights, many of her 14 books were seen as "masala" or spicy writing that romped through Bombay's testosterone-filled high life with sex in airplane toilets, cocaine abuse, lesbianism and sado-masochism.

"What shock factor? Indians do it too -- what's so shocking?" asked De, who also writes a popular newspaper column in which she tears into everything and everybody from author Salman Rushdie to the country's politicians.

"Sex sells up to a point. But bad sex does not sell. And if it's just sex it doesn't sell either. You need more to sell a book. You can get your kicks on the Internet or the phone."

Though she constantly seeks to shrug off her high-society image and sell herself as a disciplined writer and conventional mother of six children, De is often seen as a heat-and-lust author, who the literary world refuses to take seriously.

Some say her in-your-face wit and immaculately turned out looks are her biggest enemies.

"I've always been asked how I preserve myself?" De said during the provocative and lively discussion on her books.

"To that I always have the same answer: "In vinegar'."