Frequently Asked Questions

Self Publishing means publishing of a book by the authors themselves, rather than by established third-party publishers.

Pothi.com is a provider of tools and marketplace for self-published books. Books can be created, sold and bought here.

For the basic service of uploading and selling the books on pothi.com writers don't have to pay anything. We share profits with writers after the book has been sold. In future, we will introduce paid value added services for the writers who want them. But they are going to be strictly optional.

Writers themselves. When uploading their book, writer has to specify the amount they want to earn per copy of the book sold. The book is priced accordingly and the amount goes to the authors account after the book has been sold.

After the author specifies his/her earning on the book, we add our margin to it. This depends on the author's margin. Currently it is equal to the authors margin or a minimum. The minimum margin is 30% of the production cost with an upper limit of 30 Rs. What this means is that if the production cost is less than 100 Rs, the minimum margin is 30% of the production cost. For the production cost of 100 Rs. and above, the minimum margins is 30 Rs. If the cost of production is 60 Rs. for example, our minimum margin would be 18 Rs. If the cost of production is 200 Rs. our minimum margin would be 30 Rs.

A book is priced according to the following formula:

Price = Production Cost + Author's Margin + Our Margin

Production cost depends on the physical properties of the book, like number of pages, page size, binding type etc.

Author's Margin is the earning specified by the author while uploading his/her book.

Our Margin is equal to the author's margin or a minimum. The minimum margin is 30% of the production cost with an upper limit of 30 Rs. What this means is that if the production cost is less than 100 Rs, the minimum margin is 30% of the production cost. For the production cost of 100 Rs. and above, the minimum margins is 30 Rs. If the cost of production is 60 Rs. for example, our minimum margin would be 18 Rs. If the cost of production is 200 Rs. our minimum margin would be 30 Rs.

You can use our Price Estimator to calculate the approximate price of your book by specifying the properties and your margin.

Any applicable taxes and Shipping charges are extra.

Pothi.com has the rights to fulfill all the orders received while the book is listed on our store. Publishing a book through Pothi.com does not restrict the use of content by the writers in any other place. They can put the content on their blog, publish it elsewhere, pretty much do anything with it. Authors can take their book down anytime. However, for technical reasons, it may take up to two days for the take down to be effective. Pothi.com reserves the rights to fulfill any orders placed during that period.

In the basic service, which is free to use, the writer is responsible for the creation, formatting of the book as well as cover. We will introduce some paid options, where the writers can buy these additional services.