And don’t want to be one either?
Hmm…
This is how a lengthy conversation explaining what Pothi.com is ends with many people.
Yes – one problem of our business is that it takes lot of time to explain to people that we do not fit into any pre-defined category from traditional publishing. Most importantly, Pothi.com is not a publisher!
What does this mean?
- Books published through Pothi.com are published by their authors or other people/organizations behind them – not by Pothi.com.
- Pothi.com does not do any ‘selection’ of the content except to ensure that it is technically fir for printing and that it is not against the law or our terms and conditions.
- The entire responsibility of content, its accuracy and quality, its preparation lies with the author/publisher, not with Pothi.com. Same is the case with Book Design, Marketing, Promotion and Sales.
What does Pothi.com do then?
Pothi.com provides tools and services to help you through all these steps of publishing. Meaning
- There are detailed information and guidelines on preparing your book
- There are tools for formatting and cover design (e.g. blog to book tool, cover design wizard)
- There are reasonably priced services for editing, designing etc. if you need help in preparing the book
- There is an e-commerce store where you can list your book for free and sell it without bothering about logistic hassles of printing, maintaining inventory and shipping them
- etc.
What’s the future direction Pothi.com will take in that case?
- Create More technological tools to make the publishing process easier and financial burden minimal
- Figure out some innovative ways to help authors widen the reach of their books
- Develop Technological Solutions for filtering out good content from bad
Ouch! So, you will never, never be a publisher?
Pothi.com – the platform will remain Pothi.com the platform. It will not become a publisher. We may or may not have a parallel business as a publisher, but that would be under a separate imprint most likely. We haven’t decided anything on that front yet.
That’s sad! Pothi.com can’t help me become the next Chetan Bhagat.
In all likelihood you are right. Exceptions can occur, but Print on Demand based self publishing model is not optimized for creating best-sellers. It works better for books with niche audience or publications for small, targeted audiences. It is also good for casual publishing.