Announcements – Page 6

Destination for Book Lovers

Quiz question for bibliophiles: What’s better than browsing books in your favourite bookstore?

Answer: Browsing a million books in the Bangalore Book Festival!

Yes, that’s right, a million books. The Bangalore Book Festival is a synonym for book mania! Visit stall after stall of books, get introduced to new publishers, get juicy discounts, and take in the fragrance of newly printed books fresh off the press.

For the eighth year, the annual Bangalore Book Festival is set to occupy Palace Grounds in Bangalore from 12-21 November 2010. Only second to Kolkata, the Bangalore Book Festival, organised by the Bangalore Booksellers and Publishers Association and Klub Class, is the largest book fair in the country. Over 300 stalls have been taken by publishers, bookstores and distributors from all over India and will have on offer publications in English, Kannada and other Indian languages. That’s not all, there will be entertainment as well, with light music, folk dances, book reading sessions and special poet meets being held after six every evening of the fair.

Authors, you get to put your books before a huge number of book lovers—organisers expect 2 lakh visitors this year. Mr B S Raghuram, BBF programme director, says he expects a business of Rs 15 crore to be generated this year.

Pothi.com has been a regular participant at the Bangalore Book Festival since 2008 and will be there this year, too. The Pothi.com stall will help independent and self-published authors showcase their books to increase visibility and generate sales.

This is a rare opportunity for authors because people come to the fair from far and wide expressly to look for new reading material and with money to buy it. There is fierce competition, so authors should get their books out there where people can see them. Authors published through Pothi.com can visit here for more details. Other authors, head here. Book your space quickly so you don’t lose this special opportunity.

COMIX.INDIA Vol. II on Preorder (20% Discount)

COMIX.INDIA Vol II is now available for Preorder. There are a total of 12 entries in the volume containing 320 pages. Preorders are open till July 12, 2010. You can use the coupon code POCICOL and get a 20% discount!

Since this vol has grown up to 320 pages, we also created 2 smaller books each having 6 entries. If you want, you can buy one of the two smaller volumes which contain 164 pages each. These smaller books are available at 10% discount.

Check out more about COMIX.INDIA on their website.

COMIX.INDIA Vol II only became possible because of the combined effort of a dozen contributors, an editor and a designer. Read on to know more about this awesome bunch. Should we call them the Daring Dozensome?

Continue reading “COMIX.INDIA Vol. II on Preorder (20% Discount)”

Pothiz – July 2010 issue is out!

Pothiz - July 2010 Check it out at http://pothi.com/pothi/magazine/issue/july-2010/

Here is a reproduction of “From the Publisher’s Desk” section –

Dear Readers,

It goes without saying that we take immense pleasure in presenting to you the inaugural issue of Pothiz – Pothi.com’s online magazine. We see Pothiz as a natural extension to our efforts of providing the young and unheard voices a platform where they could engage, be heard, get valuable feedback directly from their readers and flourish into wonderful wordsmiths. While Pothi.com remains an open platform for a variety of publishing endeavors, Pothiz is going to be a more curated collection of creative writings. Our hope is that this collection will encourage readers to delve into and discover the hidden gems in the proverbial “long tail” of writing.

We received close to a hundred entries and selecting a few for your reading pleasure was not an easy task. At Pothi.com, we particularly respect the fact the each individual has his or her own taste in reading and writing. So, apart from the entries that made it to the main issue, we are also going to put up some of the other entries we have received on the website. Do read them and give your praises or constructive feedback to the authors through comments.

Coming to the entries included in the issue, the Featured entry ‘The Soul is a Battery’ delighted us with its interesting and novel take on ghost stories. It entertains, it frightens and it leaves you nodding in agreement with the feelings of the characters. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Amongst other stories, ‘The Matrimonial Clock’ will resonate particularly well with the urban career oriented professionals. It is a story of how they have to cope with the conflicting needs of matrimony and career. ‘Thirteen Hours of Fame’, ‘Practical Lessons’ and ‘The idiot’ are the stories about the opportunism, the hypocrisy, the good and the bad in common people – just like you and me.

While ‘Barberic Times’ and ‘God Promise’ are there to tickle you, ‘Goodbye Mrs. Boa’ is a sweet, but profound tribute to Boa Sr., the last speaker of Bo Language in Andaman islands. She died earlier this year. Other poems ‘City’s seasons’, ‘Elegy’, ‘Divine Sisterhood’, ‘बेटी होना का दर्द’ (The Pain of being a Daughter/Girl, Hindi) and ‘सूना बचपन‘ (Empty Childhood, Hindi) touch on the various stories, pleasures and pains of our human existence. ‘Oops! I made you a Daddy’ is a cute, little autobiography by a day old baby (ghost written by his father).

Finally, as you all battle with the fever of Football, do not forget to read the review for ‘Inverting the Pyramid’ by Jonathan Wilson. The book provides an interesting insight into how the gameplay has evolved over time and how the game is not just about the magical players!

We hope you enjoy the collection. Do send your feedback on the magazine and also on the individual entries. Entries are also invited for the next issue of the magazine. The deadline is July 16, 2010.

Pothi.com Team

Pothiz – Pothi.com’s e-Magazine

Over last two years we have interacted with a lot of writers and readers. And one thing we have always wanted to do is to bring the readers and writers together. The self publishing platform is one way, of course. But many other ideas also kept propping up. We do not have time to implement all of them, but today we are acting on one of these.

We are announcing the launch of Pothiz – Pothi.com’s e-Magazine. Contributions are invited for the same. Selected entries will make it into the first issue of the magazine scheduled to come out in July 2009.

Details are available on Pothi.com’s website and submissions can be done here.

To start with the magazine will reach out to 2000+ people from our subscriber base and more!

So, all the existing and aspiring writers out there. What are you waiting for? Submit your entry right away! Let the creative juices flow.

And hey! Don’t forget to tell others around you about it.

Now get instant feedback on common file errors for your book

Pothi.com is open to, even encourages authors to prepare their book on their own. The specifications are available in details on our website.

However, there are some common errors that are often present in the files submitted. Till now, authors needed to wait for our verification process to get the feedback on those. We have now introduced an automated files checker in book submission form, which will instantly analyze the submitted files for the common errors like page size of the interior and size of the cover. So, you don’t have to wait to correct those.

Enjoy the power and contact us if you face any problems with the new system.

Now restrict the shipping to India only

We have been shipping the books internationally and this is very convenient for most of our authors and readers.

However, in certain circumstances, authors need to be able to restrict the shipping from Pothi.com to India. It generally happens in one of the two cases

The rights of the book for outside India are with someone else and hence the authors can not sell their books published through Pothi.com there.
The author wants to introduce a low price version specifically for Indian market.

So, we have recently pushed out this feature where you can specify if you want your books to be shipped only within India. If Pothi.com is the only place you have published your book at, you probably do not need to bother about it. But if your case is either of the two mentioned above, you can use this feature. Log in to your account, go to your book page and click on edit link. Under the field “This book can ship to”, select “Only India” and save the book. Now, this book will not be shipped to any location outside India.

Even more power to our authors! 🙂

Changes pushed to Pothi.com’s publishing platform

Continuing with our aim of moving towards a Do it Yourself platform, we have pushed some more changes to our system. There won’t be too many visible changes in user experience. But you will find that the Book Submission form appears slightly different.

While submitting the form you only need to mention the production options (size, paper type etc.) and some basic information about the book which can’t be changed later (book language and category). After the submission, the book files (interior and cover) are checked for technical suitability. This checking has now been semi-automated. The only impact this will have on book submission experience is that our turn around time will be faster. Once the files pass the technical review, you will receive a mail with instructions to enter book details like “About the Book”, “About the author” etc.

While entering the book details, you can also choose whether to publish your book for public listing or keep it private for only your use. This setting can be changed any time. So, you can keep the book private initially, order a copy for ensuring that it has turned out all right in print and then go back and make it public. This is something that many of our authors wanted to do, but the process was tedious since they had to ask us to make the book public or private. So with the ability to do it on their own anytime, more power to our authors!

Keep writing and keep watching this blog for further updates.

Towards DIY – Modify Book’s Information and Price

As mentioned in one of the earlier posts, at Pothi.com we want to make the publishing platform at DIY as possible.

We have recently taken one such step towards DIY. It is now possible for the authors to edit some of the book’s information and author earning on their own at Pothi.com. In particular, if changes/corrections are to be done to the following, it can be done by authors on their own

Book Description
About the Author
Author Margin
Title
Author Name
Language

More details are available in this FAQ item.

Watch this space for more such stuff.

Poetry was what started it all…

I have told this story in start-up events and to the journalists several times. Let me recount it here too – in its most authentic form. The beginning of Pothi.com.

I was few months in to my job at Google (April 2007). Initial excitement had subsided down. It was still a good place to work, but I had started wondering if this is what I want to do with my life. Like all of us wonder at some point of time or the other in our professional lives. And no, I was not thinking about Entrepreneurship. While I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, I’d do so only when an idea to live for struck.

What I was thinking about then was how to do something meaningful in life. Meaningful to me that is. And the idea struck – why not publish a book of my poetry? One was published long back by a publisher in Patna. This had come out when I was in class 11th and contained all the poems I had written before class 9th. I was a hostel dweller at that point of time and my maternal uncle was handling most of the stuff. I, personally, did not have any idea about how publishing works. So, when the idea of publishing struck, I decided to find out more. And what I found out was not encouraging. I had no intention of making a living out of my writing. I wrote just because I could and I wanted to publish it just for the people around me who enjoyed it and who may want the book. I did not care about becoming famous or a best-seller. The traditional publishing is not geared for such motivations. Nothing wrong with traditional publishing, it just wasn’t meant for people like me. I was not willing to give time and effort to find a publisher, because becoming a commercial success was not my motivation.

Then I started exploring the idea of self publishing, studied print on demand closely and realized that while it fitted my needs perfectly, no providers were readily available in India.

That was it! The idea to live for had struck. Abhaya was in the US at that time. He was following the developments in publishing and print on demand there and was excited about the possibility. We discussed it and soon decided that this could be the path to take. We started evaluating operational feasibility of the business. I also did a small experiment with my poetry book meanwhile. Bought a home printer which could print on both sides of paper. Searched for and found paper market, bought a few sheets of thicker paper that would be good for cover printing. Also bought A4 sized paper, got it cut into halves to get A5 size and printed the book on them. Found a binder in our street to do a hand binding with stapler and glue and offered these on my blog for sale. And I managed to sell more than 10 copies. The book is now available with much better production quality at Pothi.com.

There were tougher decisions to be taken. Abhaya had to decide between pursuing his Ph. D. which he was absolutely enjoying and working on Pothi.com. He chose latter, because the window of opportunity would not remain forever. He was fortunate enough to have a very cooperative guide, who did take his leaving midway otherwise and encouraged him to complete the requirements for MS before leaving. I had to take the decision of leaving Google. If there ever was a dream company for me, it was Google. But the decisions got taken over time. It was almost a year since the idea first struct to us finally delving into it full time. A lot of intermediate time went in planning and experimenting. But this was where the idea was first conceived.

A bunch of poems was what started it all. So, on this new year, we are giving 5% discount on all poetry books at Pothi.com. Use the coupon code POETRY52010 while ordering the books and avail the discount.

Whats and Whys of BookSmith

We started the new year with Public Launch of Booknomics – the blog to book tool as you would have read in the previous post.

What does the tool do?

You can give your Blog’s URL to BookSmith (e.g. blog.pothi.com for this blog), it fetches the content from there and creates a print ready book out of it. Then you can order print copies using Pothi.com’s Print on Demand platform. There are no minimum number of copies to be bought, since Print on Demand can print even one copy at a time.

What’s the big deal about the converting blog to a book? I can print it as it is.

There are several design considerations that need to be applied to create a good print book. Printing content as it is would not make it a good book. Some examples of things that BookSmith does are

Create chapters out of posts and start each chapter on a new page to make them distinct
Paginate the content
Format the content with a font that looks good in print
Insert blank pages suitably so that the important sections start on the odd pages/right side of an open book (very important and a basic consideration when formatting content for a print book)
Automatically create a table of content from the posts/chapters
Clean up the post for HTML issues before formatting it so that unnecessary extra spaces, tracking codes, content generated by plugins etc. are gone and you get the content that is suitable for a print book
Reformat URLs to separate out the anchor text and URL. Clickable URLs mean nothing in the print book. So, URL needs to be extracted out.
Several other things like putting suitable margins, handling images, handling WordPress smileys etc. to make it a good looking book.

Anything else?

Some distinctive features of BookSmith are

Support for images in the post. Booksmith supports including images from your post and suitably resizes them so that they do not go out of frame when too big.
Option to include or exclude images. When you have a blog where images are not essential to the content, you may want to leave them out in the print book
Selection of covers. You can select from the pre-defined book covers while creating the book. If you want you can also order custom cover design service from Pothi.com to get a unique cover before printing copies.
Free e-book download. An e-book is made available for free download, which is useful if you want to circulate the book online. It is formatted differently from the print book to make is good for on-screen reading. Some major ways in which the e-book formatting is different from print book formatting are
- Use of a different font, which is suitable for online reading
- No blank pages as they do not make sense for e-books
- Links remain clickable in e-books since they are meant for on-screen reading
Option to include or exclude post date from the book. For a blog of short stories or poems, putting post date on a print book won’t make sense. But for a blog covering opinions of current events, it is absolutely necessary. So, BookSmith gives you the control to choose whether or not you want the post dates to be mentioned.
Ability to select posts to include and reorder them.

Why BookSmith?

Pothi.com wants to make publishing accessible to all. There are three major categories of expenses while publishing a book

Book preparation cost: This includes editing, designing and all the pre-press activities.
Printing and Operations Cost: Cost involved in printing the copies, maintaining the inventory, supplying them to buyers and managing the entire operation
Marketing Cost: Cost involved in promoting the book.

For making publishing accessible it is important to bring down the costs involved in all of these activities. For a casual writer/publisher, each of these costs in the prevailing set-up can be daunting. The only way to bring these costs down is to infuse technology in the process. There are some things for which humans can not be replaced. There is no replacement for a good editor or a designer who can do a super customized design for a book. But other things can be enabled technologically and hence the cost can be brought down. Pothi.com is on a mission to use and develop such technologies.

Internet as a technology and medium provides ample opportunities for an individual to market their book. Not with some overnight magic, but with persistence over time and by using suitable tools, an individual’s brand can be created with very little or no financial investment.

Printing and Operations costs are brought down by the Print on Demand platform provided by Pothi.com. You can print one copy at a time; so there is no need to pay upfront for printing in bulk. Besides the effort and costs to maintain the inventory or manage the logistics are gone too. Just set up your book on Pothi.com and they will be printed and shipped as the orders come. There is no inventory to maintain and logistics is taken care of by us.

A tool like BookSmith aims to bring down the book preparation cost. It lets you design a good looking print book. It is not a replacement for a super-customized design by a good an trained designer. But it is pretty good for most individual publishers. And it will keep getting better. Yantra – the cover design tool on Pothi.com is another such tool, which bring down the cost of designing.

So, convert your blog today. Or, gift a loved one a copy of theirs. It will really make them jump with joy. Meanwhile, we are working hard for bringing more exciting stuff your way.