Category: Publishing Platform

5 Types of Books you can Self-Publish Apart from Fiction and Poetry

Despite the stereotypical image, a writer of books is not always a recluse or an eccentric person. Books give expression to many different kinds of talents and purposes.

Here are five types of books beyond fiction and poetry that people have been writing and self-publishing on Pothi.com.

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Exam Preparation Books

‘Competitive exams’ is a phrase Indians of all ages and regions are familiar with. If you are a teacher or a professional in the relevant field, you can write a book to help people with these competitive exams. We have seen books related to engineering, medicine or design entrance exams, CA/CS preparations, civil services exams and everything else you can think of. Solved question papers of previous years and interview preparation books are some attractive sub-genres.

 

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Professional Books

Whether you are a software engineer working on a niche technology, a manufacturing executive with a lifetime of learning in mechanical products, or a teacher who has figured out how to spark student interest in difficult subjects, you may have a book in you. Write that book to help others in your profession succeed!

Also common are short introductory books to fields that are in the news, but an average person has little information about.

 

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Family Cookbooks

People are more mobile these days and families are often spread not only all around the country but also across the globe. Nothing connects Indian families more than food. So how about creating a family cookbook with your own crazy, unique family’s special recipes that will help youngsters moving out recreate the food magic from back home? You can keep this book private to share only with family members, or let the world have a peek too by making it available for sale.

 

 

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Translations of Public Domain Books

Are you bilingual? Then you can make a great contribution to your mother tongue if you translated out of copyright books into or from that language. With out of copyright or public domain books you do not have to worry about rights and legal issues. Check out the yearly posts on Pothi.com blog about authors who entered public domain in last few years.

 

 

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Brand-building Books

Are you a consultant, a freelancer or a corporate trainer? Add a book on your subject of expertise to your professional armory. You can give it out to potential clients and it will help your business and brand.

Of course, all these suggestions don’t mean that fiction and poetry should stop rolling in. The human race has always loved stories and our hearts have always leapt with great poetry.

 

Bring out the book in you!

 

 

Recent Changes on Pothi.com Platform

We have pushed some small changes on Pothi.com’s publishing platform recently. Here is a consolidated update

  • Links to other books from the same category on Book Pages: As the number of books is increasing on the platform, discovery mechanisms are becoming important, so that potential readers can find books of their choice. We have started off with a simple feature in this direction. The book pages will now have links to few other books from the same genre. So, people interested in similar books can browse around.
  • Fields for subtitle and ISBN: These were long due. There was no way for the authors to specify subtitle and ISBN for their books. Authors can go to their book pages, edit them and include these information.
  • Introduction of Tags field on the book edit form: Tagging the content helps in search and discovery of the content. There is now a “Tags” field that authors can populate for their books. Once we have sufficient number of books tagged, we will expose them suitably.
  • Setting MRP of the book, instead of setting the author margin: Till now, authors used to set the author margin for a book and the price of the book was calculated by our system. This was counter-intuitive to many people, who wanted to set the final price of the book. We have changed that system, so that people can now set the MRP of the book and author earning (royalty) is calculated by our system. It does not change the underlying price/margin relationship. Authors get the same earning for a given price as they used to get earlier. You can try out our new price estimator for the same. If you have used the price estimator earlier, you will notice that there are now two tabs instead of one. One of them called “For Yourself” lets you calculate the “Author Price” – the price at which authors can always buy the copies, irrespective of how they are priced on the store. The other one called “For Distribution” let’s you calculate the royalties at various MRPs. Again, the underlying logic has not changed. The earlier estimator also used to show you the author’s price apart from the store price. We have only rearranged the forms for the convenience of users.

Some more exciting stuff is in the making right now. Stay tuned for them 🙂

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.

You Make the Story – We Make the Books!

Shachii and Gaurav Manik are a Mumbai based couple who run a software company as a day job. However, it is their kids at home (two boys aged 5 and 3) , who do a great job of challenging their creativity. Gaurav loves to make up and tell stories which he creates with the help of the two boys.

This family exercise made them realize how creative the kids’ minds can be and the idea of “You Make the Story – The Creativity Workshop for Kids” was born. During the workshop the kids are encouraged to come up with a basic story plot and draw pictures of a scene from this plot. Then Shachii and Gaurav expand on the story and make it comprehensive, create and design the book, publish it and have it printed from Pothi.com. Two books from their earlier workshops are available on Pothi.com – “Adventures of the Red Club” and “The Amazing Journey to Zog“. A copy of the book is given to the kids who helped create the book.

The workshop is targeted at the kids between the ages five and ten years. These workshops are a one time session of 90-minutes each and the duo is open to conducting the workshop in any locality in Mumbai. ” We think it is a great way to bring out the imagination of a child, they seem to enjoy working in a group to create a story and draw the pictures. In the end it gives them a personalized book and a “I helped create this!”-feeling, and a special bond with the other kids that were present in the same session,” says Shachii about the workshop.

You can follow Sachii on Twitter.

Publishing books from the workshop is a great example of the use of Print on Demand. It does not take a lot of money to become a publisher and the encouragement the children get from seeing their work in a book is invaluable.

What are your kids doing this summer? Encourage them to express their thoughts and become a publisher for them right away!

Check out some other awesome books created by children which are available through Pothi.com. We will also try and bring to you glimpses from some of the privately published projects this month.

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.