Delhi World Book Fair – Location

"Pothi.com

Delhi World Book Fair is spread across several halls in Pragati Maidan and finding the right hall can be a bit of challenge. Just a quick note that we are in hall number 1 – which has English Language Publishers. Our location is Stand No. 2S-12. But don’t try to look for that number. It would be difficult. Instead look for the space between stall nos. 39 and 40 and we are right there!

We are listed as Mudranik Technologies Pvt Ltd. in the stall list. So if you don’t see Pothi.com in the list, don’t panic! 🙂

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.

The much hyped ISBN

We often get queries which desperately ask whether we can assign ISBN to their books. Some others almost seem to say that its their dream to publish their book with an ISBN.

We have not quite been able to figure out what image of the ISBN an average self-publisher carries. Still, before we proceed on this topic further, let me clarify this about the ISBN. ISBN is a useful thing, but it is not something you need to dream about. It is just a number to help cataloging of the books worldwide. You don’t have to do something to ‘qualify’ for it. You just need to approach the right people with the details of your book and they will issue you an ISBN. Do not get psyched out by the information on the Internet, mostly put up by the parties with financial interest, which make ISBN seem like a prestigious award for your book. Its not!

The above is particularly true of India. In many other countries, you will need to pay to a reseller to get an ISBN for your book. In India, ISBN is handled by a government agency. In an effort to promote the adoption of ISBN, they issue it for free.

For more information on what the ISBN is, assignment of ISBN and how to get one for your self published book in India, read the following excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide.

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ISBN

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, a unique code that can be assigned to a book. This is a system developed and adopted by the International Organisation for Standardisation to uniquely identify each published book.

Assignment of ISBN

Each country has their designated ISBN agency which is responsible for allotment of ISBNs for the books published in their country. In some countries there are also resellers of ISBN apart from the agency. In India, the only agency authorised to issue an ISBN is Raja Rammohan Roy National Agency for ISBN, which comes under Ministry of Human Resource Department. As of now, there are no authorised resellers of ISBN in India.

Who should get the ISBN

ISBNs are issued to publishers, who can then assign them to the books published by them. No one other than the publisher should assign an ISBN to the book. For a self publisher in India, it means that they should not get an ISBN from anybody except directly through the agency issued in his/her name. That would be the correct way of getting the ISBN. The process of getting an ISBN assigned is simple and it is explained later in this article.

Importance of ISBN

  • ISBN helps in compilation of published book in directories and bibliographic records.
  • It helps everyone in the distribution chain track the movement of the books.
  • It helps in collection of sales data of books.

In India, however, the ISBN is yet to be adopted by the majority and many parts of the distribution process are not automated. So, the real advantage of ISBN is not that high. However, if you want to go through the traditional distribution channels for your book, it would be useful to get an ISBN. Most organised and online retailers need an ISBN assigned for a book to be sold through them.

ISBN for Self Publishers in India

As mentioned earlier, ISBNs are given to publishers to assign to the books they publish. Earlier ISBNs were allotted only in blocks. But the good news is individual ISBNs can now be allotted to individuals who are self publishing. And getting an ISBN in India is free.

You need to send an application to the Raja Rammohan Roy National Agency for ISBN with the details of your book, photocopy of the cover page, identity proof and a self-addressed envelope for return communication. A template for ISBN application form is available on Pothi.com.

Two Models of Self Publishing

For an author looking to self-publish today, the choices are endless and varied – print book vs e-book, one company vs another, print-on-demand vs bulk. The information available can often be confusing to somebody not well versed with publishing industry nuances. While we have doled out a lot of gyan about various steps of self publishing, I think it is time to take a step back and have a look at the bigger picture.

Let us say you have decided to enroll some help in your endeavour of self-publishing. In general all the companies you will come across fall in two basic categories:

  1. Package Publishing
  2. Pick and Choose Publishing

Package Publishing

As is obvious from the name, companies offering package publishing will typically have one or more pre-defined packages. These packages will include all the service required to convert your raw manuscript into the final book. The extent to which the author is involved in the process will depend on the exact package chosen and also on the author’s willingness and interest. These companies are supposed to work just like traditional publishers, except that author pays for everything. Typically there is no choice of opting only for certain steps from the packages and doing the others yourself.

Pick and Choose publishing

Pick and Choose publishing, on the other hand, means that the author can decide which of the services she wants to avail from the self publishing company and which are the tasks she would do herself.  The author can, for example, decide that she wants to do editing herself or get it done by her friend, but will hire the self publishing company’s services for designing. She can combine the different services from different providers if she wants. Here the author has more control and choices, but she is also responsible for learning about various tasks and making the most suitable decision for each of them.

Both the models have their pros and cons and which particular model is fit for a particular author depends on the kind of book, author’s skills and knowledge of various publishing tasks, the time she can spare for her book, the amount of control she wants and her budget. Following may be useful if you are trying to make this decision for yourself.

Package Publishing Pick and Choose Publishing
Advantage
  • Relatively Hassle free.
  • You can decide to not spend any time on making decisions about your book’s content, design etc. and leave it all up to the experts (provider).
  • You can be sure that most of the things required will be taken care of
  • You have more control over the content and design of your book.
  • Managing your budget is easier.
Disadvantage
  • Pricier than individually picking up the services.
  • Not all the services from one company may turn out to be of same standard
  • You have to learn about various publishing tasks and take care that everything is covered
  • You make your own decisions and take the final responsibility of the book.

Beware

There is one thing authors should be aware of before choosing any self publishing model. Do not get carried off by the marketing and distribution support promised by any of the providers. Many Package Publishing companies offer what looks like a very good marketing and distribution support. But delve deeper into the exact arrangements. Having “your book available to retailers for order” and having“retailers actually ordering your book” are two very different things. Most of the times the promised distribution support is nothing more than an entry into the various books related databases. So, your book is available to be ordered by retailers, if they decide to. It’s a big “if”. Point is, irrespective of what kind of self publishing you go for, and irrespective of what any company seems to offer, in the self publishing world, you are on your own as far as marketing and distribution is concerned.

Anyway, coming back to the business models, a self publishing company may offer one or both of these models. For example, Lulu.com offers both kinds of models while Author House only offers package publishing.

What about Pothi.com?

At Pothi.com we have focused on “Pick and Choose” model of self publishing. This model gives maximum freedom and choice to the authors. It also ties in nicely to the “Do It Yourself” (DIY) ethos that all of us at Pothi.com really cherish. The very essence of self in self-publishing is the control and flexibility that creators get on their creations. Packages also have their own advantages. They act as a representative set of publishing tasks that must be taken care of in order for successful publishing of a book. Authors without mush prior experience can use them as a starting point.

In the spirit of transparency and free choice, all the specifications of files to be submitted for publishing are available on the Pothi.com website. The authors can, therefore, decide not to spend even a single Rupee on the services offered and do it entirely on their own. Once they prepare the files according to the specifications, they can submit them and have it listed on Pothi.com’s online store for purchase.

There is an option of going for editing, designing and other services if they want to. There are no predefined packages. They can decide what they want to avail and what they would rather do on their own.

The Do it Yourself (DIY) way

Coming back to the DIY way, we feel that it is not enough to give the authors just one time choice. Since a lot of our users are doing it for the first time, the system should be quite tolerant and permissive of experimentation. Authors should be able to experiment around with their book, in terms of content, design, pricing, information etc. until they are satisfied.

Now this experimentation should be

  • Convenient for the authors
  • Cost effective – each experimentation should not cost the authors a fortune – preferably nothing at all where possible

We at Pothi.com believe that the way to achieve this is to offer the authors a technologically enabled “Do it Yourself” platform, where they can change and experiment with their books as much as they like. “Do it Yourself” also means that the company providing the platform does not have to put somebody on work from their side every time an author is trying to experiment. Hence, it is possible to keep the cost of experimentation very little or even zero. Yantra – our free cover designing tool and BookSmith – our blog2book tool are two such efforts from our side which make the cover designing and putting together of a simple book a very easy process and hence allow users to experiment and tinker around.

Also behind the scene, we have always tried to keep our publishing processes such that enabling DIY is possible. In the new year, we are now taking steps towards making our platform more and more open and DIY. Some of the things have already been enabled and others will come in time. We will write about them here as they come up. You can also sign up for our newsletter which apart from these updates, sends out information about coupon codes, featured books and more!

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Related links from Pothi.com

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.

[Self Publishing Guide] Self Publishing Your Book – Step 5: Marketing

This post is an excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide for Indian Market. If you have not, you may want to read the following post in this series before starting on this one

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Although marketing comes as the fifth step in publishing, fact is, the buzz should start even before writing. Marketing a book is all about building the author’s brand. It takes time and you have to work towards it. If you recall the hype surrounding release of a Dan Brown or a JK Rowling book, you will understand the concept. The books sell on the author’s reputation, which is created by a team of professionals representing a publishing house.

This obviously is a limitation for an independent author who has chosen to self publish. But the good news is, with the Internet, everyone has a free and effective marketing tool to reach their audience. This works especially well when going for POD. You can get your readers, book orders and then have the book printed. It is important for the author to build a brand before trying to sell the book. Just coming online with a book to sell won’t be effective.

  • There are many social and professional networking Internet sites where you can promote your work. Among them Orkut, Facebook and Twitter have the largest following. Build your profile on these sites to market your book economically and effectively. But build up your credentials before making your sales pitch.
  • If you have written a book about your professional expertise, market it on professional sites like Linkedin where you can join groups with shared interests. Also explore book centred websites like Shelfari and Librarything which provide excellent opportunities for marketing.
  • Adding your book to Google book search displays it in relevant search results.
  • You can also create a website about your book. Request a friend or some prominent personality to write a review of your book and post it on your site as well as their networking sites. You could even write about your own experiences while writing the book.
  • Put up extracts from your book on your website for others to read. This will catch the reader’s interest and help sell your book. Don’t worry too much about piracy. Nobody is interested in a great but unknown manuscript. Book pirates only target bestsellers.

Apart from the Internet, you could also arrange for a press release in the local newspapers. If you know someone in the print media, you could have reviews of your book published in newspapers/magazines. Remember:

  • It is easier to market a non-fiction book in your area of expertise rather than fiction or poetry.
  • Think about your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The market is flooded with books and other content mediums. Why should someone buy your book?

[Self Publishing Guide] Self Publishing Your Book – Step 4: Distribution

This post is an excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide for Indian Market. If you have not, you may want to read the following post in this series before starting on this one

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Distribution should not be confused with marketing. Marketing creates awareness and entices the reader to read the book. However, the book has to move from the printing press to the book store for the reader to buy it. Distribution is the process by which the book is made available to the reader.

In a typical chain, the book travels from the publisher to the distributors. These are comparatively bigger stockists who usually look after a region or state. From the distributor, the book goes to the retailer (your nearby book shop is a retailer) where it is purchased by the individual reader.

Typical margins* (known as ‘discounts’ in the industry) are 40-60% of MRP to retailer and 10-20% of MRP to the distributor/wholesaler. This implies that for a book with a printed price of  Rs 100, Rs 40–60 is pocketed by the retailer as profit and Rs 10-20 is pocketed by the distributor. The books are also generally distributed on a “fully returnable if not sold within a specific period (e.g. three months)” basis. This means upfront payment from the distributor is rare and they take no financial risk whatsoever. These numbers often surprise first timers, but these are the realities of the publishing industry. Online as well as offline retailers work with similar margins.

Without contacts, getting a distributor is difficult for a self publisher. Distributors are picky about the books since they have to store the copies and sell it to the retailers. Even when you find a distributor, often they don’t really do a good job of getting your book to the retailer, i.e. the bookstore.

The above information is not meant to discourage, but to give a realistic picture to the independent author/publisher.

Options for Self Publishers

  • Offline Distribution:
    • The best bet is to start with your local bookshops. Give away the book even for free at this stage. If it picks up, try and get to a distributor through the bookshop.
    • Sell it yourself, through your family and friends. Don’t give in to relatives asking for free copies!
    • Ask people around to explore the possibility of institutional selling (for example, company/school libraries). Works better for non-fiction books on specialised topics.
  • Online Distribution:
    • Make your own website and sell the book through it. You can accept payment through PayPal (in dollars) or through cheque, demand drafts and electronic transfers.
    • There are self publishing companies (like Pothi.com) which operate online book stores specifically for self publishing authors.
    • Get a distributor in a similar way for offline distribution. Check with them if they can get you listed on online book shops.

As mentioned earlier, the distribution option you go for would also decide which printing technology is better for you. If you can get into traditional distribution, to get the prices right (refer to the margins above), you are better off going with bulk printing through offset technology. If you are selling yourself or through self-publishing company’s website, Print on Demand is a better option to avoid inventory and logistic hassles.

* For English Language publishing

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.

Blog is now Book!

With the advent of new year, we are starting out in a very exciting direction! After 6 months in closed beta, we have finally opened BookSmith, our blog2book tool, for everyone. If you have not tried it yet, convert your blog right away and be amazed :).

The tool is very simple. You just give it the blog url and then click along. In minutes, you have your beautiful ready to print book available for preview. If you like what you see, you can buy just as many copies as you want. As we say here at Pothi.com, print 1 for that special someone, 10 for the family, 100 for the friends and 1000 for the world :). For the digital junkies among you, it also creates a e-book out of the same content which you can download and distribute absolutely free.

Did I mention you can select which posts go into the book – latest n or by date range, leave out certain posts (we all make mistakes 😉 ) and also reorder them? So you can create a book out of your best posts till date and give it to the new readers coming to your blog or may be just collect all the posts from one category into a book. Tools are all there, you are only limited by your imagination (with a few exceptions which we are hard at work to remove as soon as possible)!

Here is wishing a very happy new year to everyone! Do give your feedback and suggestions by leaving a comment below, tweeting to @pothidotcom or by dropping us a mail.

[Self Publishing Guide] Self Publishing your Book – Step 3: Printing

This post is an excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide for Indian Market. If you have not, you may want to read the following post in this series before starting on this one

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In an earlier post on this series we had discussed the printing process and the two options available – bulk printing with offset or one-off/short run printing with Print on Demand.

Your decision needs to be based on three main factors –

  • Estimate of the market size. If you are confident that the demand for your book is more than 500 copies, go for offset printing. In the event of a smaller demand, POD is a better option. To put things in perspective, a book selling more than 5000 copies in India is considered a success by traditional publishing houses. Remember to factor in your actual marketing abilities when you are estimating the demand. Most well-known authors have a large specialised promotion and marketing team working behind the scenes. As a self publisher, you will mostly be your own promoter and marketer. Self promotion is something which many of us Indians are not very good at given our upbringing where humility is highly valued. Marketing your book successfully will require a lot of aggressive self promotion,without which book will be read only by your close friends and family. So shake off the humility and get going.
  • Genre of the book. In case the book is essentially a photo book or what is called a ‘coffee-table book’, you should go in for offset printing to ensure print clarity of the photographs. For a normal book, POD may be a better option.
  • Distribution options. If you see a possibility of getting a distributor, then, to get the prices right bulk printing is more suitable. If you are selling directly, through your own website or through the website of self publishing companies (like Pothi.com) then you are better off with Print on Demand and short run printing. Read more about distribution options in the next post of this series.

One good thing to try could be to print a short run by POD, test market it, probably scout for publishers/distributors by showing it to them and depending on the response, go for bulk printing.