Frequently Asked Questions

Book Submission (Print)

The most important things for submitting your book are your interior and cover files. Make sure you have these two files according to our specifications.

While submitting the book you will need to fill the following information

  • Production Options:

    lease note that the size you select must match the page size of the interior file you are uploading. Binding types available depend on the number of pages in the book.

  • Book Information and Metadata
    • Title
    • Subtitle (optional)
    • Edition (optional)
    • Author
    • Publisher (optional): Remember Pothi.com is not your publisher. In most cases, you yourself are the publisher. So, you should either write your name, or write "self-published" in this field. If another person or entity is the publisher of the book, you already know what to fill here.
    • ISBN (optional): Enter only if you have an ISBN you own, which has not been used elsewhere or with another edition/format of the book. If you don't have an ISBN, leave this empty. ISBN is not needed to publish or distribute through Pothi.com. Check frequently asked questions about ISBN.
    • Language
    • Category
    • MRP: MRP determined the royalty you earn. Check our Price and Royalty calculator to see what is the minimum price you can set for your book and what royalties would you earn at different MRPs.
    • Who can buy?: If you intend to keep the book private, choose "Only Me" here. If you want to sell the books (more likely), choose "Everyone" here.
    • Can ship to: If you want your book to ship only within India, choose "Only India" here. This option is useful for those who have a different edition for outside market and want to use Pothi.com specifically to bring out a lower-priced Indian edition. If you don't want such restrictions, choose "Everywhere".
    • Preview Page Range: To help readers make their choice, a minimum of ten consecutive pages of the book is made available as preview on our website. Use this to put your best foot forward. Select ten or more pages in such a way that it would entice the readers to buy the book.

The book is printed and hence maintained in two parts, the interior and the cover. Interior of the book includes the complete content of the book - everything except cover, everything that should be printed on the interior pages. These include table of contents, preface, foreword, title page, copyright information and anything else you want in the book. The file must be prepared according to our specifications. Remember that we do not add anything from our side to the book before printing. So, the interior file should be prepared to include everything you want printed inside the book. Even if you have taken our formatting or editing services, while submitting the book you must make sure that the files are exactly how you want them printed.

The book is printed and hence maintained in two parts, the interior and the cover. Cover file contains the back cover, spine and front cover of the book. These should not be placed randomly. The file should be prepared according to our specifications before the book is submitted for publication. Remember that we do not add anything from our side to the book before printing. So the cover file should have everything that you expect to see in the printed form, including price, ISBN barcode etc. Even if you have taken our cover design services, while submitting the book you must make sure that the files are exactly how you want them printed.

We do not check submissions for all possible mistakes. We only look at the technical aspect, which determine whether or not the book can be printed. We do not check the content or design of the book. You must make sure that content is edited to your satisfaction and designed correctly before you submit your book for publishing. Apart from that you should also make sure that the files are according to our specifications, have the correct size, correct DPI, right pagination, empty pages where needed, fonts embedded and suitable margins, among other things. If you do not find printed copy satisfactory, you can make corrections in the file and update them. It is recommended that you order one copy of the book as sample before opting for distribution or a larger print run.

You can avail our formatting services.

You can

If you are on windows, to check the size of an image at 300 DPI, please download and install irfanview. Open the image in that and go to image->information. In the resolution field, fill 300 in both the boxes and click "Change". Then see the size in "Print Size from DPI".

To know how to create an image at the correct DPI, check out our article "Getting Your Cover's Size Right".