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Looking to Get Self-Published in India? Here Are Your Options

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In my interaction with several aspiring authors, I have of late come across a sordid truth – not many people know what ‘self-publishing’ really means. As in any field, ignorance leads to being scammed and cheated, and hence this post is a humble attempt to clear the air.

Basically, self-publishing is when the author puts in their own resources to get published, apart from the writing itself. These extra resources can be in terms of:- (1) time (2) marketing efforts (3) money.

The most important element to know about self-publishing is that the author needs to do everything to not only publish the book but also market it and sell it. There is little or no outside support for the actual sales, and even if there are, they are paid services.

So, let us get to the meat of this article and see the three types of self-publishing platforms that are available to Indian authors.

(Note that I am not including the option of getting the books printed at an individual level and sold on sites such as Flipkart, though that option exists as well. I am only talking of organized methods here.)

Self-Publishing on Amazon

This has gotten really huge in recent times and with Amazon’s zest for world domination, that’s hardly a surprise! Publishing on Amazon goes two ways too.

  1. Publishing eBooks on Kindle Direct Publishing: KDP is a service that allows you to upload eBooks with a front cover page and a blurb. You can price your own book. Your book goes live on the Amazon marketplace, and you can choose the territories you want to make your book available in, internationally. To some extent, you can also price your book for each marketplace. The minimum amount for Amazon India is INR 49, and you can get two types of royalties – 35% and 70%. Visit the site for more details.

  2. Publishing paperbacks on CreateSpace: CreateSpace is an Amazon service that allows you to print paperbacks. You submit your manuscript in its finished – edited, formatted, typeset – form and then it goes live on the Amazon marketplace. There are specific size instructions here and the cover page has to be a full cover page, which includes front, back, and spine. Again, you can price your book above a minimum.

    Note that CreateSpace has a huge drawback for India currently. Since their printing offices are located in the US, the books are printed there. So, if an Indian reader orders this book, they might have to spend a huge sum (upward of INR 700 for a 250 page print book). However, if some inside dope is to be believed, CreateSpace is setting up its offices in India soon, maybe by the end of this year. When that happens, it will be a boon to Indian self-published authors as the MRPs will be quite feasible.

Print-on-Demand Publishing

Print-on-Demand (POD) publishing essentially means that the books are printed when the orders are placed. Hence, there is zero initial investment. All the author has to do is to upload a finished – edited, formatted, typeset – manuscript on the site with a full cover page. There are specifications and even templates to do this on the sites, due to which even a complete rookie can master the craft of uploading in under an hour. All you need is patience to read the instructions.

Currently, the most respectable site that provides free POD in India is Pothi. Apart from this, there are paid POD services as well.

Pothi is an award-winning service with an amazing print quality. It also has a royalty calculator, where you can put in the number of pages in your manuscript, and you get an estimated MRP that you can price the book at. With extended paid service options, you can sell your book through Flipkart and other portals as well. Find out more information on the site.

Partridge India claims to be a POD as well, but it does not really fit into the definition here as it requires authors to buy a package first (see vanity below). However, it provides additional services in the package cost also, including editing.

However, there are a few drawbacks as well.

  1. POD can be expensive to the buyer. The reason is that copies are printed singly and not in bulk. This increases costs.

  2. POD attracts a significant shipping fee. Pothi is currently shipping at INR 70 per book, even for the authors themselves.

  3. If you go for their extended services (optional) of marketing, editing, cover page designing, etc., you might find they are not reasonably priced.

Vanity Publishing

Vanity publishing is the elephant in the self-publishing room that no one wants to talk about, but we cannot ignore it either.

This is the kind of publishing where you pay upfront for getting published. These are small publishing houses that provide printing (and sometimes distribution) services, and their business model is simple – “Pay us a sum of money for printing your book, and we will print them for you.” Usually it is a bundle of 200 or 300 books. Essentially, vanity publishing is a “safe” option for the publishers as the entire risk is borne by the authors. Due to this simple aspect, the vanity publishers do not do much (read: anything) in terms of promotion, distribution, or marketing.

At closest count, there are about 35 vanity publishers in India. These are the houses that charge money upfront for publishing.

It is a mystery why authors go for vanity publishing when other options such as POD and Amazon publishing provide almost the same services, and the onus of marketing in any case lies upon the author. Perhaps it is because vanity publishers have a stronger advertising voice on social media due to which new authors, who are usually quite vulnerable and gullible, see the lure in getting vanity published.

On the international publishing scene, vanity publishing is meant only for people who are looking to circulate some writing between family and friends, such as a family member’s memoir or a child’s collection of stories that has some significance for the family and no one else. It is undoubtedly strongly looked down upon in the literary world. People who get published through this mode are not even considered authors. Vanity comes from the word ‘vain’ as in ‘to be vain’. People who go in for this are generally those who wish to see their names in print as soon as they can.

As a closing word, I’d like to say that none of the forms of self-publishing mentioned here have any checks for quality. They print anything and everything that comes their way. They might have editing and proofreading services, but those are optional and paid. Hence, many authors don’t opt for them, which is why we see a lot of slipshod work in the self-publishing arena.

Better knowledge will help this world to improve. Self-publishing is definitely the new mantra of the publishing world but it can only stay if authors inform themselves better and become sticklers for quality.

NaNoWriMo-2014-Winner-Certificate

How I Turned My Debut Novel into an Amazon Bestseller (Part 2 of 3) – NaNoWriMo and Online Book Launch

In my last post, I spoke of how I prepared the ground for the release of my debut novel, Maya’s New Husband. I carry that post forward here, speaking about how I actually wrote the book and conducted the launch events.

  1. I joined NaNoWriMo.org somewhere in August 2014. For people who do not know what NaNoWriMo is, this is a worldwide network of writers who come together especially during the November months each year to write their novels. Founded by Chris Baty, the intention here is to motivate people to write 50,000 words of their manuscript, after which they get a winner’s certificate. So, I became a part of this at the right moment – I say right moment because I was able to do my research on it, prepare the book’s outline, and then I could start writing on November 1 at midnight along with tens of thousands of other writers all over the world.

  2. I was also a part of several Facebook groups about NaNoWriMo, along with the wonderful NaNoWriMo Facebook group and the Indian chapter, Wrimo India, spearheaded by ML Sonia Rao. Being a part of these groups helped me in many ways. First of all, I had immersed myself into an environment where everyone around me was writing. Everyone was sharing excerpts, discussing characters, helping people stuck with their plots, and giving dozens of tips each day that helped me understand what I was supposed to do. And I did.

  3. I completed my 50,000 words on 20 November itself, and then took the remaining days to finish the novel (85000 words). The whole month of December, I edited, proofread, and showed the book to some people I trust for their feedback. I had already been sharing excerpts on my FB groups. And the reports were encouraging to say the least. I was revved up to go ahead and self-publish.NaNoWriMo-2014-Winner-Certificate

  4. I decided against traditional publishing for my first book because of several reasons. I did not want to give away all the rights, for starters. But the most important reason was that I did not want to wait that long to know if I can make it as an author. Yes, I am being frank here. Varun Prabhu, a co-author, helped me immensely in my research. And I was finally set to release the book on Amazon.com (through Kindle Direct Publishing) and make paperbacks available in India through Pothi.

  5. Now I had to take an important call. How would I market my book? I already had a reader-base owing to the excerpts I shared on FB and the short stories I put up on my website as I mentioned in my earlier post. I decided to have an online launch event on Facebook itself, since most of my reader-base was online. I created an FB event, and invited people to attend. But here I make an important note – I never did and never will invite anyone I don’t know, even if they are in my Friends list. I only invited people whom I had interacted with about the book. I guess that’s the reason why I received a positive response. Pro tip: Blind tagging and requests don’t help; they are only detrimental.

  6. I now needed to take my online launch event to a higher scale. So I did something unique, something for which people still continue to invite me to discuss and speak at workshops and seminars. I reached out to some of the popular names in the Indian self-publishing world. My offer was simple – I will promote your books my book’s online launch event (which had a good number of people by now) and you will put in a line for my book. And, let me tell you, each and every author accepted my proposal. Some of them told me later that they accepted it not because of the publicity but because they had read my excerpts and trusted my work, and because my request was worded with great politeness and decency. Another pro tip: Being decent always helps. Even if you are making a request, give people something in return. We are all here with a purpose, and it is unfair to expect anyone to help you if you don’t offer anything in return.Maya Event Announcement

  7. The online launch event, which was held on 3 Jan 2015 was a huge hit! Every author brought some of their readers (I had 12+ authors at the event, including India’s leading self-published author Rasana Atreya) and it was conducted brilliantly by an online media team named Spectral Hues. The presence of Spectral Hues got me a few press releases, a few interviews, and the ball started rolling.

  8. On the first day, I kept my book free to download (through Smashwords as Amazon does not allow that). I got more than 200 downloads on that day, and then the true test began.

  9. The reviews started coming in from the next day itself and it said, in no unclear terms, how they had finished the book in just 5 hours because it was unputdownable! Then more of them followed in the same vein. And I was made. Maya Ebook Praise

  10. The book purchases started from the second day. I did an important thing – make banners of the reviews and share them on online media. This encouraged more people to try out Maya’s New Husband, and that only meant more love for the book. Maya’s New Husband ranked as Hot New Release on the second day of its release on Amazon, and subsequently went on to rule at #1 on Amazon.in (horror), which it continues to do this day though not all the time.

In the meantime, there were several other things I did – like creating a teaser video for the book, creating promo banners, sending the book out for reviews, etc. I am going to speak about this in the next post.

Stay tuned.

How I Turned My Debut Novel into an Amazon Bestseller (Part 1 of 3) – The Groundwork

I released the first eBook version of my book Maya’s New Husband as a self-published author on 3 Jan 2015. It immediately hit the Amazon Hot New Releases charts at #1 the first day itself and then the Amazon India Bestseller list, peaking at #1 several times. In fact, even now, eighteen months after its release, the book continues to be at the top of the Amazon India charts, almost always in the top 10 positions. Even on Goodreads, it has a solid rating of 4 out of 5 stars, and as many as 65 reviews and 130 ratings.

People often ask me what I did to bring my book to this kind of acclaim. Hence I thought I would rather blog about it and keep it here for posterity. So, here goes.

In this first part of this three-part series, I talk about the things I did before actually beginning to write even the first word of my novel. Yes, if you plan to be a recognized author, the groundwork is extremely important.

(Disclaimer: The following strategies worked for me. They may not work for you, or they may. And they do entail a fair amount of work. If you are expecting a magic trick, this is your cue to bail out of this page.)

  1. I created a blog six months before I wrote my first book. You definitely need a website or a blog if you are going public. Once your name is out there, people will want to check you out. That is what the website/blog helps you achieve.

  2. Once the blog was made, I started putting up short stories on it every Friday. I went all out to make these short stories as interesting as possible, working on them over and over again, each word and phrase, till I thought they were ready to go. One thing I would like to say here – at every step of my public writing journey, I have always been conscious of being read by a large number of people, and even judged. I make no mistake about that. I might be bordering on paranoia to be thinking of that at all times, but that paranoia helps me create good stuff.

  3. I made a Facebook author page. I kept, and still keep, this page clean and only about my writing work. I promoted the page on my timeline.

  4. I joined several author groups on Facebook. There are tons of them that are really great. I joined not just national but also international groups, because that’s where the real fun lies. I participated in them with meaningful discussions and contributed with my knowledge of the language and the craft. I helped other aspiring authors with my feedback. It helped me make some good friends.

  5. I made a Twitter account, a Pinterest account, an Indiblogger account, a LinkedIn profile, everything. I may not be active in all of these places, but I do have all those accounts and I try to keep them updated.

  6. I started sharing my free stories on these accounts. But not just like that. I designed cover pages for all my stories. Yes, the visual representation is very important. I cannot stress that enough. A lot of people have told me that they have clicked on my page just because the cover page looked appealing. Knowing that, I design cover pages for even a 1000-word short story.

  7. I shared free stories on Wattpad and Figment. I participated in their swap-stories-for-review exchanges. I got great reviews everywhere. I made sure I posted one story every Friday. A time soon arrived when people started waiting for my stories each Friday. A reader actually told me he expected to see a new story from me each Friday. It made me feel high!

  8. I started talking with people who had already gotten published. I found out about their process, and I did research on publishing houses. I saw how traditional publishing compared with self-publishing. I ruled out vanity publishing entirely because that is only another way of insulting your own work before others do it.

  9. I then began outlining my first novel. This happened around August 2014. I spent a lot of time thinking over it, and I spoke with my family about it. Their encouragement was a huge motivating factor.

  10. Around sometime there, I joined a phenomenon that changed my life. It was www.NaNoWriMo.org. I had joined its unofficial Facebook group earlier and I was also a member of its India page, Wrimo India. And then, when the month of NaNoWriMo 2014 started, my journey as a writer truly began.

In the next part of this series, I shall be talking about how NaNoWriMo helped me emerge as a writer, and how I actually went through the writing process. I shall also be talking about the groundwork I did to launch my book.

Stay tuned.

Five Star Rating

Review Ramblings (Part 1) – What Reviews Should Mean to Authors

Five Star Rating
Five Star Rating

All authors hanker for reviews. Truth be told, to a lot of us, reviews mean much more than book sales. As an author who has received more than 200 reviews for my debut book Maya’s New Husband on major portals such as Amazon, Goodreads, and on several personal blogs, I can vouch for that. I am happier if a day ends with a helpful review on my book, even if the sales chart isn’t exactly rocking.

Here are a few of my personal observations vis-à-vis reviews, just a few things that I think authors might want to note.

  1. Every review is important, but no single review can be a reflection of your book’s overall performance. Do not be much affected by reviews individually, whether they are good or bad. It is best to take reviews in bulk. Authors get a much better indication of their work if they see how they are performing on average instead of looking at one particular review that praises their book sky-high or molests it. That’s the reason both Amazon and Goodreads have average star rating mentioned at the top. Most readers base their buying decisions on this rating. Books from some of the greatest authors we know often settle somewhere between a 3.5 and 4.5 star rating. If your book lands within this spectrum, you should be proud of it.
  1. If there is a 1 star rating and there is absolutely no explanation for it, then don’t fret about it. There could be zillions of reasons, including something as simple as the person simply did not identify with the genre. Even the best of classics have several 1 star ratings.
  1. If there is a 5 star rating and there is absolutely no explanation for it, then don’t go over the moon about it either. This is probably a “well-wisher” who is simply proud of their author friend. These reviews mean nothing. They don’t even look good on the page because they look rigged. In most probability, these people haven’t even read your book.
  1. If there is a pretty short review from an unknown person, just a few sentences, then that has probably come from someone who has been strongly influenced by your book but isn’t quite articulate with words. This could be a positive or negative influence, but your book did something to that person such that they were compelled to review. Such reviews should make you feel rewarded, unless they are bad reviews speaking about the quality of your writing.
  1. Reviews that speak about the story and theme rather than the craft of writing are always the best ones. We authors are storytellers, so we feel really happy when a story affects someone. If you write about a social theme and it makes the reader think, there’s nothing better than that, irrespective of the fact whether they agree or disagree.
  1. The longest reviews are usually from professional bloggers. These are to be cherished. You could frame them and post them on your walls, even if they are just 1 star! The very fact that a professional blogger, who typically reads two books a week, picked your book to read and review means something, doesn’t it? And since they are so well-read, they will be able to tell a lot of things about your book that general readers won’t. Then again, you might agree and disagree with the review because it is, after all, one blogger’s personal opinion.
  1. From a marketing point of view, the professional blogger reviews have the greatest impact. They will be put up on their blogs too, and they will share it on their own social network timelines, which adds to your book’s viral presence. And that’s why it pays to be polite to professional reviewers!
  1. Most books will have a high rating when they are newly released. This is because the initial reviews come from the author’s known circle. As the book spreads out though, the reviews will become less flattering and more practical. Some might even be brusque or downright rude. That happens with all authors; it’s part of the process.
  1. Never, never ever, respond to a review on a public platform, even if it is the friend you shared a beer with last night, and especially not if it is a negative review. There is only one way these things can get — ugly. And since it will happen publicly and be there for posterity, you don’t want that. There’s no quicker way for an author to commit professional hara-kiri in my opinion. Here’s a definite example of how not to handle bad reviews.
  1. One more related point — Make it very clear to potential buyers what your book is about. Be specific about genre and theme. This is to ensure that your book is only bought and read by people who would appreciate that particular genre. If you are not specific, you are baiting for bad reviews. Even if a classic is given to someone who only reads and understands pop literature, they might review it badly.

Coming soon:

Part 2 of the Review Ramblings series: What Reviewers Must Keep in Mind when Reviewing