Publishing in India

Publishing in India
   Amazon.com offers Kindle eBooks worldwide but when I realized that it does not offer a book in paperback format in India, I was disappointed. Many readers wish to hold a hard copy in their hands rather than read a eBook on an iPad. I therefore needed to find a publisher who could deliver The Last Prabhu in paperback format in India. From the several options that I discovered through Google (see for example https://indiablooms.com/finance-details/8164/five-popular-self-publishing-companies-of-india.html), I chose pothi.com because the processes the company uses are very similar to amazon.com that I was already familiar with.
   How does it work? It is quite simple. You first register yourself with a user name, email and a new password. You then format your manuscript according to the guidelines that are clearly described by the publishing company and save it as a pdf file. Since I use a mac, I used Pages, Apple’s equivalent of Microsoft Word, to write the text.
   Next, you prepare your cover; pothi.com offers a cover design wizard tool that can be used for the purpose.
   It is important to ensure that the pdf text file and the cover dimensions are compatible. I had decided to use a 6 by 9 inch size. I resized the pdf text file to  6 x 9 using a free tool available on the internet (e.g.https://docupub.com/pdfresize/). To resize the cover, you can use any photoshop programme e.g. the free tool GIMP or the more comfortable Adobe or Affinity that you will have to pay for. I used the tool Affinity photo both to prepare the cover and resize it.
   Now all you need to do is to go to the pothi.com website, key in the details such as author’s name, book title name etc. and upload the files. That’s it.
   My experience with pothi.com has been excellent: when I had difficulties uploading the files, customer service responded to my query within 12 hours,  immediately pinpointed the error (incompatible file sizes) with suggestions on how to correct the issue and even offered to do it for me if I so desired. Since I do not have any experience with the other self-publishing companies in India, I cannot comment on them or compare them with pothi.com but I assume they must also be good and efficient.
   There are several advantages of using a self-publishing company over a traditional publisher. Pothi publishes on demand and there is therefore no need to print a pre-determined number of books and block storage space in your cellar and wonder what to do if there are unsold copies lying around. Since orders are placed directly with the company who also delivers the books, the author is freed from the task of processing orders and deliveries.
   Another important decision that the author has to make is on pricing. There are 3 cost items to consider: printing costs, royalty of the publishing company and royalty of the author. GST is deducted from the author’s royalty. Additionally, if the author does not reside in India as in my case, the author’s royalty is transferred via paypal and therefore currency conversion fees as well as paypal’s fees will be deducted. In short, do not expect to get rich but the pleasure of being able to publish your book easily and without any hassles, reach the audience that you wish to reach and spread the message that you wish to spread more than compensates for it.
   As always, please send me your comments or questions on this blog: thelastprabhu.blogspot.com