With more than 300 million literate Indians, the market is huge for any writer. Earlier, not everyone could have hoped to become a published writer, but not anymore. The flux in the publishing industry has come due to alternate means of getting published like vanity or self-publishing and print on demand getting popular.
In the mainstream publishing industry, publishers put in a lot of time and money to overcome barriers like editing, layout, design, distribution, and marketing to get to the market. What self-publishing and print on demand service providers are doing, is using Web 2.0 tools to try and put publishing tools in the hands of authors.
Have a Pleasant Journey’s author Pijush Gupta had a bittersweet experience with the publishing world. Like many other first time writers, he started off by sending proposals to mainstream publishers, but failed to get their attention. He then decided to go for print on demand for his debut book.
He says, “After talking to Leonard Fernandes of CinnamonTeal, I decided that this Goa-based POD service provider was the one I would tie up with. From the time the author’s contract was signed, it took less than a month for the book to come to the market. It takes most mainstream publishers about a year to complete a book and put it into distribution. With the amount of red tape going on, the process takes much longer than most realise.”
Industry insiders reveal that the Indian book publishing industry and book retailing business is estimated to be growing at 10 to 30 per cent per annum, but that doesn’t mean new writers would have greater chances of getting published.
“India is reading right now and self-publishing is not looked down upon as merely vanity publishing,” adds Pijush.
Jaya Jha, co-founder of Pothi.com, a self-publishing platform, which provides print on demand says, “The open way of self-publishing is definitely on the rise. We have done close to 550 books and the rate of addition of books is only increasing,”
Seconds CinnamonTeal’s co-founder Leonard Fernandes, “We provide a lot of such visibility ourselves through social media and email marketing campaigns and by ensuring that their book can be distributed to physical bookstores and listed on online bookstores.”
Self-publishing is a boon for those who dig up old manuscripts of their parents and grandparents and get them published as a gift and family memorabilia. Many people have also published books of their kids as a way of encouraging them.
Sophie Hartman got a book published posthumously which was a kind of memorial to her friend. She says, “I will eventually try to get it properly edited and send it off to other publishers for commercial publication.”
But the question here is, do self-published authors get enough visibility? “Surprisingly, it is much more than the visibility that a publishing-house new author gets in some cases as the self-published author has a good idea of where he should be visible. Amish Tripathi, who wrote The Immortals of Meluha is a classic example. His visibility is really striking. It’s definitely not about getting reviews and the book being kept in high stacks in bookstores anymore,” explains Gouri Dange, a published author with Penguin and Jaico and, who still chose to self-publish.
But literary agent and publisher Anuj Bahri suggests when one has a good manuscript, it is always advisable to wait for a mainstream publisher as once you are published there isn’t much a main publisher can do with the same work that is already published.