The Hindu Business Line : Be your own publisher

If writing about your mom's recipes or your dad's poetry seemed an impossible-to-achieve target, log onto Pothi.com. Jaya Jha and Abhaya Agarwal, IIT graduates, say they have now made concepts of publishing far more accessible. The idea came up when Jaya wanted to publish a book of her poetry. She looked for self-publishing options, but there weren't many available in India. "That's when we thought of starting it up on our own," they say.

Pothi.com is a Print on demand (POD) portal that essentially prints anything that you want and any number of copies. So you can print just about 10 pages of your mom's favourite recipes for yourself or 50 copies to hand out to other fans of her cooking. Each book can be personalised as well.

"We are both Computer Science Graduates from IIT Kanpur and used our technical background to develop the tools for publishing. Our entire platform is developed in-house. The platform has stuff such as e-commerce tools, cover design tools and price estimators," explain the duo.

Using the site is simple. As they explain, "People need to decide whether self-publishing is for them or not. They need to know how `print on demand' works for books."

There is comprehensive information regarding preparing your book for publishing through Pothi.com. After the book's content is prepared, there is a cover design tool (http://pothi.com/pothi/yantra) on the site with which authors can design a generic cover for their books. This is an important one because graphic design might not be easy for most writers.

There is a price estimation tool (http://pothi.com/pothi/estimate-price), with which one can immediately see how the book will be priced at various levels of author margin. Writers can submit the prepared book online and readers can buy the book through the online store (http://pothi.com/pothi/buy)

Finally there is information about the services for writers on the site and people can order those from there.

Starting wasn't easy. Vendors and operations proved a hassle. "We dirtied our hands in those cases and took it upon ourselves to do what others wouldn't do for us at that stage. Plus, there are things in the business ecosystem that are not in favour of the small guys. For long we did not have an Indian Payment Gateway and had to work with paypal, which does not accept Indian Rupees. It was a major usability issue on the site," says Jaya.

Funds came from the founders, family and friends. "It was not a whole lot, but it got us started. We did talk to institutional investors, but we realised that we should first focus on building the business rather than raising funds," says Agarwal.

There was no money or time to do a detailed market study so their research before setting up the site was limited to the operational part of the set-up. "For gauging the market we relied on our gut feeling," they say.

They expect to generate revenues by profit sharing on the books sold through their store and by providing services to the authors when they need those.

The recession doesn't scare them. As they say, "Recession is a good time to start a business. If you survive, it's more likely that you'll do well for a long term. Also, on a lighter note, the opportunity costs are less. Jobs are paying less anyway." The site aims to become a complete "do it yourself" publishing platform for individuals as well as organisations (small companies, NGOs, coaching and educational institutes with publishing needs).

Paromita.pain@gmail.com