Future group is foraying into self-publishing vertical and apart from enabling authors to publish their books, Depot (Future Group’s book, music and stationery retail arm) will also sell these books in their retail stores across the country.
Writers, most of the times, are clueless as to what to do about their works. Our self-publishing initiative would allow them to publish as low as 25 copies. What’s more, we will launch the book and sell them at our stores across the country for a few weeks and, then, return the unsold copies [source]
This is quite a significant development for the nascent print-on-demand industry and Future group’s entry will boost the startups who are offering self-publishing – cinnamonteal and pothi specifically.
What’s your opinion? How will you react, if you are one of those startups running your own print-on-demand service?
Will other big retail/publishing house get into this industry? I really doubt that.
This is a good move by future group. bloggers like us will defiitely be the first ones to latch up.
The leverage Future group has over other startups would be their offline stores. If I were a pod startup, I would scramble hard to neuter this threat.
As an amateur writer this is a great deal for me though [:)] – dreaming of climbing the best sellers chart [:P]
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@Himanshu : I agree that a effective way of handling offline distribution is a major challenge in POD right now. Nobody has figured it out yet, not even in US. What future group is offering, is more in line with Vanity Publishing wher you pay upfront for all the printed copies and they will sell those copies in their stores (I think minimum is 25). This takes away the major benefit of the POD plateform that we are offering where you don’t spend a peny on any unsold books. Every book is produced when it has been ordered. You don’t have to worry about distribution, sales etc.
In addition, apart from their own stores, I doubt if they will provide you distribution services to other offline stores since that would amount to conflict of business interest. If you think that is a non-issue, you should follow up the recent moves by Amazon in POD space which has now resulted in a class action suit against them. In short, they want all the self publishers who want to sell their books on Amazon, to use the services of their own POD company, booksurge.
If you happen to have a book, do try our services. They are free and we don’t ask for any rights transfer !
abhaya – a publisher would like to go for future bazaar simply because he can get some free marketing, instead of he taking the pains to market with say, pothi or the other startup, cinnamonteal
As a publisher, it doesnt really matter if he is paying a little bit extra amt, since he wants to minimize the risk of failure and to me, future bazaar’s entry seems to be a big thing!
@kode: It is true that future group can provide *some* free marketing by displaying the books in their stores but I don’t think they provide any marketing beyond that. In addition, you will have to take care of any external distribution yourself and pay upfront for all those copies.
In short, with out the support of POD, self publishing remains as troublesome as ever. What future group is offering has been offered by many printers for years, just that FG also happen to have a book store of their own.
I will write a post explaining this on my blog shortly. That should help clarify my pov more clearly. Will post the link here
Abhaya is correct. What his startup and mine (cinnamonteal.in) offer is a hands-on experience where the author is in complete control of the process. What FG offers is called “Vanity Publishing” – the author effectively pays to get published.
There is a subtle difference that must be understood – having to pay first and realising profits later as opposed to realising profits at the point of sale itself. Effectively, the author is now a warehouse for unsold copies, albeit a smaller quantity of unsold copies.
Many questions remain unanswered especially with regards to the ownership of rights, issuance of ISBN, provision of editorial services, etc.
@Tania: you should contact us..:-)
Regards,
Leonard Fernandes
Here is my promised blog post:
http://abhaga.blogspot.com/2008/05/pod-is-to-self-publishing-what-free-is.html
Comments are welcome.