Started by an ex-googler, Pothi is a print-on-demand startup that enables authors to publish their own books.
Here is how pothi works:
- Author submits the book in word format
- AUthor can create a cover or chose from Pothi’s template
- Author can specify the book price.
- Pothi will calculate the price (Price = Production Cost + 2* Author’s Margin)
- Books are printed on-demand and author’s margin is transferred as the sales happen.
Print-on-demand/self publishing is quite a new concept in India and though it breaks the traditional hard-nose publisher barrier, there are a couple of challenges associated with it:
- Marketing - Author has to market the book himself. Sites like blurb give away widgets that authors can embed on their site. But in the Indian context, marketing is a big challenge and not sure how many of serious authors can successfully do that.
- Distribution - Readers need to order books from the online store – so essentially, Pothi needs to create an online brand store or tie-up with online retailers, for e.g. amazon, or local stores like sapna book house – which means apart from the operational part, they also need to take care of the marketing cost.
I do believe that partnering with a content player will ease out the distribution challenge – just that there aren’t too many original content sites in India.
Actually, much of Pothi’s success also depends on how Pothi positions itself – an integration with blogger/wordpress will give them access to bloggers (the initial adopters, in my opinion) who might want to publish their blogs as books (or atleast market pothi thru’ widgets) – but is that the market they want to address?
Or more serious authors? (we will ask them in the subsequent posts!).
Pothi has already released first set of books – check them out here.
Give Pothi a spin and do share your comments.
Another startup with similar offering: Cinnamon Teal, which has partnered with Sulekha for their Blog-to-Book series initiative.
tags: pothi, self-publishing, print-on-demand
good concept but as you pointed out marketing the books will be real challenge.
Hi -
I am happy to see that ,Pothi has been started by female founder.
looking forward to see more such moves.kudos to Pothi team.
best luck
Ashish A
Very interesting idea and execution is much better than the earlier startup you profiled (cinnamonteal).
What about their funding status? Any idea?
wondering how “kode” knows that the execution of one company is better than the other without trying both
Its a great concept but again copied from the west.
Checkout http://www.lulu.com/
hey..I know it’s copied from Lulu – but I guess the economy is ready for a concept like this being applied to India.
Not sure what’s Lulu’s plans are for the Indian market.
@lulu
Glad you figured. It is actually a copy of all the POD supported self publishing companies in the west and there are tons of them. I am afraid, there was no way of starting a self publishing company without being a copy since they were already there
However, I think the difference is not about where we start but about where we go. So keep a eye on us and we won’t disappoint !
Abhaya
leonard – all I meant from the site design perspective.
Havent tried either of the product, but from what I could see in terms of appeal I think pothi is more eye-candy than cinnamonteal – though it isn’t as sexy as lulu or blurb.
all the best yo all you guys
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Can authors really sell books through Pothi.com?? Till today, I can’t sell a single copy of my book…
@Bubun Publishing the book is only the first step. You need to put in marketing effort behind it, reach out to audience. Now it is hard to know where to start. But blogs, social media are a good place to start. They are free and instantaneous and allow you to connect to readers directly.
Self-publishing is just like starting your own company. You need to make a coherent strategy and then execute it if you want customers (in this case readers).
Do drop us a mail and I will be happy to suggest some ways for promoting your book to get you started!
Abhaya