Writers have always wanted their creations to reach a wider audience. The printed word has been a great medium and has inspired authors to publish their creation. From the ancient times of bhoj-patra to the sophisticated offset & laser printers and modern day digital e-books publishing has come a long way.

Traditionally books have been published only through brick & mortar book publishing channels. Modern technology, however, has ushered-in a revolutionary new concept: that of Self publishing. The driving force behind self-publishing is a newer technology known as POD, short for “Print on demand”.

So, what is POD?

The concept of POD itself is not new in the Digital World. Since 2003 a website Cafepress has enabled users to order customized Coffee mugs, Posters, T-shirts and so on. The fun part is: you can even use your designs and there is no minimum or maximum cap for order quantity. You can even order one Coffee Mug or a solitary T-shirt. Since about 3 years a new dimension got added to the POD scene, that of self-publishing, that enabled ordinary writers to publish their work.

During 2006, when the popularity of photo sharing sites like Flickr was at its peak, websites such as Blurb came in with services that could convert your photo stream to a glossy coffee table book. Services like Lulu went a step ahead and started offering self-published books through the on-demand-publishing. And the step paid off. Last year alone, 98 thousand books were published by Lulu suing POD. Recently, the big daddy of online book selling, Amazon.com has also started its own self publishing service through CreateSpace.

Desi companies have not been far behind in the game, but things are only getting warmed up here. As of now, Cinnamon Teal, established in Aug 2007 by Goa based couple Quennie and Leonard Fernandes, and Pothi.com, established in July 2008 by the IITian duo Jaya Jha and Abhaya Agarwal, are leading the pack. There are some players like DepotIndia as well that impose some restrictions on the minimum number of copies that they can be ordered.

Java Jha told us that the Print on Demand technology is being used extensively for corporate printing (variable data printing, short run brochure printing etc.) and for personal gift kind of segment (poster, mug, t-shirt printing) but in publishing it is still an early experimental phase. “The potential is certainly huge, but the stake-holders in the system have to come together and accept the changes in the workflow it demands, to be able to exploit this technology to the fullest. This includes everyone from the printers, publishers, authors, distributors and retailers.” she said.

Leonard Fernandes is also very optimistic about the future of POD in India, “The market potential is huge when one considers that about 80,000 titles are published in India by mainstream publishers and the industry is growing at a rate of about 10-12%. When one considers the scope of application of POD in regional languages, the potential is enormous.”

Future Ready Publishing


With the changing world our reading habits have been changing too. The concept of e-book doesn’t sound alien now and we read more online than we do otherwise. And with that people are now realizing the drawbacks of traditional publishing & marketing as well. 50% of the books in the United Kingdom are never read, figures must be similar for other nations. These unread books are converted back to pulp or dumped since most are not printed on recycled paper. The amount of carbon emissionsin printed these books that are never read is staggering, it’s like putting 1 lac cars on the road. Even if you don’t think of trees the environmental damage is not justified. Can the publishers & marketers be more sensible please and avoid giving those fancy unattainable projected sales figures.It feels good, thus, that e-books are slowly replacing the traditional ones. Digital books are cheaper, save paper and your computer and mobile phones can stores hundreds and thousands of them without occupying your drawing space. Then there are umpteen e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle and the Sony e-Reader that also allow you to stay connected and read newspapers and blogs as well. For authors, this opens doors for a totally new breed of readers to tap.

In traditional publishing books are printed in an estimated quantity and stored by the publishers, distributors and retailers. In POD, on the contrary, the digital copy of the publication is stored on a computer along with its design, layout and content and it’s printed and dispatched whenever the publication is ordered. Using POD it’s affordable to even print a single copy. The best part is, there are no inventory to manage and no headache of keeping track of unsold copies.

A major reason behind the growing popularity of POD is the growing awareness on the environment problems associated with the ruthless printing and the trend of traditional publications loosing ground against e-publications  (See box: Future ready publishing)

Authors can now be publishers too

If you are an author and wish to get published you will have to search a publisher first who would like to publish your work and if you are too lucky pay you a royalty as well. Not surprising that a lot of authors fund the publishers to publish their work. You obviously would find it hard to market such books, the best you could do is distribute the copies to your friends and reviewers. Self-publishing makes this task painless and you can achieve the similar results without spending a fortune.

If you know how to use computers then you can even spend on the cost of typing & composing. Your work can be ordered anyone with an internet connection. Websites like Pothi.com help you track the sales and the royalty you earn. There are also discounts on bulk and self purchase.

But doesn’t that make self-publishing Vanity publishing? Fernandes differs, “We have never asked authors to print 500 books and go market it themselves. We ask authors to print just 5 books (maybe even lesser) for private circulation or to have the books reviewed and then let the market determine the demand. We are still in talks with three distributors for sales in physical bookstores but presently we do list the books online on our bookstore and on Indiaplaza“. Jaya clarifies that POD is not for mass markets, “POD is meant for niche publications and that’s where it works the best. And, as is the case with any product, those who are able to market are able to sell. Passive authors are not able to sell.” she informs.

And one could find proofs of POD slowly moving from the Vanity publication to the mainstream publication as well. Cambridge university press sold 10,000 titles recently using Lightening Source. Even big publishers now a days consider POD for printing old, out-of-print books. The newer publishers on the other hand prefer POD technology to evade the high costs associated with traditional printing, warehousing and unsold books.

Who should go for self-publishing?

If self-publishing is vanity publishing no more then what kind of authors go for it? “A lot of people coming to our websites have absolutely no idea about how to go about publishing their books. They recognize the value add POD (and our whole platform) brings to self. This leads to lower upfront investment, no headaches of inventory management, shipping, collecting payments etc. POD is also suitable for people looking for publishing books as memorabilia. Personalized books form very attractive and value for money gifts. Books of collections of writings are also popular.” Jaya said.

Obviously, there are many other innovative uses of POD as well (See Box: POD Innovations). Fernandes narrated the case of a college in Pune that had a class size of 4 and an ever-changing syllabus. “So they chose POD for their textbooks so that they could print only 4 copies and change it the next year if need be.” he says, “then, there was one gentleman from Bangalore who published his grandfather’s poems for circulation within the family.” Both Jaya & Leonard mentioned that POD can be used to test the market and get feedback before hitting the market with bulk production.

So the lesson: go for POD if the audience for the book is small or if you wish to test the waters before taking a plunge.

Marketing a self-published book

When you are the publisher of your book the onus of marketing the work lies on your head too. Leonard suggests, “There is no point marketing a book in places where it’s not related to. For example, a souvenir for an alumni meet cannot possibly be sold outside the alumni circle. POD publishers should create awareness about the concept of POD and be imaginative about where this concept can be applied.” Jaya believes that the best place to market POD books is online. “The book should be an extension of author’s online presence through blogs, social networks and other social media outlets. He has to pique their curiosity so that they buy the book. It is important to communicate clearly as to what this new book will give them which they did not have earlier.” she said.

Self publishing through Print on demand technology is an attractive option gaining ground amongst authors, not only in English but in Hindi and regional languages as well. It opens new doors for budding authors who are unable to find ready publishers as well for writers who only want to reach a close circle of readers. The advantages it offers over traditional publication are immense.

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• Can India afford its villages? This is the cover story for the issue by Atanu Dey and Reuben Abraham, where they suggest that the answer to the problems of our rural economy paradoxically lies in urban development. Farmer blogger Ashok Pandey does a rebuttal, saying such a suggestion is an unachievable day-dream.
• Twitter buys Summize and Nirantar had an apt introducing Micro blogging to the laymen and trying to fathom the reasons for its rising popularity. The article written by Patrix (together with your truly) quotes Gaurav Mishra and Duncan Riley.
• Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) have paved the way to access Internet in a way it was never possible before. Soon complete domain names, together with the TLDs would be available in many international scripts. Nirantar has a writeup by Varun Agarwal that analyzes how IDNs would help Indian languages grow on the Internet.
• He is a trained psychiatrist who was supposed to work in Mental Hospitals, which he also did for some time. But his passion for the medium ultimately made Dr Parvez Imam to choose documentary film-making as his career. Dr Sunil Deepak spoke to the doctor turned director about his passion, his life and experiences and about the medium.

Apart from these, there is ample stuff for lovers of Hindi literature. This edition has stories, poems, book reviews, satire and a unique poem competition too.

There is so much to read, what are you waiting for

• Robert Falcon Scott (Image from Wikipedia)A report on the fight against corruption waged by a senior IAS officer in India and how his wife Jayshree became a whistle-blower. Jayshree not only stood by her husband’s side during difficult times but also created a Wiki to counter the threats received from the corrupt bureaucrats who were being exposed. Jayshree not only used the Right to Information (RTI) act to her favor but also helps other victims on her Internet forum by guiding them on using the act effectively.
• A book review of “Scott’s last expedition“, based on the diary of explorer Robert Falcon Scott‘s expedition to the South Pole where he lost his life and
• A review of the newly released semantic analysis engine “Zamenta” and its Firefox extension that makes blogging a child’s play, discussing its features and the reasons and why this excellent tool won’t make much sense for non-English blogs yet.

You can also listen to other Indian podcasts by locating them at this wikipedia page and at this listing.

Nevertheless, the deal sure brings to light the shortcut people are following to carve their niche. Techgoss quotes Pahwa’s old interview where he had bragged about 300,000 users and about eight million page views a month, just months after the launch of the site. As Techgoss says, “Who cares what was said a few months ago”. However, Vivek obviously is a man who knows a thing or two about creating hype; his is perhaps the only such site to run an advt campaign on national TV. I distinctly remember that when these commercials were being aired the first time the site had a flier saying “Coming soon” and then they came up with this poor site, that looks so awful and yet able to sell it. In this year-old interview, Vivek mentions atleast three sites that he claimed would be launched within 3-4 months of Desimartini’s lauch. You could well imagine the state of these sites, IndiaListed, a classifieds site does’nt exist anymore, IndianRadar, a Digg clone is as shabbily made as Desimartini and Zohho, a Twitter wannabe now redirects to Desimartini. Obviously Vivek had something else on his mind (he came up with an unplanned website SecondShaadi.com instead, which atleast looks a bit decent).

Everybody it seems is in a hurry to heftily add a user base to its kitty and sign treaties with or be sold off to a Yahoo or Google. I am not sure whether it has to do with luck. I had raised apprehension about one such website OneIndia that turned into a lethal combination of News Portal, Social Bookmarking website and Blog Directory/Aggregator just overnight. The growth was evidently inorganic. While I may be wrong about their news source, they apparently subscribe to many news agencies for vernacular news I was right about their swelling blog directory. “Many” if not all blogs were added without asking the blogger. The scarier part was the website changed the permalinks of blog posts it showed and showed them inside frame pages, to a laymen reader it will appear as if the blogs are actually hosted over OneIndia. I could verify simply by the fact that my English and Hindi (removed after I pointed it out) blogs were added there without my permission. No notification was sent to me as the company claims it sends. The intention in changing Blog permalink and avoiding to provide actual blog URL is quite evident. They wanted to show that as their content. And days later I raised this objection the intention was validated. OneIndia had signed a deal with AOL to provide content to them. It is easy to understand why they needed an overnight growth in their content. Despite my objections to date the company has not removed the content they added without permission and still show blog posts in frame pages (though now they added Blog URL as links to close the frame.)

It probably needs guts, tactics, and above all, lack of spine to raise quick moolah. Thankfully, we can raise such concern through blogs, not worthy enough for main stream media that survives on Press Notes. But the way such deals go about and the unapologetic way Oneindia replied to my objections, this is going to be the “rule of the game” in future.

Tired of their spamming on all my sites, in September 2007, I had written to BlogAdda through their website that they should stop this gimmick, “I have noticed that you guys are on a spamming spree off late leaving unsolicited comments on various Hindi blog posts including mine. I wish to assure you that such gimmicks would only bring you bloggers who publish porn and trash. Please do not underestimate the intelligence of bloggers. Leeches have a very limited lifetime.”, I wrote. To which one Raghuvir from BlogAdda replied apologizing and saying, “…the intention was to inform bloggers about the site where they can register their blogs. We could have adopted an anonymous route while doing this, but we did not want to SPAM, rather inform. And if someone has not being doing the job correctly, we will take care of it.”. The way they took care of this, it seems, is to appoint more mindless agents to spam the whole Indiblogdom until they decide to shun them completely.

It’s not difficult to understand that new and novice bloggers have and will fall prey to such tactics and they will still register at the site. I have seen bloggers courteously replying to such comments on their blogs thinking that their blog has been “identified” by BlogAdda and failing to recognize the menace they have created all around.

Even before BlogAdda social networking sites such as Yaari and even utility websites such as Shelfari, Gostats.in (who stupidly claim to have created a Hindi stat-counter when they only have a localized page with atrocious Hindi) have resorted to such techniques. Sites such as Yaari and Shelfari lets the users sign-in with their Yahoo/Google Mail ID and then start spamming those enlisted in his address book with fake mails sent using his own email ID. The User, in most cases, is not even aware that these sites are spamming using his own ID. If you are a user of such sites, ensure that you never ever reveal your email account credentials to them otherwise they will simply hijack your address book. Just contemplate on what your friends will think of you, because all these spam mails are sent using your Email ID.

If you hate spamming as much as I do, please spread the message and urge your friends to boycott websites such as these that are making our lives difficult by leeching on to us. Let’s ostracise BlogAdda, Yaari and such sites and teach them a lesson.

Shame on you BlogAdda and the like, may your tribe rot in cyber-hell!

It was hard for me to expect camouflage stealthily existing around, but not too hard to expect it in politics. Politicians have for long made us believe that they have only the interest of the public in their hearts. We often claim to know their true colours but fall prey the very next time we see a popular show-biz personality campaigning for them. Politicians and cine-stars easily put up smokescreens and camouflage to hide their dark side. Their sweet promises, luring demeanour, the people they move with, the media glitz, everything is a crafted ingredient in the camouflage recipe. We admire their daughters as actors and TV anchors, we buy their book of poems (overlooking the ghost author), and we curse the journalist digging too much in their private lives. Who says camouflage doesn’t work every time?

If that scared you now, it won’t when you have to use a camouflage yourself. Yes, we camouflage all the time; at work, with kindred, at interview and where not. We soften unpleasant ideas with foggy words, we act as confident individuals; blacken our hair with dyes; undergo plastic surgery to remove wrinkles; get dentures to replace missing teeth and apply facial cosmetics to emulate the lost lustre of youth. We call it make-up while getting a new camouflaged personality taking off Batman, the comic-book character and creature of night.

Sometimes this camouflage gives us courage to stay on. Consider chatting over Internet, toddlers pretending as adults and perverts as gentlemen. With adventurous and discreet screen-names chatting is easier to handle than the high-jinx of face-to-face conversations. You don’t have to worry about what your non-verbals sneakily profess. You even feel new boldness to flirt, to pen witty lines you never would have said in person. The Camouflage of faceless communication allows individuals to bypass awkwardness and provides an overwhelming sense of control.

Everyday our opinions are formed and solidified with inputs from Radio, TV and newspaper and so many times we are catered camouflaged propaganda. In the scientific and technical world, people often invent special jargon to cover up situations or facts that they may not want our audience to be exposed to directly, very much like the existence of aliens in the movie Men in black. Next time you take an appreciative look at city’s most popular newspaper editorial, look again; it may well be advertorial performing camouflage marketing. Very recently there was an outcry against liquor advertisements being run on various channels posing as Apple juices, mineral water, sports gear, in fact anything but liquor; the advertisement people terms these as surrogate ads. But that’s not new. Liquor and tobacco giants have been doing that for years, sponsoring cricket matches, even teams; thus covertly and conveniently camouflaging the lethal products they create, with their avatar of community chum. Your own English daily promotes business of flesh under the massage-parlour classified ads that ironically appear under the health and fitness column.

Accept or not camouflage has become a culture now. We use it unaware and fail to notice them around us. As long as people would like to hide themselves and evade truth, camouflage will unfold itself in numerous forms. You just have to look minutely to discover a camouflage.

The World Wide Web is indeed too deep to be explored in its entirety. It’s a myth that the Web eliminated all hiding places. Moreover web means different things to different people. We often subconsciously use metaphors to describe it. It’s our ingenious way of explaining the unfamiliar using familiar terms.

During my recent cyber-journey I was surprised to discover many such metaphors being used and fashioned regularly. Some say web is spatial as space, some personify it, some use it as a figure of speech, and others add a touch of poetic embellishment. The Information Super Highway that we refer to cannot be measured in miles for contractors to prepare estimates using cheap adulterated construction material for their next government tender. The popular forums could not be located on your city-map and the metaphysical online-community you vow on is not even comparable to your friendly neighborhood mohalla. Still we use these terms. Waves or no waves, we begin our surfing and enter a site though we never see the door to the mansion.

I was surprised to note that people had actually done systematic studies on these metaphors. They had pondered deep into the psychological side of the use of the metaphors while talking to different people of different background of gender, job profile and expertise at usage of Internet. Data was also collected using online survey and research papers. Thankfully, the results were not entirely boring and I could pick-up some interesting inferences. So here I am sharing some of these with you.

Studies showed that the metaphorical dimension we give to the Web portrays our own innate feelings. The way we describe something affects the way we perceive it and the way we perceive it can affect the way we use it. No wonder then that the paradigm of the computer desktop inspires you to tidy-up the desktop on your machine; you remove the unnecessary shortcuts, get rid of the boring icons and use those downloaded ones. Now the desktop resembles your physical approach towards your own wooden, physically existing tabletop. So what, if your desktop has windows. How many times did you feel like Amundsen using your Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer?

If the metaphors we use reflect our personality, does our skills and gender play any role too? Studies show it does. Metaphor images seem to change as skill level develops. Thus, while the novices are more likely to perceive the Internet as a bottomless pit or an impenetrable maze, even a wide endless road or a locked library, the experts will modestly nod in disagreement. They see Web as a community, a haven of free speech or still better, a huge library. And they have their reasons. I personally regard Internet as an Ocean of information, since it’s deep, inviting and immense, with many areas still unexplored.

Studies suggested that novices tend to use finite, tangible, delimited, closed, delineated metaphors for the Web while Experts use more metaphysical, intangible, open metaphors. This may indicate the lack of comfort level of the novices to conceptualize something amorphously vast and the significant ability of Experts to do so. This difference in conceptual imagery may have ramifications for the development of future Web services to target audiences.

Talking of gender, Men and women project different self-perceptions of themselves as Internet users. Even in real life men tend to prefer absolute addressing (4 MG Road) while women tend to prefer relative addressing (Second house on the right). The way people navigate in a foreign environment may affect on-line information retrieval and future Web search engine design. The fact that more women than men use the highway metaphor may be based on the observation that highways are fundamentally regarded as neutral in sexuality as opposed to ships or planes.

Whatever metaphorical way we refer to the web, information remains the dominant theme associated with them. All of us tend to describe it more often as an information source rather than as an information conduit (as in highway). Other prevalent themes are that of a Library and a Network. If you ponder a while, you would agree. Web seems a lot like a dysfunctional library, with books scattered all over the floor; an un-catalogued library; a library with its lights turned off. Still we fail to notice the conflict; our image of chaotic information access belies the structured way a library presents its information.

Obviously some user metaphors will defy simple explanation and indicate a more pragmatic approach. The Internet-as-Spaghetti may suggest an image of entanglement but it is difficult to imagine the Internet as a bowl of pasta. The Mayajaal that the Internet is referred to may be reminiscent of the spell it has cast on young mind. Also it would not be entirely correct to neglect the parents who term it as a jungle. Today they are less worried about the wrong company their teenage son might be in than the amount of time he spends in his cyber-closet all night. To the bandwidth troubled cyber-habitual web is a virtual dead end street. For the government, Web is a cooperative chaos while for the job seeker it renders a new dimension. To the spiritually inclined the sheer power of Web lets him bow before its omnipotence. Some tend to go overboard and equate Web with the almighty himself. To them God is the distributed, decentralized system.

Whatever we call it, Internet has grown big. So big that it provides humanity a new window through which to look upon the infinite. It’s the epitome of both good and evil. It provides for free exchange of ideas, information and imagination. It can, on the other hand, be a tool of isolation and a peddler of the ideas, which live in the darker regions of ones mind precisely meaning that it reflects the true nature of humanity in all it’s diversity. Metaphors simply reveal this resemblance. That doesn’t mean that we’re stuck with the same metaphors forever. Metaphors evolve, as does language itself and new metaphors will be created every now and then.