Archive | May, 2010

Pothiz – Pothi.com’s e-Magazine

28 May

Over last two years we have interacted with a lot of writers and readers. And one thing we have always wanted to do is to bring the readers and writers together. The self publishing platform is one way, of course. But many other ideas also kept propping up. We do not have time to implement all of them, but today we are acting on one of these.

We are announcing the launch of Pothiz – Pothi.com’s e-Magazine. Contributions are invited for the same. Selected entries will make it into the first issue of the magazine scheduled to come out in July 2009.

Details are available on Pothi.com’s website and submissions can be done here.

To start with the magazine will reach out to 2000+ people from our subscriber base and more!

So, all the existing and aspiring writers out there. What are you waiting for? Submit your entry right away! Let the creative juices flow.

And hey! Don’t forget to tell others around you about it.

Preview is for showing the book, not hiding it

24 May

Authors work hard on their books. It is, therefore, natural for them to be very protective of their manuscripts.  However, all the authors, especially the new, unknown ones, have to carefully balance the threats of piracy and the threats of obscurity. If the book is not known then you can be sure that the book will not be pirated. But in that case it won’t be bought by anyone either. How much to open up your book and how much to protect it is probably a matter of endless debate. So, right now we will not get into that, but we will focus on a small feature at Pothi.com called “Preview”.

When submitting their books the authors can specify certain portion of the book to be exposed for people to read online as “Preview”. We mandate a minimum of 10 pages to be included there. The idea is that most people publishing with us are first time authors. Plus the manuscript has not been vetted by a third-party. So, it is important that the potential readers get to see enough of the book to make a decision about whether or not to buy the book. We have put a minimum number there, because we feel that the exposed content should be enough to let users make up their mind about the book.

Some authors make good use of this feature. Let’s say you have written a novel. And you expose 60-70% of the novel, or even 90% of it on the site as “Preview”. What is it that you should be scared of? That people will read it for free and not pay for it? Consider this – if somebody actually reads 90% of your book, then he is probably sufficiently interested in it and would want to read the ending. He might end up paying for it. But if you circumvented the minimum 10-pages mandate by only exposing your table of contents and preface, the reader never had a reason to get interested in the book and hence would never consider buying it.

The logic will have to adjust for different genres and forms, of course. Exposing 90% of a short story collection will not have the same effect (it may still be useful for other reasons – e. g. the person may be induced to buy your next book). But exposing around 40% of the book would be worthwhile. Somebody who read 2 of your stories online, might be interested enough to pay for the remaining three too. Somebody reading only the preface and table of contents may never bother.

Similarly, one should expose at least one chapter (more the merrier) with substantial content for non-fiction. Don’t put “Introduction” and “Foreword” in the preview. If there is something about the book you want the readers to know “Description” is the section to do that. Make good use of “Preview” feature and put in an actual chapter in there. Let the reader find solution to an actual problem and decide that she wants to read the rest of the book too.

So, if you want to update the “Preview” of your book to make it more meaningful, here is the FAQ detailing how to update your book.

Recent Changes on Pothi.com Platform

13 May

We have pushed some small changes on Pothi.com’s publishing platform recently. Here is a consolidated update

  • Links to other books from the same category on Book Pages: As the number of books is increasing on the platform, discovery mechanisms are becoming important, so that potential readers can find books of their choice. We have started off with a simple feature in this direction. The book pages will now have links to few other books from the same genre. So, people interested in similar books can browse around.
  • Fields for subtitle and ISBN: These were long due. There was no way for the authors to specify subtitle and ISBN for their books. Authors can go to their book pages, edit them and include these information.
  • Introduction of Tags field on the book edit form: Tagging the content helps in search and discovery of the content. There is now a “Tags” field that authors can populate for their books. Once we have sufficient number of books tagged, we will expose them suitably.
  • Setting MRP of the book, instead of setting the author margin: Till now, authors used to set the author margin for a book and the price of the book was calculated by our system. This was counter-intuitive to many people, who wanted to set the final price of the book. We have changed that system, so that people can now set the MRP of the book and author earning (royalty) is calculated by our system. It does not change the underlying price/margin relationship. Authors get the same earning for a given price as they used to get earlier. You can try out our new price estimator for the same. If you have used the price estimator earlier, you will notice that there are now two tabs instead of one. One of them called “For Yourself” lets you calculate the “Author Price” – the price at which authors can always buy the copies, irrespective of how they are priced on the store. The other one called “For Distribution” let’s you calculate the royalties at various MRPs. Again, the underlying logic has not changed. The earlier estimator also used to show you the author’s price apart from the store price. We have only rearranged the forms for the convenience of users.

Some more exciting stuff is in the making right now. Stay tuned for them :)

Converting Word Files to PDF

12 May

At Pothi.com PDF is the best format to submit your books in. Any other format your submit gets converted to PDF and that PDF is used for printing. If the book is submitted in any format other than PDF and the conversion is done at our end, there might be some issues. For example, if you have used a font that is not available on our system, converted document won’t have those fonts and will not look good.

Its not a surprise that the most common format we receive the books in is MS Word format. So, here are a few tips to convert MS Word to PDF.

Table of Contents

Popular PDF converters

  1. Adobe Acrobat: This is a paid option from Adobe. It is expected to create most standard compliant PDF. Some of the POD providers insist that the PDF submitted to them should be created through Adobe’s product. Pothi.com does not have that requirement, but if you do have Adobe, you should use it. Once you have the product installed, you will have “Adobe PDF” as a printer option. You need to press “Ctrl-P” and select “Adobe PDF” as the printer.Screenshot showing Adobe PDF in printer listIf you just click “OK” from here and save the resulting file, it will create a PDF, but it will result in one of the most common problems we see in the files submitted as PDF. The page size in the resulting PDF won’t be the page size you had set up for the book. It will letter (8.5″x11″) or A4 (8.26″x11.69″).We will discuss how to correct this, later in this article.
  2. Office 2007 – Save as PDF: If you are using Microsoft Office 2007, you can install and use its “Save as PDF or XPS” plugin. Once you have this plugin installed, you will have the option to save as PDF available in your office menu.This option will work out of the box. The pdf file created will have the correct page size too.
  3. Cutepdf Writer: This is a Free option and works very well. You can download the Free CutePDF Writer. After installing it, “CutePDF Writer” will be one of the printers listed, when you Press “Ctrl-P” on your MS Word Document. You can create a file by selecting this option and clicking on the “OK” buttom. It will, hwoever, give the same problem as “Adobe PDF” of not creating the right page size. How to solve this will be discussed next in the article.

Getting the right Page Size in the converted PDF


Right Size in the MS Word file

The first step is to ensure that you have set up the intended page size in the MS Word itself. The default page size in MS word is either A4 or letter. Most of the time a print book will not look good in these sizes. You can check out these MS Word Formatting related FAQs on Pothi.com to ensure that you have set the correct page size in MS Word. A list of supported Book Page Sizes on Pothi.com is available in our FAQs.

Once this is taken care of  ”Save as PDF or XPS plugin” for Office 2007 works out of the box.

For Adobe PDF and CutePDF Writers, you need to set the the correct page size.


Adobe PDF

After Pressing “Ctrl-P” and selecting “Adobe PDF” as the printer, click on properties. You will see a screen like following. If you don’t get it, make sure you click on “Adobe PDF Settings Tab” on the screen that comes.

Click on the “Adobe PDF Page Size” drop down. If your intended size is there in the drop down, you can select it from here, click “OK” and proceed as usual.

If the page size is not there, you need to click “Add” button next to the drop down. It will give you a screen like following

Enter a name of your choice in “Paper Names” and enter the intended width and height in “Paper Size”. Remember to select the right “Unit” (inch or mm). The following will create a size of name “My Book Size” of the page size 5″x8″, which you will be able to use going forward.

Click on “Add/Modify”, then click on “OK”. You will be back to the following screen with printer list

Screenshot showing Adobe PDF in printer list

Now click on the “Properties” again and this time, “My Book Size” will be available in the “Adobe PDF Page Size” drop down.

Select the “My Book Size”, click “OK” and proceed to create the PDF file.


Cute PDF

In CutePDF the option for changing the page size is almost hidden.

Press “Ctrl-P”, select CutePDF writer as the printer and then click on “Properties”. On the resulting screen select the tab “Paper/Quality”

Now click on “Advanced” Button. On the resulting screen, click on the “Paper Size” Drop down. If your intended paper size is available, you should choose that.

Else, you should select “Post Script Custom Paper Size”. The resulting screen will let you specify the page size. Enter suitable width and height. Remember to select the right unit (inch or mm) The following selection will make the page size 5″x8″.

 

Click “OK” (4 times) to create the PDF of the desired size.

Queries?

Have more queries about submitting PDF files on Pothi.com? You can shoot them as comments here and we’d try to answer them.

Now get instant feedback on common file errors for your book

4 May

Pothi.com is open to, even encourages authors to prepare their book on their own. The specifications are available in details on our website.

However, there are some common errors that are often present in the files submitted. Till now, authors needed to wait for our verification process to get the feedback on those. We have now introduced an automated files checker in book submission form, which will instantly analyze the submitted files for the common errors like page size of the interior and size of the cover. So, you don’t have to wait to correct those.

Enjoy the power and contact us if you face any problems with the new system.

You Make the Story – We Make the Books!

4 May

Shachii and Gaurav Manik are a Mumbai based couple who run a software company as a day job. However, it is their kids at home (two boys aged 5 and 3) , who do a great job of challenging their creativity. Gaurav loves to make up and tell stories which he creates with the help of the two boys.

This family exercise made them realize how creative the kids’ minds can be and the idea of “You Make the Story – The Creativity Workshop for Kids” was born. During the workshop the kids are encouraged to come up with a basic story plot and draw pictures of a scene from this plot. Then Shachii and Gaurav expand on the story and make it comprehensive, create and design the book, publish it and have it printed from Pothi.com. Two books from their earlier workshops are available on Pothi.com – “Adventures of the Red Club” and “The Amazing Journey to Zog“. A copy of the book is given to the kids who helped create the book.

The workshop is targeted at the kids between the ages five and ten years. These workshops are a one time session of 90-minutes each and the duo is open to conducting the workshop in any locality in Mumbai. ” We think it is a great way to bring out the imagination of a child, they seem to enjoy working in a group to create a story and draw the pictures. In the end it gives them a personalized book and a “I helped create this!”-feeling, and a special bond with the other kids that were present in the same session,” says Shachii about the workshop.

You can follow Sachii on Twitter.

Publishing books from the workshop is a great example of the use of Print on Demand. It does not take a lot of money to become a publisher and the encouragement the children get from seeing their work in a book is invaluable.

What are your kids doing this summer? Encourage them to express their thoughts and become a publisher for them right away!

Check out some other awesome books created by children which are available through Pothi.com. We will also try and bring to you glimpses from some of the privately published projects this month.

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