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Indian Language typing on Computer

Posted by Jaya on June 15, 2010

Characters and Fonts

Before getting into Indian Language typing, let’s understand how does the computer understand what we type. We will understand this with the help of examples from English typing, since that is the language best handled by and understood on computers.

Computer understands individual characters. All letters, numbers, symbols are a character to the computer.  ‘A’ is a character, ‘a’ is another character, “,” (comma) is another character and so on.

Then there are fonts, which tell the computer how to display a particular character. So, the same set of characters “Pothi.com” will appear different in different fonts.

Pothi In Different FontsAs you can see, “P” is displayed by the font “Times New Roman” is different from the “P” displayed by the font “Arial”, which in turn is different from the “P” displayed by the font “Monotype Corsiva”. Similar is the case with other characters like “o”, “t” etc.

What is important here is that computer still knows that a “P” is a “P”, irrespective of the font it is displayed in. That’s why when you use the “Find” or “Search” feature while typing, it will find you the word/character you searched for, irrespective of how the font displays it. In fact, the underlying system that recognizes what character it is, does not care at all as to how the font displays it. In the following image, the first line in “Pothi.com” in a font called “MT Extra”. The second line is the name of the font!

Pothi In MT ExtraAs you can see, the display makes no sense for an English reading human. But the computer does not care.

What this means is, that you can design a font, that displays certain English characters as certain letter in one of the Indian languages. We’ll take Hindi as an example.

The same set of characters “Pothi.com” in a font called “Kruti Dev 010″ become the following

Pothi In Kruti DevOf course, it does not look anything like “Pothi.com” to English readers. Hindi readers can see Hindi alphabets (it’s not a meaningful combination). But to the computer, it is “Pothi.com”.

However, with this font to my aide, I can now concoct certain character combination, which would look like meaningful Hindi words to Hindi Readers. For example character set “dje #i” generated the following

Meaningful Hind in KrutiDevHindi Readers can identify meaningful words here. Even though for the computer it is just “dje #i”.

This is one way of typing Hindi. And most of the Hindi Books are typeset in this way, using one of the fonts, that display an English character as a Hindi letter.

When the ultimate aim is to print, this method works just fine. Once the book is printed, nobody cares what the original character stored in the computer was.

But this method has issues – big ones. For example

  1. No standardization: When you don’t have characters assigned for the letters of your language in the computer, each font developer is free to decide which character should be displayed like which letter. So, one font decides to display “A” as “अ” and the other font decides to display “d” as “अ”. What do you do then? In English, you can write something and then change the font at the click on a button. But in Hindi, if you change the font after writing, you will get totally different letters displaying on the screen, which are likely to be meaningless. Plus for each font you have to learn the typing all over again!Lack of standardization is also a problem in the Internet World. If you type the content in one font and send it to someone, the recipient has to have the same font on his computer, in order to see the meaningful text you have written. Any other font will not do. Compare this to English, where you may type in one font and the other person may not have that font. But he can still read it, because whatever English font he has understands the underlying characters and displays the correct letters for an English reader.
  2. Not searchable: In this system, the computer does not understand underlying characters of Hindi language. It is just the English language characters wearing a different look as far as the computer is concerned. So, there is no good way of searching through this content. In the Internet age, this is a major disadvantage. A lot of content available on Internet today is discovered only by search and if you want your content to be discovered, it is important that it is typed in a way so that it is searchable.

Unicode

It is to solve such problems that Unicode has come into picture. You can think of Unicode as something which enables computers to understand characters beyond English language. So, if your computer supports Unicode, it starts understanding not only the characters corresponding to “A”, “d”, “,” etc. but also the ones for “क्”, “अ” etc. And it’s not just the Indian languages, but it starts understanding characters corresponding to Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian and most other major languages of the world!

So, with this you do not need to represent a random English character as a Hindi letter. The characters are available for Hindi and the font can now display those characters as the corresponding Hindi letters. Such fonts are called “Unicode compatible fonts”. To repeat, Unicode compatible Hindi fonts are the ones which do not represent an English characters as a Hindi letter, but which represent the Hindi characters as corresponding Hindi letters.

Typing and Input Method Editors (IMEs)

So far, so good. Computer, somehow, understands the characters for Hindi and other languages. But how do you type in those languages? Your keyboard still has only English letters on it. So, when you press the key labeled “A”, the computer knows that you want to type the character “a”. But how do you tell the computer that you want to type the character “अ”.

Multi-language keyboards are a design challenge, and at least for Indian languages, nothing great has come out. So, different ways have been devised to use the same English keyboard for inputting non-English characters. To  understand how these work, let’s consider this. As far as the computer is concerned (“A” and “a”) are two different characters. But from the keyboard, the same button is used to type either of them. How? “A” gets typed if either CAPS LOCK is on or the Shift key is pressed. Otherwise, it is “a” that gets typed. So, the computer decides that the character typed is “A” or “a” depending not only on the key pressed, but also depending on the state of CAPS LOCK and Shift key.

Following a similar tactic, we can give the computer some other signal that when the key labeled “A” is pressed, you have to enter neither “a”, nor “A”, but “अ”. How to give that signal? For that there are multiple methods. Basically computer programs have been created, that come in between the keyboard and computer storing the characters and depending on certain signals tell the computer which character has been entered. These programs are typically called “Input Method Editor (IME)”.

These IMEs do two things

  1. They give you a way to specify the language you will be typing in
  2. They assign particular keys on the keyboard to particular characters, depending on the language selected

Two examples of IMEs for Indian Languages are

  1. Microsoft’s Indic Language IME
  2. Google’s Indic IME

I have the first one installed on my computer and I’d use that as an example to illustrate how IME works. Once I install and configure Microsoft’s Indic IME for Hindi, I get a language selection button my taskbarMicrosoft Indic IME Language Selection

If I select, English here, then things work as usual. If I select Hindi, then pressing Shift+D on my keyboard types “अ” instead of “D”. Pressing “j” types “र” and so on. I can keep switching the language and type a piece of text which uses both the languages (as I am doing now).

To use an Indic IME like this, you still need to learn the key combinations that type the right characters for you. This combination may vary between different IMEs. In fact, even the same IME may provide you with different options for mapping of keys to characters. Microsoft’s Indic IME provides at least two such combinations for Hindi. One is called “INSCRIPT” layout, which I use (the key-character combinations I described in the previous paragraph was according to this layout). The other is Phonetic and as the name suggests, its key-character bindings are more phonetic; e.g. (A will “अ”, R will be “र” and so on).

But the advantage over the earlier scheme of using non-Unicode compatible font is that once you have learned to use one IME, you can use any Unicode compatible font. You don’t need to learn the map for every font separately. Plus you text is standard compliant and searchable!

Google’s Transliteration Technology – Saviour for beginners!

If you are a beginner with Hindi typing, you would probably want to use an IME with Phonetic key-character combination. For example, where “A” typed “अ”, R types “र” etc. It is easier than using other combinations where the mapping may be very arbitrary.

But you still need to learn the exact key combinations for typing something. If you need to type Pothi (पोथी) in Hindi, do you type “Pothi” or “Pothee” or “Pothii”. With most IMEs only one of these will work.

Google’s IME is different here. It works more intelligently. Instead of assigning fix keys to the characters, it guesses the correct word from the combination you have entered. Basically from the various words you could possibly write, it guesses the word based on grammatical correctness and frequency of use in languages. If it guesses the wrong word, you have a way to change it to different word. In Google Transliteration all three “Pothi”, “Pothee” and “Pothii” produce the same (and correct) word पोथी.

So, you can essentially type words and so long as it is close phonetically, this IME will find the suitable word for you. This makes it a great tool for beginners. You can get started right away, write Hindi the way you do while chatting with your friends or in SMS and start getting output in a Unicode compatible  font.

Google actually has an online service for this – http://www.google.co.in/transliterate . So you don’t even have to download and install anything.

All is not well here though. Once you start typing in Hindi regularly, you will start feeling the limitations of Google Transliteration. We will not get into the details here. But if that happens at some point, it may make sense to invest some time in learning another IME, which uses fixed combinations.

Complex Text Layout (CTL)

There is one major difference between Hindi (most Indian Languages) and English. In fact even between Hindi and Russian, Hindi and Chinese or Hindi and Japanese. The representation of a character changes depending on the context in Hindi and many other Indian languages. The representation of “द्”, for example is different in words तद्भव and विद्या. One has “द्” before “भ” and the other has “द्” before “य”. Compare this to English where how “d” is displayed does not depend on which letter comes before and after it. So, for displaying Hindi correctly the computer needs to understand all possible ways of displaying the characters under different contexts. The technical term for this is “Complex Text Layout”. Most computers with modern operating systems have this ability now and in all likelihood, you will not have to do anything special about it. But if you find a problem in display where a character is identified correctly, but is not displayed correctly, then you would know that it is an issue with computer not understanding “Complex Text Layout”.

In Windows XP and Vista, the complex text layout is enabled by default. In Windows 2000, you needed to enable it specifically. I have not tested it on Windows 7, but hopefully things should not go retrograde.

Finally

The description here is intended for a non-technical audience. Many concepts have been simplified and a purist technical person may be tempted to correct my usage of various terms (“You mean OS when you say computer!”). Let me just clarify that it is totally intentional. I just hope it has not become too technical for the non-technical audience :)

Questions are welcome as comments!

Posted in Publishing Tasks | 2 Comments »

Preview is for showing the book, not hiding it

Posted by Jaya on May 24, 2010

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.

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Converting Word Files to PDF

Posted by Jaya on May 12, 2010

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.

Posted in Interior Design/Formatting | 1 Comment »

Copyright O’ Copyright! (Part II)

Posted by Jaya on March 9, 2010

You may want to read the first part on this topic before reading this one: Copyright O’ Copyright (Part I)

In the previous post, we have seen what copyright and copyright law mean to an author. Now let us look at some of the common queries people have in mind.

Should I register a copyright?

As mentioned in the previous post

  • Copyright registration is optional. Copyright comes into existence as soon as the work is penned down. Whether or not copyright has been registered, the protection under copyright law in available.
  • Registration is a prima facie evidence in case of a dispute, but it does not guarantee that the dispute will always be in your favour.

Give the above, there isn’t a strong case for registering copyright. However, if you have either the time for paperwork or the money for an Intellectual Property (IP) lawyer to do the work on your behalf and you absolutely want to do everything in your power to protect your copyright, you can go for registration. If you are doing in yourself, the details are available on Copyright Office’s website. Otherwise you may want to contact a local IP lawyer. Typically you may have to spend upwards of Rs. 10,000 for a lawyer’s services.

Is it necessary to register a copyright before publishing a book?

No. The copyright protection comes into affect as soon as you have penned down the work. Hence, it is not necessary to register a copyright.

Is it necessary to register a copyright before publishing a book on Pothi.com?

No

But wouldn’t it be a proof that the book is indeed mine?

Not really. Copyright office does not go around scouting for whether the work has been written/published by anyone else originally. They only give around 30 days for someone to raise objection and then go ahead with registration process. That is hardly a guarantee that only original work passes the process. In fact, it is probably for the same reason that in a court case, a copyright registration is not a conclusive proof and other proofs can actually take the decision of the court against the registration.

Would the name of my book be protected under copyright?

No, title, sub-title, short phrases would not generally be covered under copyright.

If there is a book already published under a name and I give the same name to my book, would I be violating somebody’s copyright?

In general, the name of the book is not protected by copyright and if you browse through a book store, you will see several books with the same name, especially non-fiction ones. So, just because a book with the same name has been published earlier, does not mean that your book can’t have the name.

But you should keep in mind that the name could be trademarked (especially famous ones) and if that is the case, it should not be used without proper permissions.

Also, you should avoid using the names of famous books. Because it not only about copyrights or trademarks all the time. Other laws also have to be taken in to account. If you use a very famous name or refer to a very famous name somehow, the originator of that name may sue you for trying to mislead people. Copyright may or may not have been violated, but consumer protection laws may come in to play!

So, the safe thing to do is not to bother too much about the name being used earlier, but definitely stand clear off the famous ones.

Somebody told me I should not use content from Internet. It will be a violation of copyright. Why? Aren’t they in public domain?

No. Public availability of content does not mean it is in public domain. Unless some content is clearly declared to be in public domain, you should assume that you can not use it without permission. A lot of content is available on the Internet, where the copyright and licensing information may not be available. In such cases, make it a point to get proper permission from the content owner to reproduce the content or use it in other ways. If you can’t get the permission, do not use it.

I have used images from the Internet in my book. Is that a problem?

Most likely it IS a problem. Like with written content, just because images are available publicly, it does not mean that they can be used freely by anyone. You must check the licensing information or get explicit permission from the owner before using images from Internet.

I have an ISBN for my book? Does it mean my copyright is protected?

This is a surprisingly common confusion people have. So, to clarify, ISBN has nothing to do with copyright. ISBN is only a cataloging system for books and it makes no statement whatsoever about copyright. Your literary work is protected by copyright laws irrespective of whether or not your book has an ISBN. If you want to register a copyright, you can do so, but getting an ISBN is not equivalent to registering a copyright.

Where do I read more about the copyright and related laws in India?

Copyright office has a fairly comprehensive website. While reading through the laws and rules might be infeasible for normal mortals (read non-lawyers), the handbook of copyright law explains things in a language that can be followed even by the novices.

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Copyright O’ Copyright! (Part I)

Posted by Jaya on March 8, 2010

I consider myself fairly good with spotting patterns and categorizing things. But the number of angles from which people can get confused about the copyrights confounds me. In general, it is not possible to give a quick, short, satisfying answer to copyright related queries. Because this is after all a legal issue and “if”s and “but”s are endless before you can make any statement.

So, if you have a query about copyright, I request you to read this blog post (and others to come on this) first, even if it is slightly longish and even if it does not come to the point you have in mind immediately. Because most likely, your point has to come through several “if”s and “but”s!

Since we are touching on a legal topic – a big and important disclaimer. This article is not written by a qualified legal expert. This is just our understanding of the copyright issues and should not be taken as a legal advice. If copyright questions are really worrying you, you should consult an Intellectual Property lawyer. Also, all the circumstances, examples, cases used in the article are completely hypothetical – and work of imagination. They may or may not stand a proper legal scrutiny. They are mentioned just to illustrate the idea and are not supposed to be actual legal cases.

So now, on to the real stuff.

A big nuance of law in general

Before we start on the copyright relates issues, there is something about law in general that we need to understand. There are always two aspects of law. One aspect talks about what should happen. The other governs, how do you go about enforcing that law. For simplicity let’s call them the theoretical and practical aspects of the law.And “theoretical” and “practical” should not be taken in the sense that “theoretical” is just that – the theory and “practical” is the main thing. No! Its just a nomenclature and does not carry any such loaded meaning.

  • Theoretical aspect will talk about what should happen. If X has murdered Y under ABC circumstances, then X should be punished with a life imprisonment. That’s what the theoretical law says.
  • Practical aspect is concerned with ascertaining what actually happened and which part of theoretical law is applicable. Did Y get murdered or did Y commit suicide? If it was indeed a murder, was it X who did it. If so, was X provoked in any way or did X do it for self defense and so on… How will these things be ascertained? Based on evidences. So, the law will say that a postmortem report from a government hospital can be an evidence to ascertain what was the cause of death and whether it is more likely to be a murder or a suicide. The law can say that the weapon of death being found in X’s house is not an evidence enough for claiming that X is the murderer and so on.

So, given the practical aspects of the law, whether or not the theoretical aspect gets observed in the end can never be predicted in advance. If in reality X was murdered under ABC circumstances, then he should have gotten life imprisonment. But with all the evidences and other nittigritties related to ascertaining the situation, it is a possibility that X gets away free because the circumstances could not be ascertained definitely. There is also a chance that X was not really guilty, but evidences got framed up in a way that he was punished.

Depressing as it may sound, it is a reality. The law is after all a human system and can not be fool-proof. (However, to practically compensate for that, most modern laws – specially criminal laws – follow the principle of letting the accused go if there is even the slightest doubt about the crime. Let go of a thousand guilty people to save even one innocent person).

The outcome of civil and business related legal conflicts are usually less fatal to individuals (we are normally not talking about murders and violence here). But the theoretical and practical aspects of the law are still there. So, the theoretical law may say that if company X has violated the patent of company Y, then they should compensate for the losses incurred and immediately pull their product out from the market. But the practical law has to go through the exercise of ascertaining a bunch of things here. Did Y have that patent? Has the patent really been violated? If so, how do we calculate the losses incurred (different parties would definitely have different calculations!)? What would pulling the product out mean? Can company X provide support to their existing customers and charge for it? Or would the customer also have to suffer? And so on…

Apart from unpredictability caused by the practical aspect of the law, there might be issues in the theoretical aspect of the law too. There may be laws that contradict with each other (legal systems are vast, complicated human systems, after all). Law may be vague about certain definitions. Certain concepts may just elude strict definitions and law has to depend on its interpreter to take a call on those. So, unpredictability reins all through!

The same nuance for copyright law

Similar situation exists for the copyright law as well. Law says certain things about what is copyright, in what circumstances is it violated, what is the punishment for violating the copyright and so on.

But if there is a practical conflict, the outcome can not predicted because the process of ascertaining the claims is not predictable. Just like in the murder case example taken earlier, someone might actually have violated the copyright and may still get away with it because the court could not ascertain whether or not the copyright belonged to the other person in the first place!

We should look at the remaining discussion, keeping the above in mind.

But let’s not be overly pessimistic. While the outcome is not quite predictable in case of an actual conflict, it does not mean that totally arbitrary things can happen to us. If we understand the important aspects of the law correctly, and follow some good practices, we should be fairly safe on copyright grounds.

The theoretical part of the copyright law

  • Copyright in actually a bundle of rights given to the creator of creative work – normally the works of literature, art, drama, music etc. The bundle of rights include things like right of reproduction, right of adaptation, right of translation etc. Given Pothi.com’s business, we will restrict our discussions to the copyright of literary works (computer code is also treated as literary work for the purpose of copyright, but we’d not include that in our discussions).
  • The copyright law grants certain protection to the owner of copyright. Typically for literary work, it means that all the rights from the bundle can not be exercised by anyone other than the copyright owner, unless there is an explicit permission or a right transfer has happened.
  • There is a provision for registering the copyright. However, it is not necessary to register the copyright to claim protection under it. Copyright and protection under copyright law comes into existence as soon as the work is penned down. Registration is optional. Registration serves as prima facie evidence, if there is a dispute in court. This means that it can be basis to file the case, but it does not mean conclusively that the case will be decided in favour of the person having registration. The other party can present other proofs, which can put the case in their favour.
  • In Indian copyright law, the copyright protection for literary work is available for up to 60-year period counted from the year following the death of the author. If the publication is done anonymously or with a pseudonym, the protection is available for 60 years from the date of publication.
  • Copyright mostly works like any other property you own. You can assign a copyright to someone else in a lifetime, you can assign it to someone starting from a future date (like after your death). If there is no explicit assignment, then like any other property, the copyright passes on to your legal heir after your death.
  • You can assign individual rights from the bundle of rights copyright law protects to other people/organizations while keeping the remaining with you. So for an English work of yours, you can give Spanish translation rights to one company, Hindi translation rights to a relative of yours and movie adaptation rights to a bollywood producer. The remaining rights will still remain with you. None of these assignments will entitle them to print and sell the copies of your original work.

Practical Parts to remember

  • Recall the theoretical and practical aspects of the law and apply it here. The law grants the protection, but that does not mean that someone who wants to, will not be able to violate your copyright. They may violate it and you have to keep track of them and take the legal recourse, if they don’t agree to stop the violation. Once the case starts, you will have to go through the process of proving that the copyright was yours and it was violated. You will have to produce evidence to this effect and so on. The outcome is not completely predictable.
  • The law does not say that any government body will actively monitor copyright violation irrespective of whether or not you have registered the copyright. That is something you will have to do on your own. There is no copyright police anywhere to actively monitor and stop illegal copyright violations!

In the next blog post on copyrights, we’d get into some of the practical things a self publishing author should look for while dealing with copyright issues.

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The much hyped ISBN

Posted by Jaya on January 20, 2010

We often get queries which desperately ask whether we can assign ISBN to their books. Some others almost seem to say that its their dream to publish their book with an ISBN.

We have not quite been able to figure out what image of the ISBN an average self-publisher carries. Still, before we proceed on this topic further, let me clarify this about the ISBN. ISBN is a useful thing, but it is not something you need to dream about. It is just a number to help cataloging of the books worldwide. You don’t have to do something to ‘qualify’ for it. You just need to approach the right people with the details of your book and they will issue you an ISBN. Do not get psyched out by the information on the Internet, mostly put up by the parties with financial interest, which make ISBN seem like a prestigious award for your book. Its not!

The above is particularly true of India. In many other countries, you will need to pay to a reseller to get an ISBN for your book. In India, ISBN is handled by a government agency. In an effort to promote the adoption of ISBN, they issue it for free.

For more information on what the ISBN is, assignment of ISBN and how to get one for your self published book in India, read the following excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide.

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ISBN

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, a unique code that can be assigned to a book. This is a system developed and adopted by the International Organisation for Standardisation to uniquely identify each published book.

Assignment of ISBN

Each country has their designated ISBN agency which is responsible for allotment of ISBNs for the books published in their country. In some countries there are also resellers of ISBN apart from the agency. In India, the only agency authorised to issue an ISBN is Raja Rammohan Roy National Agency for ISBN, which comes under Ministry of Human Resource Department. As of now, there are no authorised resellers of ISBN in India.

Who should get the ISBN

ISBNs are issued to publishers, who can then assign them to the books published by them. No one other than the publisher should assign an ISBN to the book. For a self publisher in India, it means that they should not get an ISBN from anybody except directly through the agency issued in his/her name. That would be the correct way of getting the ISBN. The process of getting an ISBN assigned is simple and it is explained later in this article.

Importance of ISBN

  • ISBN helps in compilation of published book in directories and bibliographic records.
  • It helps everyone in the distribution chain track the movement of the books.
  • It helps in collection of sales data of books.

In India, however, the ISBN is yet to be adopted by the majority and many parts of the distribution process are not automated. So, the real advantage of ISBN is not that high. However, if you want to go through the traditional distribution channels for your book, it would be useful to get an ISBN. Most organised and online retailers need an ISBN assigned for a book to be sold through them.

ISBN for Self Publishers in India

As mentioned earlier, ISBNs are given to publishers to assign to the books they publish. Earlier ISBNs were allotted only in blocks. But the good news is individual ISBNs can now be allotted to individuals who are self publishing. And getting an ISBN in India is free.

You need to send an application to the Raja Rammohan Roy National Agency for ISBN with the details of your book, photocopy of the cover page, identity proof and a self-addressed envelope for return communication. A template for ISBN application form is available on Pothi.com.

Posted in Sales and Distribution, Self Publishing | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

[Self Publishing Guide] Self Publishing Your Book – Step 5: Marketing

Posted by Jaya on January 8, 2010

This post is an excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide for Indian Market. If you have not, you may want to read the following post in this series before starting on this one

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Although marketing comes as the fifth step in publishing, fact is, the buzz should start even before writing. Marketing a book is all about building the author’s brand. It takes time and you have to work towards it. If you recall the hype surrounding release of a Dan Brown or a JK Rowling book, you will understand the concept. The books sell on the author’s reputation, which is created by a team of professionals representing a publishing house.

This obviously is a limitation for an independent author who has chosen to self publish. But the good news is, with the Internet, everyone has a free and effective marketing tool to reach their audience. This works especially well when going for POD. You can get your readers, book orders and then have the book printed. It is important for the author to build a brand before trying to sell the book. Just coming online with a book to sell won’t be effective.

  • There are many social and professional networking Internet sites where you can promote your work. Among them Orkut, Facebook and Twitter have the largest following. Build your profile on these sites to market your book economically and effectively. But build up your credentials before making your sales pitch.
  • If you have written a book about your professional expertise, market it on professional sites like Linkedin where you can join groups with shared interests. Also explore book centred websites like Shelfari and Librarything which provide excellent opportunities for marketing.
  • Adding your book to Google book search displays it in relevant search results.
  • You can also create a website about your book. Request a friend or some prominent personality to write a review of your book and post it on your site as well as their networking sites. You could even write about your own experiences while writing the book.
  • Put up extracts from your book on your website for others to read. This will catch the reader’s interest and help sell your book. Don’t worry too much about piracy. Nobody is interested in a great but unknown manuscript. Book pirates only target bestsellers.

Apart from the Internet, you could also arrange for a press release in the local newspapers. If you know someone in the print media, you could have reviews of your book published in newspapers/magazines. Remember:

  • It is easier to market a non-fiction book in your area of expertise rather than fiction or poetry.
  • Think about your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The market is flooded with books and other content mediums. Why should someone buy your book?

Posted in Marketing, Self Publishing | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

[Self Publishing Guide] Self Publishing Your Book – Step 4: Distribution

Posted by Jaya on January 7, 2010

This post is an excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide for Indian Market. If you have not, you may want to read the following post in this series before starting on this one

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Distribution should not be confused with marketing. Marketing creates awareness and entices the reader to read the book. However, the book has to move from the printing press to the book store for the reader to buy it. Distribution is the process by which the book is made available to the reader.

In a typical chain, the book travels from the publisher to the distributors. These are comparatively bigger stockists who usually look after a region or state. From the distributor, the book goes to the retailer (your nearby book shop is a retailer) where it is purchased by the individual reader.

Typical margins* (known as ‘discounts’ in the industry) are 40-60% of MRP to retailer and 10-20% of MRP to the distributor/wholesaler. This implies that for a book with a printed price of  Rs 100, Rs 40–60 is pocketed by the retailer as profit and Rs 10-20 is pocketed by the distributor. The books are also generally distributed on a “fully returnable if not sold within a specific period (e.g. three months)” basis. This means upfront payment from the distributor is rare and they take no financial risk whatsoever. These numbers often surprise first timers, but these are the realities of the publishing industry. Online as well as offline retailers work with similar margins.

Without contacts, getting a distributor is difficult for a self publisher. Distributors are picky about the books since they have to store the copies and sell it to the retailers. Even when you find a distributor, often they don’t really do a good job of getting your book to the retailer, i.e. the bookstore.

The above information is not meant to discourage, but to give a realistic picture to the independent author/publisher.

Options for Self Publishers

  • Offline Distribution:
    • The best bet is to start with your local bookshops. Give away the book even for free at this stage. If it picks up, try and get to a distributor through the bookshop.
    • Sell it yourself, through your family and friends. Don’t give in to relatives asking for free copies!
    • Ask people around to explore the possibility of institutional selling (for example, company/school libraries). Works better for non-fiction books on specialised topics.
  • Online Distribution:
    • Make your own website and sell the book through it. You can accept payment through PayPal (in dollars) or through cheque, demand drafts and electronic transfers.
    • There are self publishing companies (like Pothi.com) which operate online book stores specifically for self publishing authors.
    • Get a distributor in a similar way for offline distribution. Check with them if they can get you listed on online book shops.

As mentioned earlier, the distribution option you go for would also decide which printing technology is better for you. If you can get into traditional distribution, to get the prices right (refer to the margins above), you are better off going with bulk printing through offset technology. If you are selling yourself or through self-publishing company’s website, Print on Demand is a better option to avoid inventory and logistic hassles.

* For English Language publishing

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[Self Publishing Guide] Self Publishing your Book – Step 3: Printing

Posted by Jaya on December 31, 2009

This post is an excerpt from our Self Publishing Guide for Indian Market. If you have not, you may want to read the following post in this series before starting on this one

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In an earlier post on this series we had discussed the printing process and the two options available – bulk printing with offset or one-off/short run printing with Print on Demand.

Your decision needs to be based on three main factors -

  • Estimate of the market size. If you are confident that the demand for your book is more than 500 copies, go for offset printing. In the event of a smaller demand, POD is a better option. To put things in perspective, a book selling more than 5000 copies in India is considered a success by traditional publishing houses. Remember to factor in your actual marketing abilities when you are estimating the demand. Most well-known authors have a large specialised promotion and marketing team working behind the scenes. As a self publisher, you will mostly be your own promoter and marketer. Self promotion is something which many of us Indians are not very good at given our upbringing where humility is highly valued. Marketing your book successfully will require a lot of aggressive self promotion,without which book will be read only by your close friends and family. So shake off the humility and get going.
  • Genre of the book. In case the book is essentially a photo book or what is called a ‘coffee-table book’, you should go in for offset printing to ensure print clarity of the photographs. For a normal book, POD may be a better option.
  • Distribution options. If you see a possibility of getting a distributor, then, to get the prices right bulk printing is more suitable. If you are selling directly, through your own website or through the website of self publishing companies (like Pothi.com) then you are better off with Print on Demand and short run printing. Read more about distribution options in the next post of this series.

One good thing to try could be to print a short run by POD, test market it, probably scout for publishers/distributors by showing it to them and depending on the response, go for bulk printing.

Posted in Print on Demand, Printing, Self Publishing | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Designing Cover and Understanding Images

Posted by Jaya on December 30, 2009

The most frequent reason why book submissions do not go through in one go at Pothi.com is because cover is not submitted in a print ready format. The bad news is that it needs some technical understanding to get your cover right. The good news is that it is not too difficult to understand. You only need to spend a few minutes of your time. Let’s do it right now.

Parts of the Cover

First, let’s understand the different parts of the cover.

  1. Front Cover: Should be self explanatory.
  2. Back Cover: Should be self explanatory.
  3. Spine: This is the part that covers the thickness of the book.
    PhotoSpine.jpg
  4. Bleed: Bleed is not a part of the final cover, but needs to be present in the print ready cover file. This is extension of the background of the cover a bit beyond the actual size. The book is printed and bound, usually on the paper of size bigger than the final intended size. After the binding is done, the book is trimmed to the final size. This ensures that all the pages are trimmed evenly and the book looks good. Now, even the best trimming processes will not be completely accurate. There will always be a margin of error in the size to which the book is trimmed. If the cover is printed in exactly the final size, then a slight error in trimming could result in a white line on the sides. To avoid this the background is extended a bit. The part you see in the image below outside of dotted lines on all four sides is the bleed.

ScreenshotCoverParts.jpg

Next thing to understand is the position of the different parts of the cover on the print ready file.

  • Cover is printed on a single page. So, a print ready cover will have front and back covers as well as spine on a single page in a single file. You may initially design front and back covers separately, but finally they have to be put together on a single page.
  • To understand the correct position of the various parts on that single page, open any book you have and then look at the cover. For most of the Indian languages and English, which are written left to right, the binding is done on the left side of the book. So, if you are looking at the cover of an open book, back cover will be on the left side, spine in the middle and front cover on the right side. This is exactly how the print ready cover should have these parts positioned. For Urdu and other Right to Left languages, the position of front and back cover would be switched. In either case, bleed goes around the entire cover. Never design separate front cover, back cover and spine with bleed on all sides. Bleed goes only around the entire cover, not around the individual parts! I know I am being repetitive here, but that’s intentional.

Size of the Cover

Now, let’s come to the size of the cover. Dimensions will be a bit different for a hard cover book. To keep things simple, let’s talk about perfect bound (normal soft cover books) and saddle stitched (center stapled) books.

  • Front Cover and Back Cover should be a no brainer. You want the front and back cover in the same size as the trim size you have decided for the book. So, for a book of 5″x8″ size, the front and back cover should be of 5″x8″ size
  • Spine is the tricky part because its width will obviously vary with the number of pages. It is important to work with your printer to ensure that your spine thickness is right. Else, everything on front and back cover will be placed wrongly and all your design will go down the drain. Offset printers may sometimes ask you for front, back and spine in separate files in an editable format (photoshop, illustrator, indesign or coreldraw typically) so that they can adjust the spine width if needed. This model is not feasible for most Print on Demand (POD) vendors. They would, generally, provide clear formula on spine width as a function of number of pages. Use the formula and stick to it strictly. Because of the spine width part, the cover design can be finalized only after the interior is formatted and we know the final number of pages. Unless you are comfortable with graphic design or have a designer at your disposal to keep making adjustments, you may not want to start cover design before interior formatting in final.
  • Saddle stitched books will not need a spine, although the number of pages for which you can do saddle stitching is usually limited.
  • Bleed should be added to the entire cover. Typically POD printers will specify the bleed you should put in your design. If your printer has asked for the front, back and spine as separate files (mostly in case of offset printer), add the bleed only on the relevant side of each part. Assuming Left to Right language for the book
    • Front Cover: Top, right and bottom should have the bleed, left should NOT
    • Back Cover: Top, left and bottom should have the bleed, right should NOT
    • Spine: Top and bottom should have the bleed, left and right should NOT
  • Typically the cover design specifications would tell you the total size of the cover and also the sizes of individual parts in it (WIDTH: bleed+trim width (back cover) + spine width + trim width (front cover) + bleed; HEIGHT: bleed + trim height + bleed) . It is extremely IMPORTANT to stick to both parts of the specification. Common mistakes people make are
    • Having correct overall size for the cover, but random sizes for individual parts (front cover, spine and/or back cover)
    • Having correct size for front and back cover, but putting in spine of a random width
  • Be careful of such mistakes, as you may hate the book that comes in your hand even if the design and production quality was the best otherwise.

Reoslution of the Cover

Finally a very important part about a concept called resolution. In the world of computers, the measure of length is in pixels. Pixels have no equivalent in physical world. So, you can not say something like 1 inch = N pixels. It is always decided by the device displaying the image as to how many pixels are displayed in inch. This measure is called pixels per inch or PPI. DPI is a term more commonly used for PPI, even though its not the correct usage. Without getting into details, let’s say that DPI and PPI are interchangeable terms for our discussion. Since DPI is the word more commonly used, we will also use DPI here. So, when you are trying to create an image of certain width and height in inches on the computer, you also need to know at what DPI you have to create it at. Typically for on-screen display (on monitor) 72 or 96 DPI is good. But for print the image must be at 300 DPI. Anything lower than that would result in bad print even if it appears good on screen.

To make this concept clear, let’s take a simple example. Suppose you have to design a cover for a book of 5″x7″ size. The spine width, given the number of pages, is 0.35 inch and you are required to put in 0.2 inches of bleed on all sides. Then

  • Total size of the cover in inches is
    • Width: 0.2 (bleed) + 5 (back cover) + 0.35 (spine) + 5 (front cover) + 0.2 (bleed) = 10.75
    • Height: 0.2 (bleed) + 7 (cover) + 0.2 = 7.4
  • This cover has to be designed at 300 DPI
  • So, the size in pixels would be
    • Width: 10.75 x 300 = 3225
    • Height: 7.4 x 300 = 2220

In most modern image editors, you should be able to specify the width and height in inches/mm and the DPI. So, you do not need to worry about the pixels. But it is important that you specify the DPI correctly.

In Photoshop, when you create a new image, you will see a dialog like this. You can specify PPI/DPI in Resolution field.

In Gimp (a free and open source alternative to Photoshop) the default dialog will be the following and you would have to click on the “Advanced Options” to get the DPI setting

Clicking on “Advanced Options” will show the place to specify DPI (X resolution and Y resolution).

So, now you know all about the image sizes and how to get the right size of your cover.

If you need to prepare a cover for publishing on Pothi.com, you may check out the following options

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