Making publishing easy for first-time authors!

Power Publishers is among India’s first and earliest self-publishing platforms, that started offering pre-press, publishing, book promotion and distribution services on demand to mainly first time and new authors, who would find it difficult to locate a publisher for their book. “We started in January 2008 with a vision that there are many talented writers and authors who get rejected by traditional publishers just because they have not been published before, do not have a proven track record and the traditional publishers want a guarantee that the books they publish would sell in excess of 5,000 copies,” tells Pinaki Ghosh of Power Publishers.

Services provided to authors…

“First time authors can choose from a range of pre-press, printing, promotion and distribution services for a cost price. We offer pre-press services like: editing, partial rewriting, ghostwriting, biography writing, page setup, cover design, illustrations; printing service in b/w and colour; distribution service like making a book available on Amazon, Flipkart, Shopclues, Snapdeal, ebook stores; books that qualify/sell more than 100 copies in the first month also make it to major offline store chains; promotion services like: video book trailer, news and interview of the author, etc. We also have a very developed audiobook production division, and film production division,” tells Pinaki.

The genesis…

“We started publishing a few books of our known writers. Soon, we got noticed by a lot of writers who were not known to us, who approached us for publishing. From 2010, we were publishing 150 book titles; which grew to 200+ titles every year. In 2011, we made innovations like video book trailers to promote books. In 2015, we became an ISO9001 company and also was approached by ISCE and ISC Council to publish their Bengali textbooks, which opened our educational books division. We started participating in major book fairs like the Kolkata International Book fair from 2016. The same year, we started producing films from our select best fiction titles; and from 2017, we started publishing audiobooks in Bengali language,” he shares.

“In 2017, we published 280 titles, which is our highest in a year. On an average we publish slightly above 200 new titles. The popular genres are fiction, biography/memoir, educational, non-fiction and self-help. 70% of our books are in English, 20% in Bengali and 10% Hindi,” he adds.

Pinaki Ghosh is a screenplay writer of 140+ Indian and American films and television shows and the author of 12 books. Pinaki has worked with media brands like BBC, National Geographic Channel, Cartoon Network, ABP Ltd, etc. He is also the founder of India’s leading book publishing company Power Publishers & film production company Power Publishers & Motion Pictures. Pinaki Ghosh has produced feature films like Sin Sister, Synthetic Sati, Agamani etc. Pinaki is also a guest speaker at Amity University on the topic of publishing & media industry.

Sale of books…

“We sell 80% of our books through online bookstores like Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Shopclues and our own website. Only 10% are sold through offline stores, because only select titles that qualify, go to the offline stores. 10% is sold through our stall in Kolkata International Book Fair,” shares Pinaki.

On audiobooks…

“We have a very developed audiobook division with 80+ audiobook titles produced by us, but it is an arrangement with world leader audiobook service Storytel.com whose Bengali audiobook titles we create from paperback books, at our studio,” tells Pinaki.

On readership profile…

“We reach out to a wide range of readers. We have a range of educational books, the readers of which are students. Regular readers of fiction are young adults and executives in the age range of 18-35 years. Sometimes some corporate companies also order large quantities of motivational books for their employees,” tells Pinaki.

Self-publishing: then and now

“At present, the self-publishing market is saturated with too many self-publishing start-ups, most of which close down within an year of starting. Many new start-ups are trying the self-publishing market as it used to be quite lucrative back in 2012-2017. Self-publishers whose reviews and experience are good are expensive; their average book publishing package being around Rs 50,000 + 18% GST. On the other hand, new self-publishing start-ups offer similar services at much lower costs like Rs 10,000; which confuses many authors and makes them go for the cheaper alternatives,” tells Pinaki.

On book reading habits…

“Changes are happening fast. Book reading habit is changing quickly; even hardcore book readers do not spend enough time with books these days, a major part of their time being engaged by their smartphones,” he shares.

“Book lovers and hardcore readers are switching over to OTT movie streaming platforms like Netflix and others and spending time watching movies on their phones. Innovative ways of attracting phone-addicted readers are being tried, in the form of audiobooks and videobooks, and in 20 years, which is a lot of time, printed books will be collector’s items; interactive forms of books like interactive videobooks and other artificially intelligent forms of books and videos will replace books as we know today,” he adds.

Few popular books…

Power Publishers has more than 40 bestsellers in genres like fiction, self-help/motivational. These include Sonkolita (ICSE Bengali textbook, 100,000 copies sold); Probondho O Godyo Sonkolon (ISC Bengali textbook, 70,000 copies sold); Sonkolita Workbook (60,000 copies sold), Probondho O Godyo Sonkolon Workbook (50,000 copies sold); and ICSE Sonkolita Sahayika.

Other bestsellers include Mom I Hate Maths – Dr. K B Subramaniam, Sahi Ke Hero – Dr. Avyact Agarwal, Goodbye? Well, not Yet – Ritesh Arora, Owner of a Lonely Heart – Vidhika Dalmit & Atma Sumit Agarwal, Eighteen Scars – Rishav Ghosh, Paranormal Exposed! – Prabir Ghosh, Suspense Express – Pinaki Ghosh and Why Men and Women Are North and South Poles – Pinaki Ghosh, among others.