Future Group may give publishing a leg-up

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New Delhi, Mar 6: Do you have a book in you that no one will publish? Fret not. The Rs 3,000-crore Future Group’s newest brand, Depot, now promises to publish all those unsolicited manuscripts and even lend you a retail platform at all Big Bazaar outlets, provided you, as author, undertake to underwrite your book project.

On the Internet, ‘publish on demand’ or user generated content (UGC) are well-known concepts, especially with the growing tribe of bloggers, e-book authors etc. Three years ago (in April 2005) one of the biggest names in the business, Amazon.com acquired BookSurge, a company specialising in end-to-end offerings, including editing, formatting, illustrating and online distribution of work submitted by independent authors. In addition, there are companies like blurb.com and lullu.com that also print a limited number of hard copies for an aspiring author.

Depot is a little different in the sense that its not just the first in this business, it also offers authors the opportunity to retail with them at standalone 11 Depot stores and all the Big Bazaar outlets. And, in less than two weeks of announcing this service, it has received over 45 manuscripts (in all genres) from far off corners.

The company was earlier printing and distributing only private label children books, cookery books, multimedia products, stationary etc, under an exclusive arrangement with the copyright holders. Launched in December 2005, the early response to this business (Depot touched a turnover of Rs 50 crore in 2006-7, up from Rs 30 crore in 2005-6) prompted the company to get into self publishing.

Claiming that her company is very “passionate about mass marketing the written word,” business head of Depot, Preeti Vyas, told FE, “We realise that publishers have limited bandwidth and authors don’t have easy access to well-known publishers. As a result, 98% of all unsolicited manuscripts get ignored or rejected. With Depot, these authors have the choice to print their own work.” The initial print run for Depot customers is usually extremely small (25 copies), which is mainly for circulation among family and friends. The cost of this can vary between Rs 15,000-20,000, depending upon the combination of services (editing, formatting etc.) ordered. Luckily for the authors, this pricing is not dependent on quality of the manuscript but merely on the page or word count.