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They say that life begins at forty. May be that’s true, but everything else starts to wear out or fall out. Why, I’m still too young to consider that, but God knows why, I feel like getting older than my age. Premature..err..ageing?

So you ask what evidence? Mere faazil dost..there are three signs of old age. The first is loss of memory, the other two..I forget. The case is not so serious though like some of my other friends who sometimes find themselves on the landing of the stairs and can’t remember whether they were on their way up or way down.

So what does a married man like me who took to his heel from his 6 years young ‘illustrious’ sales career grunting over in IT with colleagues fit to address him ‘uncle’. Uncle sam? Or the temptation to surf the Net (that ultimately lets you gain so much weight, because at almost every site they give you a “Cookie”) or was it the inability to decide regarding ‘com’ or zyada. The decision to jump in the IT-bandwagon, clever or not, apna raam thinks with Rayben clarity that philhaal work is a lot less fun-and fun is a lot more work (so now you know folks why I did a bunk from parties and never even stroll in the vicinity of Basketball stadium). Imman se, is umra main caution is the only thing I care to exercise.

Still people envy me? I could smell that! They feel that girls flock me. Trust this bhaisaab, one should start realizing that he is getting older when the girls at the office started confiding in him. And you thought.. shiv..shiv..shiv..

So back to the issue of me feeling that I have arrived the stage of taking longer to rest than to get tired. Boss, it’s been ages when I stopped growing at both ends (and begun to grow in the middle). Frankly I never have had this choice of two temptations and choosing the one that will get me home earlier. But you know which one I would have chosen. Reason perhaps, half of the guys who shake hand with me in morning will complain “Arre tu itna dheela kyon rehta hai yaar?”

May God forgive the nadaans for the folly of not their own because even I wake up with that morning-after feeling, while I didn’t do anything the night before. So that’s it guys! It’s a pity you are compelled to cope up with a veteran. But remember even Microsoft gives DOS with windows. When you can have faith in India winning a gold in next Olympics at least I can expect a bit for me..as for now please note that tomorrow I may be late because meri kamar mein dard hai..Ouch..

Abbreviations (abbs) were invented as essential AIDS to memory and their application surfaced as equally contagious as the capitalized word; memory-aid that has to be mugged up to successfully clear any GK test. Many, if not most, of the abbs are funny or at least can be given a witty bend, which ironically may also be their true face.

In earlier times abbs were the hallmarks for cherished degrees – BA, BSc, M.A, MSc, LLB… And no body perhaps expected that the newborn MBAs from IIMs would steal the limelight from the formidable PhDs and IITs so much so that even the ordinary bosses metamorphosed in to CEOs and COOs. Incidently the PhDs were the people with solemn looks and thick lenses on their noses because all their life they Patiently Hoping for a Degree and had no energy left to recoil with josh when they were Phinally Done. It’s another thing that the most coveted three letter word still remain as IAS, though the buzurgs could hardly locate the halo that surrounded its predecessor – with the middle component as ‘Civil’ instead of ‘Administrative’, reminiscent of the Indian Cancer Society. Sad indeed for the Indian Forest Services and the Indian Foreign Services, who had to settle down for the common IFS.

Abbs could have brought ease to the public works department after it became PWD but for the people, who find the more notorious name of Public Wastes Department easy to remember. The DMs and the DCs took a cue from this and acquired a credo of Don’t Mingle with the public and then Don’t Care for them too. VIPs gained more limelight as VVIPs and then shied away as ZVIPs. Post-tehelka, PMO’s doctrine appeared to be “Pehle Maal phir Office ka kaam”.

Americans are infamous abbs enthusiast. A laudable World Wildlife Fund has been reduced to World Wrestling Federation. You have the US of A, NASA, NATO and the toe licking UNO, UNICEF and WHO knows what not. Their FBI simply became Feds perhaps protesting against their over-exposure in Hollywood movies. Our own RAW is no match for ISI and even though the institution has been re-christened the Bureau of Indian Standards, most people want the ISI-approved products.

Speaking of demand, think of the time people acquired cardio-vascular ailments or did the P.C.Sorkar trick if you mentioned IT raids. Strange times I tell you, the same people talk about jumping into the IT bandwagon now. Simple earthly desire, this? Chanakya, backed up by his erudition from HTML to WML, from SAP to WAP to SOAP, from EJB to CORBA, and armed with colossal MCP, MCSE & SCJP certifications, simply wants to go phoren and turn out to be chunki, not mentioning the neighborhood Manakya who would better not go for a similar feat. The guy OTOH would rather be J using the net-abbs in the chat forums.

Brain drain was bye-product of the angrez education system, realized the swadeshis. By introducing the lessons of Socially Useful Productive Work, SUPW they wanted us to transform into Anna Hazare ASAP. Students, bunking the classes to see a HAHK, DDLJ, DTPH and the more recent KNPH with their GFs, however thought differently. To them these sessions remained Some Useful Periods Wasted. In colleges doing a bunk have become, the more sophisticated, GT. Here, the preparation for GK test helps during ragging when it would be a KLPD you couldn’t expand on the newly acquired geographical wisdom on JAPAN and HP.

Finally, not all abbs are enduring happy anecdotes to bring smile to a face. A bad ECG, DD’s newscasts, the mighty-September 11-fall of the twin towers of WTC, FM’s budget proposals, MPEB’s bills and the thinning index at BSE and NASDAQ are bound to cause dropped jaws.

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 emissions in 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.

This year Indibloggies again has good support from the Sponsors with Hachette India and WordPress pitching in. A big thanks to all the sponsors! If everything goes well, another feather may get added to the cap The 2008 edition has 17 award categories, with three new additions for Best Personal blog, Best Business blog and Best Microblog.

The nomination announcement post and link to nomination form can be found here.