Last year I visited a 'book exhibition' (book fair) in a small town in Tamil Nadu. Dozens of publishers had participated in it and displayed their books in small booths. All the stalls, except one in a corner, had several assistants that were working hard to attract visitors and to sell their books by colorful sales talk.
There was only one young man - perhaps in his early twenties - in that corner shop. He was reading a book and only when a customer approached him, he looked up, prepared a bill, collected cash, and delivered the books. As soon as the customer left, he would again lose himself in the book he was reading.
"I believe things are going extremely well. Perhaps that's the reason why you are not trying to push anything," I told Ram - that was his name - after I introduced myself to him. Ram smiled and said, "I respect my customers. All of them are more intelligent than I am. I display books of high quality and my customers buy them. I never try to sell. I help them buy from me!"
"Can you please tell me about your business model?" I asked him. He said, "After I finished my B.Sc. degree course a few years ago, I started my endless search for a job. By Divine grace, I came across an interesting book on self-employment "
At this point, I interrupted him and asked, "May I know the author's name?" Ram grinned and said, "It is not your book! Actually I did not buy the book. I was just browsing it and was wondering whether I should invest a fortune - Rs.25 was a fortune to me at that time - on it. When I was standing in that bookshop, a few customers asked for books by a famous Tamil novel author. The book seller did not have them. Then I began to think of having my own bookshop with the books written by that author."
"Excellent! You are a conscious, resourceful person," I said. "Thank you," Ram said and continued, "Without any knowledge and experience about publishing books or selling them, I contacted the author and requested his permission to publish his books. But, he asked an upfront payment and a sizable percentage of the sales as royalty. He was very arrogant too. I thought he was crazy. Then I contacted a few knowledgeable persons and they explained me how the system works. They said that big publishers always dictate terms to the authors and the authors agree to all the terms without a word. However, if the publisher is small and new, these authors would start dictating terms to the publisher! "
"Then what happened?" I asked him. He said, "After some research, I understood a few things. Desktop publishing software programs such as PageMaker have brought down the cost of typesetting to negligible level. Anyone can learn how to do typesetting. It is possible to print as low as 500 books with the help of any good modern printing house in a matter of few days at a low cost. Book exhibitions and fairs are conducted throughout the state around the year and a publisher of any size can hire a stall for low fees. The total cost of publishing a few books was well within my means. The only big problem was finding saleable authors that don't ask for an arm and a leg of the small publisher."
"It is a big problem," I agreed with him. "Someone told me that nationalised books belong to all citizens of this country and you can use it in anyway you like without paying anyone so long as you don't misrepresent the facts. I learnt that most novels of a very famous Tamil writer belong to the public domain and you can use them without any restrictions. His novels are available in digital format on many websites. This means you have to do a minimum work on typesetting and you don't even have to do proofreading! Will anyone with six senses let this golden opportunity slip away from his hands? " Ram asked.
"No," I replied.
Ram said, "I learnt how to do typesetting within a week. I downloaded a famous Tamil novel that has five parts, produced the digital copy in PDF format and then printed 500 paper copies in a few weeks. I participated in a small book fair and sold more than 300 copies in 10 days. After that initial success, I have printed more than 25,000 copies of his books and have earned a few lakhs by selling them in book fairs in various parts of Tamil Nadu. I don't have any show room!"