iami1 blog book published with title 'The Ultimate Existential Reality Answer; Vedanta; God and Science' at Pothi.com; Printed copy (in India only) can be ordered online

Pothi.com has 'self-published' my iami1 blog book and put up the print copy (yes, print copy as Print-On-Demand or POD copy) for sale at Rs.159 (zero royalty to me; cost price for author is also Rs. 159) here: https://pothi.com/pothi/book/ravi-s-iyer-ultimate-existential-reality-answer-vedanta-god-and-science. The book ships within India only.

For a 123 pages black & white A5 size book with colour cover, offset printing of 500 copies would reduce cost per copy to around Rs. 40 to Rs. 50, based on the inquiries that I have made. Then such copies could be sold, after adding distributor and seller margins (zero royalty to author), at Rs 75 or so per copy.

But that needs investment of Rs. 20,000 to Rs. 25,000, headache of storing and distributing the books etc. etc. And the ****big risk**** of financial loss if people are not interested in buying the book even if it is priced around Rs. 75! And that is a very real possibility for this iami1 blog book of mine :-).

Given the above, the POD approach where people interested in having a print copy (note that ebook version is free download) pay around Rs. 160 plus shipping via online ordering, is a great option for me. No hassles of investment for 500 copies offset print run! No stocking and supplying headache! No business accounting headache!

This book sale page does not have too much info. and seems OK. The free ebook link (to the pdf stored in my blog) is shown in the book description. So people who turn up at this page and do a little bit of looking around on the page will see that a free ebook version is available. They need to pay money only for the print book.

Clicking on the book front cover small pic on the sale page opens up a preview book window/tab. Visitors can preview all of the book's inner contents (as that was what I specified).

A little while back today, I placed an order of 1 copy (as author but was shown same price of Rs. 159 as for everybody else). Shipping is Rs. 50 to South India (perhaps they do the printing & binding in North India). Standard payment options were available. I chose to pay the total amount of Rs. 209 via Net Banking.

I got the message on Pothi.com book shopping site that the payment has been received. I was also shown a message that "Production of the books using print on demand takes 3-5 business days for soft cover books ..."

So 3-5 business days is needed to print the book. After that comes shipping time. But they have been up front with this info. on the book sale page itself where they say, "Processed in 3-5 business days. Shipping Time Extra". So no confusion there.

I hope to receive the book in a week to ten days time. Then I will get to know the print quality of the book.

Pothi.com seems to be a very efficiently managed company. I had done the submission yesterday night. The size and DPI (Dots Per Inch) of the cover pic (back cover + spine + front cover) that I first provided was not good enough for them. Their requirement was '(11.90" x 8.27"), 0.2" bleed on all sides, created at 300 DPI.' Went through some hoops; downloaded and used GIMP to modify existing cover pic to these specifications. Had to then centre the back+spine+front part of the pic within the border filler area. Once that got done I uploaded the new cover pic to Pothi.com. This time around it found the submission to be OK and gave a message that the book has been lined up for review. All this was late yesterday night.

Today morning at 11.06 AM I received a mail from Pothi.com whose initial lines were, "Hello, Congratulations! Your book The Ultimate Existential Reality Answer; Vedanta; God and Science has been successfully published on Pothi.com. It is now available on Pothi.com's store at .."

I have NOT PAID pothi.com any money at all! I am using their bare-bones service which is ***FREE***. I am highlighting this as I would like to encourage those readers who may have thoughts of becoming book writers and then publishing their own books.

Increasing number of copies ordered reduces shipping price per copy of book

Just tried some other figures on the order page:
20 copies shipping (to Puttaparthi) is Rs. 552.50

20 copies book price is 20 * 159 = 3180 [I think 50 copies brings in a 10% discount but no discount for less than 50 as per their website info.]

But with 20 copies, per copy shipping charge comes down to 552.50/20 = 27.63 (as against Rs. 50 for a single copy).

For 10 copies, the courier charge is shown as Rs. 297.50. So per copy shipping charge comes to 297.5/10 = 29.75.

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