Notion Press' Chennai printer sent me 13 paperback copies of my part autobio book with some inner content pics badly printed, but later I was provided (free) replacement copies with good print

Last updated on 19th Nov. 2019

Update on 19th Nov. 2019: I was pleasantly surprised to receive 13 paperback copies of my part autobio book, all of which have decent printing of inner content pics. This seems to be the replacement copies for the 13 copies mentioned in post below which had bad printing of pics in some pages.

This action of Notion Press has restored my faith in Notion Press' business practices being fair to the (self-published) author-customer. I thank Notion Press for this action of theirs.

I will be sending a message to them shortly where I will share above blog post (and Facebook post) update. As I managed to patch up the bad printing of pics issue in earlier copies using laser printer printout of these pics which I then cut-and-paste on to the books, I will offer to pay Notion Press the cost they incurred for these 13 replacement copies.

I have changed the title of the post to indicate that Notion Press has sent me the replacement copies with good printing of inner content pics.

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Readers may know of the problem I faced with 2 paperback copies printed by Notion Press' Chennai printer in early Sept. which I described in this post: Dismayed to see bad printing of pics in some copies of part autobiography; How to handle such scenarios in future, https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2019/09/dismayed-to-see-bad-printing-of-pics-in.html, 8th Sept. 2019.

Notion Press resolved the issue by sending me 2 replacement copies which were printed well (by Manipal printer).

Then I decided to place an order for 1 copy with Notion Press Store which I presumed (correctly) would be printed at Notion Press Chennai printer to see whether future orders will be handled correctly. This order was placed on 27th Sept.

On 29th Sept. I placed an Author Copies order (minimum 12 copies) where I told the Orders support staff that it should be printed at Manipal printer, to which they agreed.

Unfortunately, due to some reasons internal to Notion Press, the 12 Author copies order was also printed by Notion Press Chennai printer! I got delivery of both the orders totaling 13 copies in early October (4th & 5th). The labels on the delivery package/invoice copy for the two packages identified that it was shipped by Notion Press Chennai (and NOT Manipal printer).

I was very dejected to see that like in the case of earlier printed copies problem from Notion Press Chennai printer which I have described in above mentioned blog post, all 13 paperback book copies had the same bad printing of pics problem on pages 23, 73, 90, 92, 93, 94 and 117. These are black-and-white/greyscale pics printed in inner content of book, different from colour cover page of book.

I wondered whether Notion Press Chennai printer had printed many copies of the book in advance, all of which had the same bad printing of pics problem in the above mentioned pages, and those previously printed copies had been shipped to me for these two orders. I mean, if they had printed these 13 copies separately, the probability of having exactly the same bad printing of pics problem is very low!

I wrote to Notion Press about the problem (raised support tickets) in early October itself.

They did not respond properly to my complaint. There were one/two responses which were tangential to the main issue of replacement/refund for these 13 copies.

Finally on Oct. 24th I got a response on one of the associated tickets (No. 71712), as follows: "In Black & white book clarity of the image will be little less and it depends upon the image quality too, you have to opt for color page to get clear clarity image."

I responded: "I understand your response to mean that you are not willing to accept the horrible patches in printing of some of the pictures in the book as your problem. I will now think seriously about what steps I should take further and inform you about it."

Meanwhile I had placed orders of 1 or 2 copies of the book on amazon.in and flipkart.com where I choose the seller (default option) as Repro Books-On-Demand (which is another printer based in Bhiwandi near Mumbai). This was to check whether Repro Books-On-Demand prints the book copies well. I later received the 2/3 copies all of which had all the pics printed well (without dark patches). Notion Press is listed as the second seller in amazon.in and flipkart.com sale page of my book. Choosing this seller may result in Notion Press Chennai printer printing the book and which may have this bad printing of some pics in inner content of book problem.

Note that Manipal printers printed the book well without any dark patches problem for the pics.

The bottom line on the complaints is that Notion Press refuses to give me replacement copies or a refund, and so expects me to bear the loss of Rs.2272 that I paid them for these copies.

What should I do now? I thought about that with a cool head and arrived at the following analysis:

As Notion Press has published my book on amazon.in and flipkart.com where Repro Books-On-Demand printer is the default, I find that this is a positive. So, while I have the option of escalating the matter to government of India's consumer complaints forum, I will NOT do that. I will absorb the loss of Rs.2272, and inform readers (through this post) that I am doing so due to above mentioned (positive) reason.

In future, for any books that have inner contents pics (black-and-white/greyscale) which are printed on paper meant for black-and-white pics (as against paper for color pics which, I believe, is significantly more expensive), I will make it a policy to avoid using Notion Press Store or Notion Press seller on amazon.in and flipkart.com. That implies that for such books I will NOT use the Author Order facility of Notion Press.

I will also put out a note on my book page on my blog giving paperback sale page links to ask readers who want to buy the book to buy only from amazon.in and flipkart.com using Repro Books-On-Demand and NOT Notion Press as their printer does a bad job of printing some pics in the book. I will also warn them NOT to use Notion Press Store to order this book as they will probably face the same problem there.

Okay, that decides the reaction from my side to Notion Press' refusal to give me a refund or good replacement copies.

But what I do with these 13 paperback copies, each of which have 7 pages of badly printed pics? After thinking about this problem for some time, and exploring solutions, the final solution I arrived at involved the following:

1) Creation of a separate PDF file of A4 size from book inner contents PDF file that have only these 7 pages which have been printed badly in the above 13 paperback copies. The inner content PDF file is A5 size and so the separate 7 page PDF file has the A5 size page printed in the centre of an A4 size page. This was done using Foxit Reader and Print to PDF feature in it.

2) Printing of 13 copies of this 7 page A4 size PDF file at a local laser printer shop in Puttaparthi. [Initially I had tried printing directly from the inner contents PDF file but it printed as compressed size. So I explored the A4 size PDF file with A5 page data centered in it.]

3) Cutting the edges of the A4 size pages so that its size is slightly lesser than the page in the book, and then pasting the A4 size pages on top of the badly printed pages. [I am not good at cutting in a straight line with scissors. I explored doing the cutting using a paper cutting device but my efforts to find one in some Puttaparthi shops resulted in failure. I could have used a ruler and a blade to do precise linear cutting. But I had just spent too much time on this effort and so decided to go for scissor cutting even thought the cutting was not in straight lines.]

Given below are pics of one copy of the book with such patchwork:

[To open pic in larger resolution, right-click on pic followed by open link (NOT image) in new tab/window. In new tab/window you may have to click on pic to zoom in.]

4) The patchwork is easily detected by even looking at the closed book due to some pages being thicker now. And even if one misses that, one look at a pasted page clearly shows that a smaller size page has been pasted on to the original page.

5) I intend to tell those persons to whom I give these book copies with patchwork, about this patchwork. I will give them the book only if they are OK with the patchwork. This way I will not offend people and not waste these 13 paperback copies.
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Given below are my comments (slightly edited) on my Facebook post:  https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/2642921162591111, associated with this blog post:

In response to a comment, I wrote:

Good evening --name-snipped--. Thanks for taking the time to read the post and give me your valuable feedback. What I have learned about self-publishing in India over the past one and a half years is that it is quite a disorganized field. The self-publishing platform guys usually outsource the printing work to other book-printer companies. In most cases, the book-printer companies print the book and send it directly to the purchaser (shipping address) without the self-publishing platform guys even having a look at the printed book.

So QC of printed book is usually not done at self-publishing platform company. And the QC the book-printer company does varies. The Chennai printer of Notion Press does a poor job of QC - that is clear to me from my experience.

But the really hard-to-swallow part for me, is that Notion Press publishing company guys seem to prefer to get into denial rather than acknowledge that they messed up here.

But I have to swallow it, as I need Notion Press due to them putting up my book on amazon.in and flipkart.com without any extra charge! Pothi.com will not only charge me some Rs.1500 to put it up there but will also jack up the book price to mid 300s from the mid 200s it sells at now. That is to factor in the margin for amazon and flipkart. Notion Press sells my book at 285 on amazon and flipkart (and on its store). Note that I have set the author royalty to minimum value (0 in Pothi.com and some non-zero minimum at Notion Press).

Amazon and Flipkart have 7 or 10 day guarantees during which the book can be returned. The seller cannot play around with Amazon or Flipkart. Further, the default seller for the book on both amazon.in and flipkart.com put up by Notion Press publishing is Repro printer who is a much more reliable printer based on my experience with them through both Notion Press and Pothi.com. The second choice is 'Notion Press' seller!

Essentially, somebody at the Notion Press associated printer in Chennai messed up with my print order. But rather than accept responsibility for the mess-up, they are playing no-response and denial game with me as they know that the probability of me raking up this issue with forums like Consumer Protection forum of Govt. of India is low. Had this order come to them through Amazon or Flipkart, they would be reacting much more positively. Such is life!

The ebook having the same pics but in colour is free download and I have mentioned its link in the back cover page.

Most of the pics in both ebook and paperback book have long urls of blog posts having hi-res colour images of the same picture. I did not have the time & inclination at the time I was finalizing the book to additionally provide short-links (using bit.ly). I had not thought of QR code then. That is a good suggestion. Thanks. I plan to explore using it for future needs.

About new/edited pages in the book: This is a somewhat complex issue. I am still learning about it and so could be slightly wrong in what I say now. Book versioning is far more rigid that software (release) versioning. When I began on self-publishing my first book, I was viewing the book version like a software release version which gave me a lot of flexiblity in bringing in incremental changes/improvements.

But I saw that for the book to be viewed seriously by libraries and others in the book publishing and classification field, I need to follow their norms. In particular, the title-verso page is of importance in this regard. It has copyright, title, edition, publication date, author name, ISBN number etc. most of which are used by librarians and others who are into book classification stuff.

Applying for an ISBN is another vital aspect. If contents of the book change beyond very minor stuff like correction of typographical errors, a new ISBN is supposed to be applied for/used. The ISBN seems to be the unique way with which a particular version of a book is identified.

I also got the impression that one does not change edition in the same year. However, one can add revision within the same edition. E.g. First edition, revision 2. But that would ideally require a new ISBN. [And I did that. I applied and got a new ISBN for a revision that I had to do within the same (first) edition.]

I plan to have an errata and suggested changes blog post for each book of mine. If and when I get into another edition (not revision) in a future year (not in same year), I may consider rolling in the errata and suggested changes at that time.
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In response to a comment, I wrote:
Well, there are, I think, two basic publishing routes in India (and perhaps its the same in the West) for printed books (and also for-price ebooks): one is through a regular publisher and another is through self-publishing. Regular publishers will take a lot of such publishing burden on their shoulders besides, of course, marketing the books and having strong distribution channels. But regular publishers will publish only those books which they feel have good sales potential. If I recall correctly, I had sent my first book manuscript to Penguin India but got back no response. So it was clear to me that for my kind of limited audience books, regular publishers in India may not be interested.

And then there is the issue of exclusivity. Regular publishers, I think, will demand that the book becomes essentially their property, which is something that would be very uncomfortable for me, given my non-profit approach and free ebook download approach.

Self-publishers are the other route. Non-exclusive, ready to publish anything but with legal burden for any issues with book contents solely on the author (enforced through an indemnity clause in the online agreement that the author accepts), no obligation for author to buy some minimum book copies, and a Do-It-Yourself option where author is not charged anything for self-publishing the book on their platform (which is what I use). Essentially, for the book to be made available on self-publishing company online store as print-on-demand paperback version, an author can do it without paying one single Rupee to the self-publishing platform! Notion Press additionally makes it available on amazon.in and flipkart.com at no cost (Pothi.com has some charges to put it up on amazon.in and flipkart.com).

Note that self-publishing companies also offer 'guided publishing' packages where they provide editing and other services, for a charge [Rs.5,000, Rs. 10,000, Rs. 15,000 etc. are the typical prices for these packages with more services provided for higher-priced packages]. I have not used such services/packages.

And then comes the marketing bit. Notion Press offers to put up the book in book exhibitions for a charge (discounted price of around Rs.10,000 to Rs.15,000). I have not taken up any such offers.

I have read that quite a few authors have made decent money from self-publishing their books - at least that's what the self-publishing companies claim, and I have also read articles from authors making such claims. I think such authors may be using the marketing services of self-publishers, paying charges for it, and viewing it as an investment. If their book clicks and there are many sales, then perhaps through the royalty payments they get, they recover their investment and then get into the profit zone.

In my case, only four or five people (other than myself) have purchased my paperback books so far - you being one of them, if I recall correctly :-). But that's fine with me. Essentially, the book is available both as free download ebook and as at-minimum-cost paperback book for those that are interested. Note that my ebook (free download) versions are now put up on self.gutenberg.org, archive.org & OpenLibrary.org and pothi.com besides my blog & associated Google Drive/Wordpress file download link. At least two to three hundred downloads of my 2 books have been done (total downloads not download of each book) but the actual downloads figure may be higher as Google Drive file downloads are not reported (as far as I know), Wordpress file downloads are reported only from July 2019 and self.gutenberg.org downloads are not reported. Note that through self.gutenberg.org my free ebooks have made it to World ebook library, http://worldebooklibrary.org/, and through the latter to India's National Digital Library: https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/. So I have succeeded in making my free ebooks available on major free ebook platforms on the Internet, due to which my ebooks, in all probability, will be around for decades to come even if the number of downloads of those ebooks dwindles to zero in coming years. That is a very satisfactory outcome for me.

And, as of now at least, Google search (and also other search engines like bing and duckduckgo) for the term:
Ravi S. Iyer books
takes users to either my book pages on book sites or my blog posts having the book site links for my books.

Searching for the term:
Ravi S. Iyer books free download
leads to the free download ebook links, directly or indirectly through my blog posts.

Pothi.com and Notionpress.com have contributed significantly to making my books more easily accessible through search engines, as books published by them seem to be given higher rankings at least by Google search engine. So I am thankful to both Pothi.com and Notionpress.com for helping me achieve this goal.
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In response to a comment, I wrote:
Interesting views about interests of people today, and about the three poets you know, --name-snipped--. Thanks.

I write as a way to express myself, and as it is not a livelihood for me, I am more concerned about expressing myself as well as I can, within limitations of time, place etc. rather than how many read it. The first and important satisfaction is in expressing myself. If readers read it and share feedback that is additional but bonus satisfaction.

Niche interest areas many times have limited readership. But even that limited readership is a not insignificant contribution to the topic, IMHO. As an example, this pdf document of mine: Chandogya Upanishad – Chapter 6 (Dialogue between Uddalaka and Svetaketu) – Some Shlokas, https://iami1.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/chandogyachapter6someshlokas.pdf dated June 2010, which I seem to have uploaded on Wordpress in March 2015, has been receiving average downloads of 2 per day since July 2019 (which is when Wordpress started reporting file download stats.)

A related but separate post: Divine revelation gems from Chandogya Upanishad: Chapter 6 (Dialogue between Uddalaka and Svetaketu), https://iami1.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/divine-revelation-gems-from-chandogya-upanishad-chapter-6-dialogue-between-uddalaka-and-svetaketu/, was put up in April 2018 and has so far had slightly over 550 views which is around an average of 1 view per day.

Presuming that at least some of these views are human views (as against Reference SPAM views), I find it to be very satisfactory as the above pdf document contains my core understanding of Vedanta using Chapter 6 of Chandogya Upanishad as the key Vedanta document, and having commentaries by various persons on it, including Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba and Prof. Max Mueller.

Vedanta is a niche interest area. Percentage wise, only a tiny fraction of Internet readers/users will be interested in it. But it is a vital topic from a Hinduism spiritual point of view as it deals with very high levels of spiritual philosophy/revelations about existence.

BTW Google search from anonymous window on my PC for the term:
Chandogya Upanishad Chapter 6

gives my above mentioned Wordpress pdf document link as the 4th result! Perhaps some of the guys downloading the document do so via Google Search with above term or similar.

Sometimes my past writings are useful to me itself when I have moved on to other stuff and want to quickly refresh my mind on what I had studied and written on in the past.

Many thanks for your kind words about writing as my calling and your good wishes.
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In response to a comment, I wrote:
Tat Tvam Asi Mahavakya is from Chap. 6 of Chandogya Upanishad. My document covers that.

BTW my family background is Sama Veda (though I did not formally study Sama Veda). Chandogya Upanishad is from the Sama Veda.
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