© Notion Press
As the self-publishing phenomenon continues to increase in India, so does the popularity of a Notion Press, a company providing a multitude of services to help writers publish their books and e-books and distribute them to audiences across the world. We caught up with Naveen Valasakumar, one of the co-founders of the Chennai-based Notion Press and interviewed him to learn more.
Can you please tell us a little about you and your background?
I studied Aeronautical Engineering and then worked in the IT industry for 5 years before making the shift to publishing.
You started Notion Press with two of your friends. Can you please tell us what inspired you all to start this company together?
Yes, I started Notion Press with two friends from school – Janarthanan and Bhargava. Back in 2011, Bhargava and I were working on an app and wanted to publish a book to promote the application. We approached Janarthanan who was managing his father’s publishing company to see if there was a way he could publish our book. Jana patiently explained to us how publishing works and gave us reasons why he could not publish our book, as the market size was too small and we were not popular authors. He recommended that we self-publish. We started evaluating various self-publishing companies and found that we did not have good self-publishing options in India. That is when we decided to start our own self-publishing company that would be driven by technology. We spent the next 6 months on research and talking to people from the publishing industry – authors, distributors and publishers.
How do Notion Press’s services help authors who want to self-publish their work?
The idea behind Notion Press is that every author and idea must be market validated and self-publishing is a great way to do that. All our services and packages are aimed at bringing out a high quality book and to bridge the gap between a self-published book and one from a traditional publisher. To make that happen, we provide editing, design, marketing and printing services to authors.
Are these services free? Or is there a cost?
We provide fee based services to our authors who want to publish a high quality book at par with international standards. We also have a self-service portal where authors can publish their own book by creating the interior and cover using our online application for free.
Notion Press runs a very popular short story contest. Could you please tell us some more about this and how writers can benefit from participating?
We ran the first ever social short story contest in January 2012. It was an instant hit among authors and readers. The idea behind the social short story contest is to make writing and reading a fun exercise for the younger generation. We added several social layers to it to make it more interesting and competitive, and to help stories go viral. All stories were evaluated by actual readers and also a panel of judges. In the latest edition, we had about 1000 entries from 800 plus authors and 2 million readers provided feedback to the authors. Contests like this help first time authors showcase their talent. Authors who were identified by Notion Press via this contest have today gone on to participate and win in several other writing contests all over the country.
How can authors find out more about Notion Press?
You can find out more about Notion Press by visiting our website https://notionpress.com or simply pick up the phone and call 044-4252 4252 to talk to one of our publishing consultants.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]