Author Interview: A humorous story on self-publishing journey

What started as a fun and informative book on self-publishing turned into a humorous story of a literary journey from the discovery of a love for writing to the eventual self-publishing of two books. Like every other journey, this book took the authors, Padmini Viswanathan and her daughter Aparna Kamakshi, the co-author who died before the book came out, long varied paths of self- discovery.

The duo started by self-publishing their book through Amazon.com. They realised that it was priced in dollars which were very high. “Then an Indian group Pothi.com provided the same facility. So we published through them. The price was lower but the bookshops felt that we could sell at a better price if we printed it ourselves and we printed ourselves. In this way, we went through all the stages of self-publishing. We learned that if we were focused and persistent we could achieve our goal,” says Padmini.

Padmini went to a large bookshop with her first book and offered the owner Rs 75 as commission to keep her book in his shop. “He told me that all the shops take 40 per cent. When I realised how much 40 per cent was, I was stunned. Finally, he kept the book and accepted Rs 75 as it was my first attempt at self-publishing. Similarly, when I went to Bengaluru to market my book the marketing chief was astonished that an old lady and her husband had come all that way to sell her book. In fact, he was kind enough to help me get a distributor,” shares Padmini.

This book tells all the dos and don’ts of self-publishing and also provides tips on how to go through each stage. Padmini and Aparna are two women who had to overcome diabolical opponents like the editor, publisher, distributor and critic to reach their target audience, the reader.

“My daughter, my co-author had a tremendous level of positivity. Despite her bad health, she would find immense joy in everything that we did. And since we spent so much time together and did so much work together we would even think of the same word at the same time. We were like identically wired robots. We measured everything we did by happiness quotient. Nothing else was important to us. Since this was the last joyful thing we did together, this book is very dear to me and I am extremely happy that the book release went off so well,” she tells DT Next.

Padmini, who has been living in Chennai since her marriage in 1969, has been writing for her personal pleasure for 40 years. She has had articles published in many publications and published her first book Nostalgia in 2014 and Mylapore Lodge in 2015. “I didn’t really think that I could write. In College, I was more interested in NCC, mountaineering and things like that. I stayed in the College hostel for two and a half years. Immediately after completing graduation I got married into a typical Mylapore TamBram family. They were forward-thinking but traditional too. And here I was a constantly whistling, English speaking Bengaluru girl. My husband did his MTech after getting married. Fortunately, my father-in-law enrolled me in the Cultural Academy on San Thome High Road which was like a finishing school. There were debating classes as a part of the course which I enjoyed tremendously. I even won several inter-collegiate debate competitions. This was when I realised that I like to write,” the author reminisces.

With everything that one does, we learn some lessons in life and the biggest lesson that the mother-daughter learned was to accept everything that God gives us and enjoy doing it with total happiness. “We understood the importance of humour — the capacity to look at the lighter side of life. This helps when you have to spend tedious hours in the doctor’s waiting room or in hospitals. We could while away our time laughing and chatting about simple things. We always took a book. If Aparna couldn’t hold a book when hospitalised, we would play knots and crosses, scrabble — we learned to take things in our stride,” muses Padmini.  Inspired by Roald Dahl and Ogden Nash and particularly by an American poet Phyllis Mcginley, she started writing funny poems too. “Aparna and I had it all collected in a folder. This was my dream book. Now, we found it difficult to find a publisher. That was when my son told us to self publish. We did Nostalgia first because it was a start to finish the book. Mylapore Lodge was more difficult because it had titles, poems and little anecdotes. There’s a lot of humour in both the books. In fact, how Mylapore Lodge got its name itself is a funny story. I gave a total stranger breakfast thinking he was my husband’s cousin. He came to our house thinking it was a Lodge because it has Mylapore Lodge written on one gate post. My father-in-law thought he was my cousin! Finally, we all understood that he hadn’t seen the T.S. written on the other gate post which stood for Theosophical Society!” Padmini shares a laugh.

When you have written a book with passion and dedication you develop the confidence that you have completed a job without the help of anyone like an editor or publisher. “Self-publishing your book gives you an intense sense of satisfaction. That was how Aparna and I felt after self-publishing our first two books. In Be The Book we have given as many pointers as we possibly can to help a first-time self-publisher or writer pick up the confidence to achieve their goal,” sums up the author.