‘Young Tamil authors opt for self-publishing e-books’

Chennai

These authors have also been able to earn a substantial income from their writing and are helping contribute to the growth of Tamil literature online. C Saravanakarthikeyan or CSK, a wellknown Tamil writer who has self-published 25 books, tells us, “In the past 4-5 years, many authors are getting into digital self-publishing. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a platform that helps authors self-publish e-books. Here, an author doesn’t need a publishing house to publish his/her book. He/she doesn’t need to depend on the publisher to know how many copies were sold, what’s the royalty they are going to get, etc. There are both print self-publishing and digital self-publishing. But in today’s world digital self-publishing is gaining more demand and attention.” His self-published works include KanniTheevu, Appleukku Mun and 96: Thaniperunkadhal among others CSK has self-published 25 e-books out of which 20 books are published as paperbacks as well. “Digital self-publishing will promote all forms of Tamil literature. These days, many youngsters are showing an interest in Tamil literature. Rather than buying a physical copy, they prefer digital copies. During the lockdown, many magazines have stopped their print edition and started publishing it in e-format. I think digital is the way forward. There are many restrictions and limitations with physical copies of books. Some copies of books might not be available in the market for a long time. We cannot ask the publisher to reprint the book for a particular audience. But if a copy of that book is available digitally, people from any part of the world can read it. The main advantage of e-books is that it is accessible than physical books,” shares CSK, who is also one of the jury members for the current edition of KDP Pen to Publish contest 2021 which is open until March 10. Author Sashi Murali had to wait for five years to publish her book, that too on a digital platform. “After completing my book, I visited a lot of publishing houses. But they were reluctant to publish my book citing various reasons. That’s when I decided to self-publish my book digitally and the response was amazing. The entire process was new to me. I find it revolutionary because digital self-publishing helps budding Tamil authors like me. I don’t know about other languages, but Tamil literature is definitely growing digitally,” says Sashi.