Naveen Valsakumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Notion Press, shares his vision and influences that shaped his company’s success in a largely trust-deficit market helmed by traditional publishers. P C Balasubramanian, Director, Matrix Business Services, led the conversation.
Our story started in 2012 with a sum of Rs.3000. Till date that is all the money we have invested into the company as personal funds. We grew the company from a three-person team to a 250-member team without any sort of extra investment or the kind of ludicrous things that you read in the news today.
Three of us—Bhargava Adepalley, Jana Pillay and I started Notion Press. When Bhargava and I wanted to publish a book, Jana was a publisher and also a friend for 14 years. We thought Jana would publish our book. But contrary to what we thought, when we approached him, he asked, “Who are you guys? Why would anybody want to publish you?”
We were super shocked that our friend would give such a response. We started as engineers and so we wanted to solve our problem. We searched for answers and googled how publishing works. Publishing as an industry, started with the invention of the movable type press around 1440; along with it came the commercialization of the printed text. The movable type press was a technological breakthrough that kickstarted the publishing industry. In the early years of publishing, a lot of experiments were done. People would print books, go from city to city in carts, hoarding them and selling them to people who wanted to read. As the industry went along, over the next couple of years, it started getting more organized.
Paper Back and Mass Production
The new age of publishing was born somewhere around the 1930s with the invention of the paperback. Publishing as a business started becoming mainstream. Large players emerged and started writing the rules of the industry. Books were mass produced, sold through bookstores and promoted through mass media.
Over the years, a lot of publishers started looking at minimising the risk and the industry started becoming anti-author. Basically, they were looking at celebrities and trying to get them to write a book. They became extremely risk averse to new authors. What they also provide is the editorial expertise and the supply chain. They make sure that your book comes out well and it hits the bookshelves, in exchange for which the writers get a royalty, which is usually about 7.5% to 10% of the cover price.
Platforms and Print-On-Demand
In 2012, we read online about the indie publishing movement, which was brewing largely in the West, where authors were taking control of their own books. We realised that this could be an opportunity. A group of very passionate people who were growing something themselves, could be a huge industry. This created Publishing 2.0, which was the rise of platforms. A lot of other people had very similar ideas.
Players like Amazon emerged, who started their own venture into helping authors publish. All of us follow the same rules. It made logical sense to make sure that books are printed on demand, sold only through online commerce and promoted through social media. All our books are available on Amazon. If an order comes, we print them within 45 minutes of the order and we send it to the buyer the same day.
In the self-publishing model, writers are free to produce and publish their content and they own the intellectual property. As a writer, you can hire your own experts or work with a publishing platform like ours. As you take the risk, you earn profits from the book sales. You’re no longer earning a royalty out of every book sold. You are the author and you’re the entrepreneur. We flipped the publishing model completely.
Two Models
We offer two solutions. One is a premium publishing program, where experts will deliver the publishing services that you want. The book will be available in about 150 countries. Over the years, we realised that providing services by using experts was becoming a bottleneck. We launched a technology platform, called the DIY (Do It Yourself) Publishing, where a writer could design the book themselves, and make it available for sale in 150 countries across most ecommerce channels, absolutely free of cost. We take a profit share.
Currently, we operate on both these models. We offer a whole suite of services ranging from content services, ghostwriting, editing and designing the books either through our tools or services. We also provide marketing services where we help authors promote their books.
So far, we have published about 110,000 books for authors in about 61 countries. We currently publish a new book every 30 minutes. We have offices in India, Singapore, Malaysia, and UAE. The last three are newer markets that we have just entered this year. We run a community of over a million writers who engage with us constantly. We grow our revenue by 40 to 45% year-on-year. What is most exciting for me is that 82% of our revenue comes from book sales and not from the sale of services.
Way Forward
What is the future? We feel that real democratisation comes only when an author can transact with the reader without a middleman, including us. We are building a democratic and decentralised model where an author can do business directly with the readers. We’ve identified that generative AI is going to be used massively in publishing. All the content that we have today in India can be available in other countries, in other languages and in other formats. We no longer think of us as a book publishing platform. We’re going one step ahead and thinking of content publishing, in whichever format and we help creators to monetise them.
The second area which I am very passionate about is to build tools by which we can decentralise the relationship between a publisher and an author. Today, no matter how much you democratise, you still need an Amazon who will not give you the data. True decentralisation comes when authors are able to build their own community.
The past of publishing industry may have been built in Europe. It may have grown in the US, but I strongly believe that the future of publishing will be built in India in our own Namma Chennai.
Q&A
P C Balasubramanian: I’m an accidental author. I have also published two books through Notion Press. When you approach a traditional publishing house, you face a lot of difficulties that I’m not putting them down. Their business model works like that and they prefer to publish books that are authored by celebrity authors. There is every business reason for them not to risk their money or effort on an unknown author.
But what about a passionate author or an upcoming author, who wants to get his/her book published? Thanks to Notion Press, you have a platform, a company which will help you to bring out your book seamlessly. They may not assure you readership but at least the book is out for readers to pick it up. You become the ambassador for your book and you have to keep promoting your book.
Naveen, you were working in HAL as an aeronautical engineer. What made you leave a good, stable, secure job and get into entrepreneurship? What was the trigger?
I am one of those kids at school who would always reply, ‘I want to be an entrepreneur’ when asked, ‘What do you want to do in the future?’ I’m very passionate about entrepreneurship. There is no qualification necessary to become an entrepreneur. You can learn on the job. I don’t think there is any other job that allows you to do that. I am a third-generation entrepreneur in my family.
After I worked with HAL, I worked with a cybersecurity firm for about five years. There was a point where my boss called me and said, “You have an onsite overseas assignment. There are three countries and you can choose one country.” I quietly went back to my desk and sent him my resignation as I thought I was getting too comfortable in the job. The minute you get comfortable in a particular job, I think it’s time to quit it, at least, as a young person. I started Notion Press at 25.
What gave you the faith that Indian authors would pay money and get their books published?
We started out of foolishness of the youth. We decided to give it a try for six months and see what happened. Our first goal was to find if there were authors in India who were like us. We built a platform on top of Facebook, and launched a short story contest. We wanted writers to send in short stories and announced that the best stories would be published into a book. We thought maybe 50 or 80 people would write stories but we had 1200 people writing stories in a span of 30 days and 10 lakh people read those stories. We were taken aback by the response.
When we started, we used to get a new inquiry for publishing a book once every five or six days. When a new author signs up on our website, we would get super excited. I have travelled to people’s homes, trying to explain our model to them. Today, we have 10,000 people registering with us in India alone every month.
How long did it take to get the first set of 50 authors?
It took a year. For the first 150 authors, I was the spokesperson. There was a news story about Notion Press and the unique model that we were trying out. People started reaching out based on that. One of the best things about the business is that every book that I publish becomes an ambassador.
If you go to a traditional publisher, it goes through a filtering process. But in self-publishing, any crap can get published. How do you respond to this criticism?
I say, ‘Yes, bring it on.’ We do not publish anything illegal. The definition of crap may vary. An old person may write his story because he wants to document his legacy to an audience of 10 people in the family. Who are we to say ‘no’ to that? Who are we to judge that this man’s story is lesser important than the story of a Prime Minister? I have worked on a book personally, where a guy said, ‘Tomorrow is my girlfriend’s birthday. I want to document our love story and publish it as a book in one day.’
We have books that sell 250,000 copies very easily, but at the same time, because we are democratic, because we love all use cases, we get very interesting stories that a traditional publisher would never notice. One of the problems with the industry is that it has become so formulaic. If there is a campus romance that becomes a hit, the only thing that is going to happen for the next six months will be campus romance books. It works very similar to the movie industry. Then how do new artists break in?
When we started, the validation came from the fact that six out of 10 writers in India at that point, had started out by self-publishing a book. Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathy and all of these guys had started out through an alternate process. The question is, if an editor is so good at identifying the next big thing, then how did these guys get missed out?
We have lots of other distractions today like YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, OTT and so on. Where is the time for people to pick up a book? Is readership coming down or is it growing?
In a country like India, where the literacy rate is on the rise, readership is going up and the industry is growing at 19% CAGR. A book organises the content and presents it from an expert’s perspective. That is why people buy textbooks and nonfiction books. AI will take your ideas to different languages and if your idea can be spread across so many people, then that is going to be a killer use case.
What role does social media play in your overall business strategy? How has it impacted your growth?
We have a very clear view of social media. We use Instagram and LinkedIn for two different purposes. On LinkedIn, we try to demystify publishing and build more awareness. But on Instagram, our goal is very different. We make publishing fun and bring the next set of writers. On Instagram, our content is geared towards the 14- to 25-year-old, which is why over the years, we have found that we’ve been able to reduce the average age of writers and that’s something important for a business like ours because it increases our longevity.
What marketing and promotional strategies proved most effective in building your brand?
What we did was very simple. We knew ours was an industry that nobody knew about. Can we then give a phone number and say, “We are there for you!”? We displayed a phone number and said, “Whatever questions you have about publishing, call us.” By far, that is one of the best decisions that we’ve ever made. The fact that we are available to our customers, to our authors who want to publish books, whether they want to publish with us or not, is the killer strategy that helped us grow.
How do you handle competition from other similar self-publishing platforms and traditional publishing?
I used to be a guy very obsessed with competition and doing something better than our competition. Now, we don’t even talk about it anymore. I want to know what my authors want, even before the competition does. The only way to do that is to be very close to all my authors, to be grounded and to keep my ears close to the ground.
How do you approach talent acquisition and team building at Notion Press?
This is one of the most difficult challenges right now. I’m 37 years old and I am not in the average age of a business leader. Even at 37, I feel so disconnected from the current team that we work with. As far as talent acquisition is concerned, I let the younger people in the team do their job really well and they know what people want. I focus on talent nurturing. From the minute you enter Notion Press, you have life goals; not work goals. Having very honest conversation with people and bridging their aspiration is what has helped us retain people. We bring more women into the workforce. 65% of our team is women.
In what ways did your background as an aircraft engineer contribute to your approach to running Notion Press? Is it always a safe landing?
I’m a risk junkie. There are times when my team feels that I’m too stupid to understand about risk. There are times where I pull the company in a direction where the existence is questioned. It is never safe landing. It’s always turbulence. Only in turbulent weather, a great pilot is born.
What personal habits or routines have contributed to your success as an entrepreneur?
I’m extremely regimental. That’s one of the habits that I feel has helped me. I wake up at 3.30 in the morning, every single day for the past 12 years. I have my routine jotted down to the last bit. Even my lunch is on my calendar. Entrepreneurship is nothing but chaos. If you have to thrive in chaos, I think, you need to be organized.
What role did customer feedback play in shaping the services and features of Notion Press? How successful are you in customer retention?
We do make mistakes and that’s the honest fact. If you’re building something, obviously there will be people who are extremely unhappy at things that are not working. On the other side, this is one of those businesses where you enter into a relationship with an individual customer, across 18 touch points. My first author who published with us is still an author with us. Today he could be extremely happy. Tomorrow, if a book goes out with a small flaw, he will be very upset. We understood this very early on. We treat this like a relationship. Like any marriage, there will be ups downs. As long as we’re able to have an honest conversation about it, it works. About repeat authors, the average number of books published today is about 2.1 books per author.
How do you ensure continuous innovation within Notion Press to stay ahead in the industry?
Innovation is the only thing you should not be worried about with Notion Press. We have a crazy team that is working on crazy ideas all the time. There is a lot of content innovation and technology innovation happening at the same time. From a tech perspective, we are trying to achieve true decentralisation, whereas every tech company gains its power from centralising and making sure that they control the relationship. Innovation is part of our DNA. We innovate to break our own business model. We have already done it twice, so that more people can be served.
How do you see the role of digital media evolving in the publication industry?
Digital is just one more format. A writer sits down to write the story. Even for a movie that’s visual, the story is still written. That is the medium of expression as of now. I still have my social media team that makes reels but they sit down and sweat over the script for two hours. We don’t distinguish between digital media and print media. We only look at quality content and quality presentation. Print is a format and digital is a different format.
How important was building a strong company culture? What steps did you take to cultivate it?
I have gone from being a micromanager to one who totally delegates everything. Now, I say, “Please don’t bother me.” From very early days, I have been lucky to have people around me who cared enough about the company that we were building. I don’t think culture is something that is built from the outside where you plan and say, “This is going to be my culture.” Culture is about how you behave with each other. Why should it be any different from how we are at home or in other settings? If we see elders, we get up. These are things that are not imparted to us every single time through training. We see somebody do it and we also do it.
Can you describe a major challenge you faced in the early stages?
I don’t think we faced major challenges in the early days. A market like India is usually trust deficit. We were lucky enough to have a lot of trust. People trusted us with their books and money, though we were a non-entity in the early days. The first important juncture where we were completely lost was during covid. We had made out of print, a massive business and were pumping out thousands of copies per day.
Suddenly for the next eight months, nothing happened. We were worried about the future. ‘Is print even going to work after this?’ we thought. People said that schools won’t work after covid. Online schooling business generated billions of dollars. That was an uncertain period. But luckily, we had authors who had super conviction in our model. We kept talking to them and they assured us that print would be back. During covid, we published about 20,000 books, without being able to sell a single copy. That was the level of commitment that our authors had, and the desire to express themselves. Also, a lot of people got free time to write.
What role did mentorship and networking play in your entrepreneur journey?
I’ve learned a lot from people I call mentors. They always ask the right questions and tough questions. For an entrepreneur, the best thing is to face tough questions. They will provoke your thoughts and actions. Every single mentor of mine doesn’t give me the answers. They ask tough questions like, ‘Tomorrow, if X event were to happen, what would you do?’ That is how we get better. I’m not a huge fan of networking.
As a CEO of a growing company, are you writing a book? If so, who will be your publisher?
I’ve been approached by a publisher to publish the Notion Press story. In fact, I’m writing a book called ‘The Notion Press Way.’ We’re publishing it very soon and it will surely be a national bestseller. It is getting released by this December.
What do you do to promote readership? I feel you have the responsibility to do that since you are in the industry. I’m always concerned that I don’t see people with books at the airports, railway stations and so on. Earlier, it used to be. Are you taking conscious efforts to do that?
We work with a lot of bookstore partners to promote readership among young people. But again, with any industry, the challenge is that everybody has got their own agenda. We could be doing a lot more to promote readership in the country. I don’t think we do enough. Our authors do that, with a motive of selling their own books.
How do you ensure good quality of books, as you encourage everyone to publish?
There are a couple of ways to do this. One, you have an amazing idea but you’re not a good writer. We can solve that and we are on the verge of incorporating that into our platform. Two, we want to reward good quality. We are launching an author development program, possibly by next month, where we’re rewarding writers with phenomenal quality and phenomenal marketing abilities. You have a platform like Facebook or Instagram. You could use that to give quality content or entertaining content or you could use that as your personal blog. That is up to you and that is the democratic nature of the platform. But as quality gets rewarded, more people will want to pursue that. That is our take on it.
When we talk of best-selling books, what is the quantum that you refer to? A publishing house told me that if you manage to sell 5000 copies, you’re a best-selling author. Is it true?
Bestsellers are there, category-wise; it’s not overall. The whole concept of bestseller is very much flawed. But to answer your question, in a category like poetry, which doesn’t sell really well, something like 5,000 could be construed as a bestseller. You have to think of a bestseller against all the other books that are published in that year. A fiction can be read by a lot of people. Here, a bestseller can sell 10,000 to 12,000 copies. A true national bestselling book will crack 100,000 copies.
What next at Notion Press?
My co-founder Bhargav and I are very passionate about democratising writing further. There are also people who have great ideas, but they lack writing skills. We want to solve that problem. These are two areas that we are working on, to make sure that there are more writers; and writers have more readers and that they are all connected.
