In an exclusive conversation with NewsX for its special segment NewsX A-list, Ajay Setia, founder-director of Invincible Publishers opened up about his journey, life and changing dynamics of the publishing field.
Sharing his insights about the future of the publishing industry amid the Covid-19 crisis, Setia says, “During this pandemic, both book publishing and book reading trends have gone up. People are reading more books as they have more time and authors are writing more content. We are publishing more than what we were doing before.”
The publisher also shares how most of the readers are opting for paperbacks over ebooks and audiobooks, “Now readers are coming back to paperback owing to the feel of books, that freshness in the book, roughness of the paper, and the smell of glue. I think people still prefer that.”
Asked about how Invincible Publishers is changing the game, Setia tells us, “We felt the need to do proper marketing and hence came up with a publishing and marketing platform. It is a software-driven company where we have digitised the entire publishing process. It includes the complete supply chain in our dashboard and our authors can track sales till distributor and retailer level at runtime.”
“If one is publishing with Invincible Publishers, they need not hire any marketing agency or PR agency. Thereby we are following a more corporate and organised approach,” he adds.
Talking about his journey and stint in publishing, Setia shares how working as a software engineer with TCS to publishing his book changed his career direction, “I worked there for almost five years and eventually published my book in 2012. Coming from a first-time author who didn’t know anything, I saw gaps between what most of the publishers are doing. They’re just publishing the book. I sensed an opportunity and grabbed it.”
“Giving it a corporate approach, I started this company in 2017. Now 500 plus authors, influencers, and motivational speakers are working with Invincible Publishers. Every publishing company needs to have a marketing department to help new authors,” adds Setia.
Touching upon topics that the publishing industry is picking up and whether there is somewhat resistance in publishers to pick up only controversial topics, he asserts, “Whether it’s controversial or not is completely secondary. If the content is relevant, we are ready to publish it. Many desperate authors are only writing controversial and biased content. They’re supporting a particular political party, but we never support them.”
“We have categorised authors into three categories. The first category is a self-published author who can visit our website, use the software and do the editing, designing, marketing, publishing everything online, and launch their book. The second category is midsize authors to whom we suggest marketing strategies so that they can target their audience. For celebs and influencers, we use the third level reach,” he points out.
Talking about marketing and publishing ideologies, Setia feels it depends upon the author and explains how they go hand in hand including sales and promotions, “For the first time authors, we need to create hype. Firstly, we do proper marketing so people start taking them seriously. We have a separate online and offline marketing team and work with 20 plus distributors.” He says that getting books into bookstores for first-time authors is very difficult for other publishing companies but they work with distributors all over India. “Now, if the content is relevant for the audience and people are liking the cover page, the content definitely gets to sales,” adds Setia.
Covid-19 is changing landscape of publishing business. Setia speaks to us about the welcoming changes, “We were chasing many authors before to write but now they have enough time for it. With regards to sales, most of it is happening online nowadays.”
“The supply chain distribution, both distributors and retailers have been affected for sure. But talking about educational books, students attending online classes still prefer books. And once schools and institutions will open, we can witness the time that was before the pandemic,” adds the publisher. Talking about future plans and projections for Invincible Publications, Setia intends to grab more content and get good authors on their platform. “After this pandemic, we have plans to promote the authors by doing literary events.
Every month, we were hosting two-three events which have been shifted to online. But once the situation is fine, we are aiming to do more literature festivals in other cities and further planning to have different editions in different cities, even outside India.” He wants to focus more on their authors and ensure them good reach and does not plan on writing a sequel to his self-help book.