MyKitaab : Podcast on Book Publishing in India: Recent Episodes
Amar Vyas interviews bestselling authors Joanna Penn, Apurva Purohit, Christopher Doyle, Rich Amooi ; Publishers Meera Johri, Tom Morkes and Mark Coker
Mykitaab is a podcast meant to help authors in getting their books published in India. Three times a week, we will interview authors, editors, and publishers, to answer the question "I have written a book, how do I get it published in India?" Our guests include bestselling authorpreneur Joanna Penn, entrepreneurs in the book publishing space Mark Coker (Smashwords), Ricardo Fayet (Reedsy), Leonard Fernandes (Cinnamon Teal) and Tom Morkes (Insurgent Publishing); bestselling authors Bhaavna Arora, Aditi Chopra, Kiran Manral and Rich Amooi; Publishers Meeraj Johri (Rajpal and Sons), Satya (New Horizon Media) and Jeremy Thomas (Inkshares); corporate leaders and bestselling authors Apurva Purohit (Jagran Group), and Christopher Doyle. The guests will share their stories about self publishing, audiobooks, translations, and the publishing industry in India.
Urmila spent nearly 10 years in senior editorial positions with companies like Penguin and Oxford University Press before launching Purple Folio in 2012. You can listen to her experiences with book publishers in India, the role of literary agencies, and Purple Folio in this podcast episode.
Urmila Dasgupta is the founder of Purple Folio, a Literary Agency. Urmila began her career in book publishing industry and was an editor with some of the top publishing houses with experience of well over a decade. She set up Purple Folio in 2012, which is headquartered in Mumbai. Her past professional experience includes working as a commissioning editor with Pearson Education and Oxford University Press, as well as Penguin Books India. Urmila has an graduation degree from Lady Shriram College, Delhi University and a master's from Jawaharlal Nehru Vishvavidyalaya Shownotes are available on www.mykitaab.in/urmila
Rasana Atreya is the author of Tell A Thousand Lies which was shortlisted for the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia award. UK’s Glam magazine calls this novel one of their five favourite tales from India (June 2014). Her other works are The Temple Is Not My Father (also available as an audiobook), 28 Years A Bachelor and Valley Isle Secrets. When she's not writing, Rasana is an advocate for self-publishing. She's been part of many panels at various literary festivals across India. She also had a blog on self-publishing, where she also warns about various scams in self-publishing.
Shownotes from this episode are available at www.mykitaab.in/rasana
PR Ganapathy "Guns" is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and has authored to books in the thriller genre: The Anza Deception and The Sympathy Wave. In this podcast episode, he talks about bookwriting, his experiences with traditional publishing, and lessons learnt from his book publishing journey. Guns is a management executive who has held important leadership positions with some Indian and Global Corporations in India and the United States. He is currently investing time in giving some wise unbiased advice to budding social entrepreneurs.
Shownotes from this podcast episode are available at www.mykitab.in/guns
Overview of the 3 Podcast episodes to be published this week; Authors P R Ganapathy and Rasana Atreya, and Literary Agent Urmila Dasgupta
Christopher Doyle is a Management Consultant and the author of Two Bestselling Books. The Mahabharat Quest was his debut novel, which was followed by The Mahabharat Secret: Alexander's Quest. In part Ii of our discussion, Christopher talks about his second book, how he ended up changing publisher, translations, audiobooks, and The Quest Club.
Shownotes are available at www.mykitaab.in/christopher2
Christopher is an alumnus of St. Stephen's College, Delhi and Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He has written articles on management and business for Indian and international publications and is also a regular invited speaker for international conventions and conferences. He is a certified Executive Coach and now works with senior executives to help them achieve success and better results in their organisations. Christopher lives in New Delhi with his wife, daughter and his dog and enjoys writing, reading, swimming and tennis as well as travelling and meeting people. He is also a musician and lives his passion for music through his band called Mid Life Crisis which plays classic rock.
Christopher Doyle is a Management Consultant and the author of Two Bestselling Books: The Mahabharat Secret and The Mahabharat Quest: Alexander's Secret. In part I of our discussion Christopher talks about how he became an author, books that have inspired him, the importance of research in his writing process, and facing rejection from multiple publishers and literary agents.
Shownotes from this episode are available at www.mykitaab.in/christopher1
He is an alumnus of St. Stephen's College, Delhi and Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Christopher has written articles on management and business for Indian and international publications and is also a regular invited speaker for international conventions and conferences. He is a certified Executive Coach and now works with senior executives to help them achieve success and better results in their organisations. Christopher lives in New Delhi with his wife, daughter and his dog and enjoys writing, reading, swimming and tennis as well as travelling and meeting people. He is also a musician and lives his passion for music through his band called Mid Life Crisis which plays classic rock.
Akhilesh leads thematic research for KIE and co-authors market strategy reports. His first book, ‘The Making of India – Game Changing Transitions’ chronicles the journey of India's demographic dividend through varied economic transitions—the forces shaping India's job market, its cities, its industry and agriculture and its equation with the rest of the world. Akhilesh has a PGDM from IIM, Ahmedabad (class of 2004) and an alumnus of St Xavier's College. He has taken several courses in Mumbai University including Securities Law and Astronomy. Akhilesh lives in Mumbai with his family which includes his wife, daughter and parents.
In this podcast episode, we talk about Akhilesh's journey as an author, the support he received form his employer, and his interests other than writing. Shownotes are available at www.mykitaab.in/akhilesh
This episode gives an overview of episodes from week 10: Bestselling authors Christopher Doyle and Akhilesh Tilotia
In this episode, Satya and I talk about the challenges faced by ebooks in regional languages, reading habits among schoolchildren. Shownotes are available at mykitaab.in/satya2 This is part II of our discussion with K Satyanarayanan or Satya, the co-Founder of New Horizon Media, a publisher in the Tamil language book market. Satya is an alumnus of IIT Madras and Cornell University in the US. He and his co-founder Badri started Cricinfo, which became the go-to site for cricket before they exited and went on to launch New Horizon Media. Satya has blogged on education and state of publishing industry in India, and he has spoken on the publishing industries in India at forums such as Publishing Next. Part I of the discussion can be found at www.mykitaab.in/satya
K Satyanarayanan or Satya is the co-Founder of New Horizon Media, a publisher in the Tamil language book market. Satya is an alumnus of IIT Madras and Cornell University in the US. He and his co-founder Badri started Cricinfo, which became the go-to site for cricket before they exited and went on to launch New Horizon Media. Satya has blogged on education and state of publishing industry in India, and he has spoken on the publishing industries in India at forums such as Publishing Next. This is part I of our discussion.
Satya talks about the evolution of the Tamil language book industry, challenges with distribution, size of Tamil language market, reading preferences of readers in Tamil Nadu, and audiobooks. Shownotes are available at www.mykitaab.in/satya
Meera Johri is an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi and a partner at Rajpal & Sons. In Part II of the discussion with Meera Johri, we talk about the timelines for publishing a book through this publishing house, and also the future plans for Rajpal and Sons. And we also discuss working with Late Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, the President of India.
In the 20 years that she has been at Rajpal & Sons, she has developed a range of multi-lingual dictionaries that widened the scope of publishing in English, and set up an infrastructure for selling language rights of books to overseas and regional Indian publishers.She has established a vibrant translation publishing programme of authors of global and national acclaim.
Shownotes for this episode will be available at www.mykitaab.in/Meera2
Meera Johri is an MBA from the Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi and a partner at Rajpal & Sons. In part I of our discussion, we talk about the history of Rajpal and Sons, how the publishing house has grown over the past century, some of its acclaimed authors and poets including Presidents, Nobel Laureates and Harivanshrai Bachchan and Devdutt Pattanaik. We talk about the publishing process, impact of technology on distribution and retailing of books, and working with Late Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, the President of India.
In the 20 years that she has been at Rajpal & Sons, she has developed a range of multi-lingual dictionaries that widened the scope of publishing in English, and set up an infrastructure for selling language rights of books to overseas and regional Indian publishers.She has established a vibrant translation publishing programme of authors of global and national acclaim. Shownotes for this episode will be available at www.mykitaab.in/Meera
This week, we have two guests: Meera Johri from Rajpal and Sons, and K Satyanarayanan from New Horizon Media, who are one of the leading Hindi and Tamil language publishers respectively. For Episode 28, Meera Johri from Rajpal and Sons narrates how the publishing house has been in the book publishing business for over 100 years. We talk about the market for Hindi language books, distribution challenged, evergreen Hindi language classics and use of technology.
In Episodes 29 and 30, Satya from New Horizon Media talks about the Tamil language book market. This is the first time on MyKitaab Podcast that we are releasing an episode in two parts.
Sequence of release: Episde 28 on Tuesday March 15th, Episodes 29 and 30 on March 16th and 17th respectively.
Miral Sattar is the CEO and founder of BiblioCrunch, a market place which connects authors with the curated and trusted book publishing professionals they need to publish a high-quality book. BiblioCrunch was also selected as The Next Big Thing in media by the Paley Center. Miral is an alumnue of Columbia University and has Masters in Media from New York University. She started her career as a software engineer and eventually moved to media.She has close to 11 years of experience in media working with Time Inc and Time Magazine .
In this podcast episode, Miral and I talk about her journey from being a software engineer to media and now into publishing. Specifically, we talk about the services offered by Bibliocrunch, their association with Nanowrimo, and Miral's writings.
Mark Lefebvre is the Director of Self Publishing & Author Relations at Kobo since 2011. He started his career as a technologist during the day and author during night . Mark is the writer of dark fiction that is often described as “Twilight Zone”style fiction . He has been involved in book selling business for over 20 years. Mark describes himself as a writer & book nerd from Hamilton, Ontario in Canada.
In this episode, Mark and I talk about his career in the book publishing industry, from being a bookseller to now with Kobo Writing Life. We talk about Kobo's approach towards book publishing and particularly their focus on Indian market after acquisition of Flipkart's ebook business, and pricing for the Indian Market. Finally, we discuss Barnaby Bones, Mark's skeletal companion.
Shownotes for this episode will be available at www.mykitaab.in/markleslie
Joanna Penn is a New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author, Professional Speaker, Coach & Entrepreneur. She was voted as one of The Guardian UK Top 100 creative professionals 2013. She is currently based out of London, England but spent 13 years as a business IT consultant in large corporates across the globe majorly in Australia and New Zealand for 11 years before becoming a full-time author-entrepreneur in September 2011.Her books include the ARKANE conspiracy thriller series, the London Psychic crime thrillers an d Risen Gods, a dark fantasy thriller. Joanna's site www.TheCreativePenn.com helps people achieve their dream of becoming an author, and she is the host of The Creative Penn Podcast.
Joanna's latest book Destroyer of Worlds, will be released on March 31, 2016. She has invited listeners particularly from India to read her book.Shownotes and ways to reach out to her are available at www.mykitaab.in/joanna
In this podcast episode, Joanna and I discuss her journey as an author. We also talk about audiobooks, translations, publishing across platforms and international markets. In other words, we cover a variety of topics which are near and dear to MyKitaab Podcast. Joanna also offers her advice to authors who are looking to get their book published.
This is a preview of the episode for Week Number 8 for the MyKitaab Podcast. We have a few announcements : this week we will reach a special milestone- Episode Number 25! And we have a very special guest to celebrate this milestone. The shows with the other two guests are also very interesting- we will let the week's episodes unravel themselves with time!
News and announcements: we are looking for a part time Virtual Assistant and a Social Media intern. The job profiles and the workflows are available on MyKitaab.in/positions. Those of you who are interested in applying for the roles can visit the page and reach out to us.
Kovid is the creator of Calibre, an ebook management and conversion program. He has a Ph.D from California Institute of Technology and has worked on quantum computing. He has many and varied interests. He is a book lover and reads close to 100 books an year. In addition, he has written poems and essays . Kovid was one of the panelists in the Jaipur Literary Festival -2016 . He has 2 daughters and his wife is an author of children's books.
Naveen Valsakumar is a former technologist who co-founded Notionpress with his friends in 2012 with a INR 3,000 investment ($50). In four years, the company has grown to INR 6 Crores (nearly US 1 million) in sales, and is one of the non traditional publishing companies in India.
Naveen and I talk about his professional career before founding Notionpress, the story behind his company, growth plans, and services offered. We talk about the Notion Press Accelerator Program, which provides INR 100,000 (nearly 1,400 Dollars) to authors who have been able to sell 30 books with atleast 30 positive reviews.
A not to miss part of this discussion is where Naveen provides some facts and figures about the book publishing market in India, based on the FICCI+Nielsen report released in November 2015. India is the second largest english language book publishing market in the world, at US 4 billion dollars, it is a large though unorganized industry.
Leonard Fernandes is a former IT professional who co-founded Cinnamon Teal Publishing with his wife Queenie in 2007. He can be described as a "parallel entrepreneur", with four different ventures including Dog Eared Books and Publishing Next conference.
During our discussion, we talk about Leonard's journey from an IT professional to his move back to Goa, and launching his ventures, We discuss about Cinnamon Teal Publishing, and how the business has grown over the years. We spend considerable time over ISBN, and weigh the need as well as the importance of getting iSBN for books. Other topics we talk about in this rather long interview incvlude Cinnamon Teal Blog, audiobooks, and nearly half a dozen entrepreneurial ideas in the book publishing space.
Jaya Jha is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Lucknow. She is the co-founder of pothi.com, a self-publishing platform. She is an ex-googler and has two other ventures- Instascribe (for ebooks) and Summary Town (summaries of business books). She is a published author herself, with one novel in English and 3 collections of Hindi poetries.
Jaya and I talk about her interest in books, the idea behind pothi.com; how the self publishing service works. She also discussed numbers- how the service has grown over the years (from 3 or 4 titles in first year to about 100 titles per month at present), and cost of self publishing a book. We also talk about audiobooks and translations.
Finally, Jaya talks about her nomination to L'Oreal Paris and NDTV - Woman of Worth award, and her request that listeners should vote for her if they like the podcast episode!
Shownotes will be available at mykitaab.in/pothi
In this preview of the podcasts to be featured in Wek 7 of MyKitaab Podcast, Amar introduces the them of the week. He also talks about the three guests and the topics that he will be covering with them. In episode 22, Jaya Jha, Co-Founder of Pothi.com, tells the story of her self publishing company and her other ventures- instascribe and Summary Town. Epsiode 23 features Leonard Fernandes, the founder of Cinnamon Teal. Amar and Leonard discuss the story behind Cinnamon Teal, how the company has grown, and finally, the importance of entrepreneurial ideas. We conclude the three part series by discussing with Naveen Valsakumar, Co-Founder of Notion Press. Naveen started his entreprenbeurial journey in the world of book publishing with a 50 Dollar (3,000 Rupee) investment and his business has grown into a US 1 million dollar venture. Naveen provides several interesting facts and figures about India's Book Publishing Market.
V Raghunathan is an academician turned banker who is currently the CEO of a non profit .He dons the hat of a columnist and is an author of 14 published books. His academic affiliation was with IIM, Ahmedabad (1982-2001) as a Professor of Finance & Accounting, banking association with ING Vysya Bank as its President (2001-04) and corporate/Foundation role is with the GMR Group since 2005. He also heads the India Campus of Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada, where he is an Adjunct Professor as well. He has been teaching annually at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, since 1990.Collecting old and antique locks (as in pad locks) is his serious hobby , has played chess at all India level and have done a bit of cartooning for a national daily briefly and some competitive sketching in the past. Apart from these, he has flirted with a vintage car (a 1937 Austin 7) for a few years, occasionally fixes mechanical clocks and travel a good bit.
Dr. Satish Deodhar is the Author of two bestselling books - “Day To Day Economics” and “Why Am I Paying More?” His books are a lighthearted read, but by no means they are light reading: Dr. Deodhar has explained complex concepts used in economics in simple easy to understand terms. We talk about his writing, translations of books, his interest in archaeology in this podcast discussion.
Dr. Deodhar has a PhD from the Ohio State University in the United State and his undergradate degree is from University of Pune. To do justice to the writer in him, he is able to squeeze time apart from his day job as a Professor of Economics at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He lives in Ahmedabad with his wife Deepali and two children - Sylee and Yash.
Shownotes are available at MyKitaab.in/satish
Rajeshwari Victor is a faculty at XLRI in Jamshedpur and author of the book “My Life, My Choice: Midlife Career Choices.” She is an alumnae of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and has over 15 years of experience in the corporate sector. She has worked with organizations such as Hindustan Unilever, CavinCare and Nippon Paints. She loves listening to music and she is a marathon runner. She is a columnist for the Business Line, where she covers the topics of sales and marketing.
Shownotes are available at mykitaab.in/rajeshwari
Starting this week, I am including a new feature: preview of the episodes that will be released in the current week. Our guests for this week include:
Rajeshwari Victor, Professor of Marketing at XLRI and Author of My Life, My Choices (Episode 19). Rajeshwari gives some useful insights on the marketing and distribution challenges in book publishing and how a marketing plan can overcome some of them.
Dr. Satish Deodhar (episode 20) author of the bestselling book Day To Day Economics. He tells us how his book got featured in the Bollywood film Two States, and also his interest in archaeology and history.
Dr. V Raghunathan (episode 21) is a former business school professor turned Banker and now a CEO of a nonprofit foundation. He is the author of 14 books, many of which are bestsellers such as Ganesha on the Dashboard and Mathematics, Locks and Mahabharata.
Vidyanand Vartak is a software engineer who lives in the UK. He is the originator behind Bolti Pustake. This is a volunteer driven project under which narrators record Marathi language books which are in the public domain. Listeners are able to listen to these files through the website Boltipustake on blogspot
Anand and I talk about the response to his initiative, listener preferences, managing time for this volunteer driven project, and finally how can interested audio narrators contribute to his project. Anand can be contacted via the facebook page for this project or on the contact page on tbe boltipustake site.
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PC Balasubramanian (Bala) is an entrepreneur and a bestselling author. His first two books have a very interesting theme: Tamil movie icon Rajinikanth. Rajinis Punchatanra and Grand Brand Rajini are essentially management books. He followed up his nonfiction books with a fiction novel - Ready, Steady, Exit.
Bala and I discuss his journey as an author, his passion for writing, how he manages time between running his company and authoring and marketing his books. We also talk about how bookwriting has led to him getting invited to speak at corporate events. We of course talk about Rajinikanth, and for the first time on MyKitaab Podcast, we end the discussion with a punchline from a Bollywood Tamil movie.
In his professional avatar, Bala is a Chartered Accountant and the Executive Director & President of Matrix Group. He also contributes articles now and then to newspapers and magazines especially on subject relating to Retailing and FMCG industries.
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Shownotes from this episode are available at mykitaab.in/bala
Apurva Purohit is the author of the national best - selling book on successfully managing the merge between home and work “Lady, You’re not a Man” – the Adventures of a Woman at Work. Apurva and I discuss her journey as an author that began with a blog, finding a publisher, writing the manuscript on flights, and the impact the book has had on readers. We also talk about marketing the book, a few unconventional approaches for marketing books (partnering with HR organizations in companies) and the importance of family support for women in demanding careers.
Apurva is the CEO of Radio City 91.1 FM, an IIM –B alumnus (Batch of 89) and has been managing media organizations for a large part of the 25 years she has spent in the corporate world. She has launched TV Channel, Media Agency, and is an independent Director on boards of Companies, and a partner in Social Venture Partners India.
Shownotes from this podcast episode are available at mykitaab.in/apurva
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Kiruba Shankar is a Social Media consultant, Professor, Organic Farmer and Author. He has varied interests including photography (over 7,000 photos on Flickr and counting!) and podcasting: he is the host of Kiruba.tv , where he interviews exceptional leaders. Kiruba has written five books, including Wikipedia for Beginners, Crowdsourcing and Copyright and Copyleft. His latest book is titled First Book, which is a compilation of the best advice on writing from authors who have together sold millions of book.
Kiruba and I also discuss his journey from his engineering college days, to the dot com bust, working with Sify and Sulekha, his 20 year career in social media, organic farming, and Creative Commons.
Special Mention: Kiruba has offered his latest Book titled First Book, as a free download to listeners of MyKitaab Podcast in exchange for an honest review.
Interested listeners can visit mykitaab.in/kiruba to download this book.
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Kiran Manral is a former journalist turned author of four books, including All Aboard and Once Upon a Crush. Her fifth book, The Face at The Window, will be released in February 2016. We talk about her journey as an author, writing style, audiobooks, translations, and self publishing.
Kiran writes humor, but all four of her books have a different theme and are practically in a different genre. Equally interesting is that she has published all of her books with a different publisher each time.
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Shownotes for this episode are available on the Mykitaab site at mykitaab.in/kiran
Rich Amooi is the author of Romantic comedies. He has published five books , including Dog Day Wedding, Five Minutes later and Mr. Crotchety. His latest book, an Eclair to Remember, was released in January 2016 and has received great reviews on goodreads. Rich and I talk about his journey into writing books, reviews from readers, his upcoming book An Eclair To Remember.
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Shownotes from this episode will be available at www.mykitaab.in/rich
Aditi Chopra is a former technologist turned author, who has published about 20 books in both fiction and nonfiction genre. She describes herself as author of NRI fiction and nonfiction books.Her fiction books include Mr. Imperfect and Desi Girl Series, and her nonfiction books are on leadership, particularly her book Leading Without Authority.has received positive feedback. In this podcast episode, we discuss her journey towards becoming an author, publishing multiple books in a year, and her advice for aspiring authors.
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You can view the shownotes and the resources discussed in this podcast at at www.mykitaab.in/aditi.
In this podcast interview, Ben Wurth talks about how he started Upliterate. We also the future plans for Upliterate and what Genres they will focus on. Upliterate was one of the sponsors of Nanowrimo 2015, something that we cover in our discussion. Particularly for authors who write in Science Fiction and Fantasy as well as Young Adult genres, it is great to have one more option, though it is still a little rough around the edges at the time or recording.
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Shownotes from this episode are available at mykitaab.in/ben
Tom Morkes is an author, entrepreneur, podcaster and founder of Insurgent Publishing. Tom and I talk about his journey into the world of publishing, writing, self publishing and book marketing.
Tom has appeared in several podcast interviews on Entrepreneur on Fire, Bestselling Fiction podcast, and Wrtier 2.0 podcast His guest posts on Goinswriter, and writeup on how he earns an income while traveling around the world on Business Insider are interesting reads.
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Shownotes for this podcast episode are available at mykitaab.in/tom
Jeremy Thomas is the CEO of Inkshares, which offers a mix of crowdfunding model and the services offered by a traditional publisher. Inkshares was founded in 2013 to create a differentiated offering, In many ways they are similar to a traditional publisher, but they rely on the interest and funding of readers and booksellers. Once a book proposal meets a pre-determined threshold for number of pre-orders, Inkshares provide editorial, cover design, printing and distribution for that book.
Jeremy and I talk about how Inkshare's model has evolved, his take on international presence, non-English language publishing and audiobooks, and finally, his advise for authors.
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The shownotes and references mentioned in this podcast episode will be available at http://mykitaab.in/jeremy
Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, an ebook distributor, tells his views on authors going exclusive with online retailers, particularly amazon. We also talk about translations, self publishing, and the power of the Internet in providing a level playing field for authors. Shownotes and resources mentioned in this podcast are available at mykitaab.in/mark.
Mark previously founded Bestcalls.com, an earnings conference call directory and Dovetail PR. He is an angel investor and advisor to technology startups. He is on the advisory board of GetQuik (a restaurant order automation technology provider). Mark is a frequent speaker, guest on podcast, and blog interviews, and is a contributor to the Huffington Post. He describes himself as a gardener, dreamer, doer, hiker, explorer, battler of squirrels, and co-author of Boob Tube and several other books. He is an alumnus of the University of California Berkeley, Haas School of Business.
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Shownotes for this podcast episode are available at mykitaab.in/mark
A C Fuller is an Author, Podcaster, Wirting Teacher and Speaker. His first book The Anynmous Source was released in June 2015. He is also the host of the Writer 2.0 podcast, has a active facebook group by the same name, and he is a writing teacher. AC grew up in Berkeley, California and attended Oberlin College before moving to New Orleans, New York, and Connecticut. AC and I talk about book writing, self publishing and his speaking engagements, Seattle Seahawks, and strong coffee.
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Shownotes from this episode ar available at mykitaab.in/acfuller
Bhaavna Arora is the bestselling author of the Deliberate Sinner, her debut novel which has sold more than 100,000 copies till today. Her second novel, Mistress of Honour, has also received very good reviews. Bhaavna has two MBAs, a PhD, and she was the director of a business school in Bengaluru (Bengalore) before she took up writing as a full time career. We talk about her family, getting rejected by Penguin Randomhouse, how the same publisher approached her one year later. Interesting side stories include: Bhaavna had to change the manuscript of the Deliberate Sinner slightly because of her mother, who thought that writing about live-in relationships could hurt Bhaavna's chances of marriage. We also talk about movies, her deep love and respect for the Army, insisting on getting the same editor and publicist as Shobha De, and finally, how she got an General's wife to read the Mistress of Honour before the General agreed to release it.
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Shownotes from this episode are available at mykitaab.in/bhaavna
George Smolinski is a man of many talents. He is a Physician, entrepreneur, and amazon #1 bestselling author. He is also a full time physician, efficiency expert, father, husband, and athlete. He founded Gutenberg Reloaded, which provides high quality ebook content composition, audiobook recording, paperback book publication, book covers, book layouts, and book promotion services. We talk about his journey into self publishing, his ventures in book publishing, and his upcoming book: Recording Audiobooks.
Listeners can get a copy of this book by visiting the shownotes page on mykitaab.in/george
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Kavita's journey has taken her to London 2012, a stint in Gurgaon, India, and now into entrepreneurship, where she runs her startup whatsmysize.com. Her book, Kabhie Khushi Kabhi Kham, is about working in India. In this episode, Kavita discusses the motivation behind her book, how she chose the title, cover design, and we talk about finding a printer in India and getting ISBN. when she is not writing, she is a speaker at forums such as TedEx, and she is a filmmaker.
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You can get the links and the resources mentioned in this podcast episode at mykitaab.in/kavita
Rachna is a humor author who covers topics of love and organizational development.
Her debut novel ‘Dating, Diapers and Denial’ was published in 2012. As on December 2015, she has 4 books under her belt, including a collection of short stories. Her blog is a light and fun hearted read, but with a deep message on how to stay positive when life throws a curveball or two at you..
Rachna and I discuss how she got started as an author, how she used getting stuck in traffic to draft her manuscript, her blogging, fight with breast cancer, and her upcoming books.
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The shownotes for this episode are available at http://www.mykitaab.in/rachna
Anuj Dhar is a former journalist who has spent over 10 years working to unravel the mystery surrounding the disappearance and death of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. He has written many hard hitting books on this topic, including India's Biggest Cover Up and What Happened to Netaji? He has spoken on this issue extensively on many forums including TedX. Anuj writes in his books and holds the view that there was no air crash; and that Netaji Bose died in the 1980s after living as a monk named Gumnami Baba or Bhagwanji in Faizabad. Anuj's interview was recorded at the venue of the Bangalore Literary Festival in December 2015.
About Netaji Bose: Subhas Chanda Bose was a freedom fighter who fought for India's independence from Britan. According to official records, he died on 18 August 1945, when a Japanese plane carrying him crashed in Japanese-occupied Taiwan.
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Shownotes from this episode are available at mykitaab.in/anuj
Ricardo takes us from the time Reedsy was founded to the new models and tools that they are introducing. We talk about books, self publishing, marketplace, editing, ebooks, agent assisted publishing, among other topics of interest to authors. Reedsy has a very stringent acceptance process for editors and cover designers, and we learn that their acceptance rate (less than 3 percent) is less than that of Harvard or McKinsey. We conclude the discussion with Reedsy's plans for translations, India, and Ricardo's dream book.
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Shownotes from this episode are available at mykitaab.in/ricardo
Vikrant and I discuss about his experiences as a translator, what should authors look for when they are considering translation of their book, and purely as a coincidence, all the books that he has translated and published so far have been released as movies in Marathi and Hindi. His most recent work is the translation of the Marathi book Raau on which the Hindi movie Bajirao Mastani was based.
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You can find the shownotes of this episode on www.mykitaab.in/vikrant
Vivek provides insights into the Indian publishing industry - at 4 billion US dollars, it is big, but is also quite fragmented. Specifically, we talk about regional language and academic publishing. We begin the discuss his journey from the world of textiles to publishing, the struggles that he had to undergo early on in his career, and his entry into publishing in early 2000s. Vivek is a published author who self published his debut novel and is working on a trilogy based on Kolis, the fisherman community from western India.
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Shownotes from this episode are available at mykitaab.in/vivek
Amar Vyas, the host of the Mykitaab Podcast, introduces us to the podcast. He walks us through his reasons for starting the podcast, the format and frequency of the show, and what listeners can expect from this show. The links and resources mentioned in ths episode are available on the "home" for this podcast at www.mykitaab.in/intro
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