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Last year I visited a ‘book exhibition’ (book fair)
in a small town in Tamil Nadu. Dozens of publishers had
participated in it and displayed their books in small
booths. All the stalls, except one in a corner, had
several assistants that were working hard to attract
visitors and to sell their books by colorful sales talk.
There was only one young man – perhaps in his early
twenties – in that corner shop. He was reading a book
and only when a customer approached him, he looked up,
prepared a bill, collected cash, and delivered the
books. As soon as the customer left, he would again lose
himself in the book he was reading.
“I believe things are going extremely well. Perhaps
that’s the reason why you are not trying to push
anything,” I told Ram – that was his name – after I
introduced myself to him. Ram smiled and said, “I
respect my customers. All of them are more intelligent
than I am. I display books of high quality and my
customers buy them. I never try to sell. I help them buy
from me!”
“Can you please tell me about your business model?” I
asked him. He said, “After I finished my B.Sc. degree
course a few years ago, I started my endless search for
a job. By Divine grace, I came across an interesting
book on self-employment…”
At this point, I interrupted him and asked, “May I
know the author’s name?” Ram grinned and said, “It is
not your book! Actually I did not buy the book. I was
just browsing it and was wondering whether I should
invest a fortune – Rs.25 was a fortune to me at that
time – on it. When I was standing in that bookshop, a
few customers asked for books by a famous Tamil novel
author. The book seller did not have them. Then I began
to think of having my own bookshop with the books
written by that author.”
“Excellent! You are a conscious, resourceful person,”
I said. “Thank you,” Ram said and continued, “Without
any knowledge and experience about publishing books or
selling them, I contacted the author and requested his
permission to publish his books. But, he asked an
upfront payment and a sizable percentage of the sales as
royalty. He was very arrogant too. I thought he was
crazy. Then I contacted a few knowledgeable persons and
they explained me how the system works. They said that
big publishers always dictate terms to the authors and
the authors agree to all the terms without a word.
However, if the publisher is small and new, these
authors would start dictating terms to the publisher! ” |
