Ever thought of publishing a book? Then surely, these thoughts might have come back to you again during this lockdown period, thanks to all the time that we have on our hands right now. Here's a good opportunity to put those thoughts on paper, well e-paper, and get them published! The publishing house Half Baked Beans (HBB) has announced an Online Pitch Fest. Pitch them the synopsis of your book along with a marketing plan and if they like it, they will publish it on Kindle for free! Not only will they launch and promote the book, expenses like cover, typeset and editing will also be borne by them. The application opened on April 10 and will close on April 20 so you have only two days left, hurry up!
They've got the beans
HBB is known for its youth appeal which they have built tirelessly through initiatives like The Great Indian Anthology, for which they are inviting people to submit poems and they will publish them, HBB Poetry Challenge where the winner won a cash prize of Rs 10,000 and so much more. They have close to two lakh followers on Facebook and 25.6k followers on Instagram.
The Online Pitch Fest is the first challenge of its kind that they have launched. Founder of HBB Chetan Soni informs us that this was going to be an offline event, "Where, upon selection, we would offer the contestant the publishing contract on the spot, but because of the lockdown, we decided to take it online," he says. The application currently only asks for your contact details and the status of your manuscript. "This is because we wanted to get in touch with them first and then explain to them our terms and conditions and make the point clear that we are going to publish it as an ebook because printing has been halted," says the founder.
When they used the same process of application in another initiative of called the Co-author project, where they got together two unknown writers who don't even know each other to write a book, it worked in bringing the publishing house and the author on the same page. So they want to follow the same process again.
Coming to the marketing plan that the aspiring author has to come up with, Chetan, who started HBB in 2014, reminds us that marketing a paperback is different from marketing an ebook. And again, marketing a book that falls under the genre of fiction is very different from marketing a non-fiction book. The point he is trying to make is, "The author should be aware of what he has written or is going to write. The plan doesn't even need to be elaborate or descriptive, it needs to be workable," he stresses. Well, that's not a big ask. A summary is the first step and then comes the marketing plan. It is the summary that needs to click with the good people at HBB. Because if the content is not good, no marketing plan can save it.
Content is king
Now HBB is aware that they might not be as big as Rupa Publications or Penguin Random House India, "We know our limitations," says Chetan and adds, "But the problem arises when the author starts comparing us to them. Which is why we want to make the terms and conditions clear with them in the first place." To date, they have 90 entries and they are definitely looking to score a century. "We are not a traditional publishing house, we are open to ideas. If we really like more than one idea, we might even publish two books. Only the content needs to be great," concludes Chetan reemphasising the fact that content is king.
