The Hindu Business Line : `It's easy to venture out in networked world'

WHEN Ms Jamuna Rao set up Dronequill, a publishing house in September 2000, with an investment of less than Rs five lakh, she never expected that in less than two years, she would be able to bring out three titles and win a production award for the first title.

Ms Rao, who was an academic teaching economics in two colleges, until she thought of setting up a publishing house, finds that in today's technological world, it is easy to become an entrepreneur, as it involved very little investment. "When the economy is in a recession, entry is easy, but the survival depends on your skills,'' she says.

She found that it was possible to print a small print order of 500 books, which would help in minimising the risks. "In today's world, a one-room place is enough for all these operations. The manuscript from the authors come in floppies, then editing is on the computer. The layout and the cover can all be designed on the computer, which makes operations paperless,'' she says.

Dronequill prints its books at National Printers at Koramangala and has a small office for stocking the books at Jayanagar. "I found that you could save a lot of money from outsourcing. I even get editors to freelance for me. I send out four manuscripts to them to sift and select those for publishing,'' she adds.

Then came the difficult part of finding distributors for the books. Ms Rao found distributors were willing to try new publishers and take them on with even fewer titles. "I heard that they would need 15 titles to take a publisher on, but I had only three titles,'' Ms Rao said. On deciding to take on distribution in Bangalore, she looked for a distributor for the other regions.

"Now, I have six distributors at Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram,'' she adds.

Along with the search for distributors, work on editing the first title began.

It was a work of fiction called "A bride for Jaganatha,'' by Sisir Das. Then came a book on cricket by Rajan Bala. The third one in the pipeline is a non-fiction work by Siddartha, profiling creative rebels.

"I have approached a father and daughter scientist team from Indian Institute of Science to work on a book "Physics made easy,'' she adds.

Her best moment was when the first title went on to win a national award from the Federation of Indian Publishers, for 2001-2002, a certificate of merit for excellence in production, category paperback (English).

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