Building audience though social media Scroll through any writers' group and you will hear it sooner or later: "Build your following first. Nobody reads a book from an author with 200 followers." So authors delay their launch, chase reels, obsess over numbers , and quietly start believing that readership is a popularity contest they haven't qualified for yet. Let's bust that one. Why Everyone Believes It Because the loudest success stories seem to confirm it. An author with half a million...

You picture a book launch and here is what comes to mind: a five-star hotel ballroom, a film star cutting the ribbon, a press table, a hundred flashing cameras. So when your own book is ready, the thought quietly follows , that's not for someone like me. Let's bust that one. Why Everyone Believes It Because that's the only kind of launch that makes the news. The quiet, real ones, a room full of thirty readers, a bookstore/cafe corner, a warm evening of readings and questions, don't trend on...

You have written the book. You have read it, re-read it, cried a little at your own ending. And then someone, a well-meaning uncle, a writer friend, a random comment on a Facebook group, says it: "Are you self-publishing? Oh. Couldn't you find a real publisher?" And just like that, the doubt creeps in. Somewhere along the way, Indian readers and writers picked up the idea that self-publishing is the consolation prize, what you do when the "real" publishers say no. It's time to bust this one...