When Vaanathi Padipagam received an order for 2000 re-prints of one of their earlier titles with a different font type and size, they called their data entry people to try and recover a soft copy of their old book. That was when they realised that all 1200 pages of the book were available for free download without their knowledge.
Now, to help Tamil authors market and distribute their eBooks on mobile platforms, the Tamil Virtual University had tied up with private vendors. “If some revenue model is put in place, it will help reduce piracy and encourage more people to develop e-readers for Tamil books,” a professor from the university said.
Since the university has already translated several thousands of books to the electronic format, it is mainly the distribution that they are concerned about. For this, they have roped in DailyHunt, a Bengaluru-based startup. “Initially we are offering the 6000 books from the university for free through our mobile app. Customers will be able to download the books in the ePub format and read them offline on our e-reader,” said N. Ravanan, head of eBooks at DailyHunt.
“Although there is a huge demand for Tamil eBooks, there are no established distribution methods. We currently have a payment model that allows readers to pay through their phone bills, which encourages a large number of people to download books,” he said, adding that they had around 2.5 lakh downloads of Tamil books per month, with around 70,000 of them downloading paid books.
The app has books from a wide range of authors, from established authors like Jayamohan to newer writers.
According to Badri Seshadri, managing director, New Horizon Media, Tamil eBooks in various formats have been available for a long time.
It is only now that people are looking at methods for distribution.
‘Although there is a huge demand for Tamil eBooks, there are no established distribution methods’
