The publishing industry in India is counted among the top seven publishing nations in the world. With a market of over 10,000 crores, India ranks third after the US and UK in English language publishing.
With the coming of the Digital Age, the nature of the industry has changed. The advancement in technology and India's skilled manpower resources make the country a major outsourcing hub for print and pre-publishing services in the world be it print, design, or editorial. This sector has tremendous potential, both in the domestic as well as export markets.
But it also has several limitations like whenever an independent writer wants to publish a book; the publishers don't get back to them for feedback so the writer never knows what major publications are looking for.
Being a victim of this issue, Nikhil Sharda decided to tackle this problem by launching his own media publication company with the name 'EFiction India' which is a transparent way to deal with independent writers.
EFiction India is a platform where all independent writers from across the world can submit their blogs, short stories, poetry, and other forms of content.
It is a technology-driven company and it is a community that has more than 200 volunteers who read and vote on the content. After this, the content that receives the maximum votes gets published in the magazine.
They publish a monthly magazine on print as well as online and they are also present in e-reading formats like Kindle.
EFiction India also has a lot of independent filmmakers and music composers who convert a short story into films and poems into songs respectively. EFiction believes that writers are the assets of the company, so they focus on taking care of them.
Nikhil Sharda has a great passion for creating quality content. He completed his schooling at a boarding school in Mussoorie and then went to Kolkata to learn about filming technology. He also went to the UK for internships and also created many independent films.
After coming back to Kolkata he started working as a content manager in one of the magazines called 'communiqué'. Later he joined Wipro and they recommended him to Convergys where he worked as a network engineer.
All this time he was creating great content for many magazines and publications, some of them accepted his content but most of them never get back to him, therefore, he decided to start his transparent publications for independent writers like him which are known as EFiction India.
EFiction India has a total readership of over 1 lakh people and around 1000+ subscribers and most of them are from the UK, US, and Singapore.
Besides these, some libraries are subscribing to them like Mahatma Gandhiinternational Delhi University, Sarah Lawrence College in New York, University of California, and many more.
EFiction follows the best marketing strategy which is mouth to mouth publicity. As they have a network of 1000+ writers and all of them do marketing for them, if a writer has submitted any story or poem for the magazine and it has been published, the writer wants people to know that her/his work has been published then they promote it for them in their network.
"Good mouth publicity can result inlifelong subscriber of your product."
– Nikhil Sharda
One major difference that separates EFiction from other publishers is that even though they have experienced writers and financial aid, EFiction has a community that recommends it.
Another feature that attracts writers to them is that whenever they receive a story or a write-up which have quality issues and is not selected for publication, that article is sent to their E-workshop where one of their volunteers.
Editors work with the author of the article and edit the article in front of the writer and give feedback at the same time, then that article goes into the magazine of the next month.
Therefore, no article is ever rejected and it also encourages writers to come up with better write-ups. Most publishing houses are not providing feedback therefore; this gives an advantage to EFiction over others.
As EFiction is a community of writers and readers, therefore, every content is read before it gets published and feedback is given to the writers so they get to know what their strong points are and what they need to improve.
To delight their readers they also provide ads-free magazines. The writers also get credit as well as pay when their write-up or poem turns into a short film or a song.
Technology and innovation are the heart and pillar of EFictionIndia, the entire process is based on a series of algorithms, whenever a story comes a mail is sent to all the volunteers and they have to vote and comment.
Based on those votes and comments the article automatically gets into the format of the magazine and is later published.
There is no manual work except the commenting and the feedback from the writers and there is no designing as there is a fixed template in which the content and picture get placed automatically as per the information from the backend.
There were many complex situations during the initial days of fiction in India like it was not easy to find independent writers, filmmakers, and composers to do it for free.
"It was difficult to convince themthat we are doing it for something bigger than money"
– Nikhil Sharda
One challenge that they are facing now is to convert magazines into audiobooks for blind schools around the world as there is no financial support.
They have a set standard for the quality of the article which fiction keep on pushing and that quality is set by the reader themselves. EFiction focus on delighting its readers by giving them what they want to read in top quality.
"We always has a short bio of the author with their contentlike if a 10-year-old boy has written a short story, it will be shown like a 10years old, not like a 24 years old man has written that story, this helps thereader to understand the content better."
Nikhil Sharda
"I don't want awards I just want tobuild a community of great content."
– Nikhil Sharda
In the future, there will be a bigger community, writers' forums, reader forums, and automatically more subscribers.
"Wither it will be a profit-generatingcompany or not, but as a brand, EFiction India will grow."
– Nikhil Sharda
One vision that the CEO of EFiction, Nikhil Sharda has is to convert all magazines into audiobooks and distribute them to all the blind schools in the world for free. He also wants to enhance the quality of songs and stories that the industry is producing as EFiction is going to be a leading media house.
