Sonam Tshering (name changed) has been running from pillar to post to get his short stories published. Many publishers have promised to get back to him but none has yet responded. Tshering lives in a remote area in the Himalayas and it is practically impossible for him to follow up with publishers personally. His emails go unanswered. Imagine his frustration.

Fortunately, for him and a lot of other aspiring writers, poets and illustrators, an Indian company, Fieldi (www.fieldi.com) has come up with a platform that lets you publish your own books and also interact with other authors and readers. In fact, it also allows you to read other books for free. Aware of the fact that Apple devices do not allow Flash, these e-books are rendered using Java too. So users can chose whether they want to use Flash or Java. Both render the books equally well on any browser.

Interested? Then complete the registration process. You will be sent an email or sms to activate your account. I registered at Fieldi and was waiting for the sms to arrive. It never did. This is because my number is registered in the National Do Not Call Registry. This prevents me from getting junk smses and calls from telemarketers. You can check whether your number is registered by going to http://ndncregistry.gov.in/ndncregistry/index.jsp?reqtrack= btynReqbKCbFSKnVLRHxeivHP. Then click on the flashing DND Registration check.

Anyway, I got the email with the activation code. You just have to click on the link given and your account will be activated.

Each author is allotted a profile page with placeholders for his or her photograph, biodata and a list of the other books written by him or her. The user is given a dashboard through which you can publicise your book; as well as facilities for interacting with others through social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Google Buzz and LinkedIn. Besides, the book will be available all over the world to any number of subscribers and readers simultaneously the moment it is published. Each author gets a niche space in the World Wide Web free of cost.

Fieldi has several unique facilities, not available on similar platforms. They include the publication of serial stories, chapter by chapter, publication of anthologies of stories, articles or poems, in parts, without any restriction on the interval between publishing the first and second or the second and third part. There is also an option to select the mode of reading, from left to right as in English (left-edge binding) or right to left as in Arabic (right-edge binding).

You can publish in any language you wish to. The actual process is very simple. First design your cover, write a foreword, and make a contents page followed by your story in Microsoft Word. Then turn them all into a pdf. Free software is available on the web to turn Word documents into the pdf format. If you have the Acrobat software from Abobe then you can do it directly from Word. The last step is to turn your pages into images with the .jpeg format. You can do that with Photoshop or any other image editing software.

Once that is done, start uploading them one by one, making sure that the page numbering is okay. If you make a mistake, there is an edit option to correct it. Remember, all your pages must be of the same size. There are guidelines on the site on how to make a book perfect.

Fieldi will also visit all universities, colleges and other centres of higher education in the country to help them publish the erudite volumes by teachers and students that have not reached the hands of the reading public to a lack of funds. The website is trying to integrate textbooks and guides for formal education, including higher education and technical education, for the benefit of students all over the world. Students can then access their books when they are away from home or school on any computer, iPad or even a smartphone.

The Fieldi website will be officially launched on June 5 to coincide with World Environment Day. The site believes its very presence will reduce the wastage of paper because people will publish digitally and our forests will be spared.

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