In the era of globalisation when the world is shrinking like never before, it is electronic commerce that has introduced new ease in business around the globe. E-commerce is basically regular business deals and deeds which are done via virtual interface, most commonly, internet. The concept is not older than a few decades but has caught everyone’s attention with the continuous and rapid technological advancements. Today, anyone with a laptop or smartphone and internet connection in it, can go for online business. E-commerce covers almost all kinds of goods and services and one of the hottest trend in this regard is the concept of E-Publishing.

Electronic or digital publishing is a modern technique of distribution of literary works and information with the help of electronic devices and formats sans papers. Such articles, research works and even fictional novels reach the readers through various channels, be it online bookstores, apps, blogs, online magazines and journals and many more.Both publishers and E-commerce companies have developed interest in coming together and building a space or marketplace where one could exploit the profits of working with the other. Publishers want their business to get online where all their works could be digitised and become geographically more accessible to readers whereas, E-commerce people want to widen their service and products options and earn more revenue with least input.

E-commerce generally plays the role of back-end support here. They provide segmented and sorted platform to the publishers to sell their books and articles. Most of the magazines and journals that go digital, offer periodic subscriptions to readers and other products. The renewal, marketing, payments and sales etc. are managed by the former.E-commerce companies mostly go for affiliate model where they link their site to that of the publisher’s site and a restricted revenue of 4-5% is given to publisher on each sale.

The advantage with the publisher here is that he does not have to create a customer base in the vast pool of online business. Although sometimes they enter into revenue-share with the retailer, sharing more profits and risk together.Another source of money inflow is advertisements in E-publications. With evolution of so many blogs and online journals, apart from buying and downloading of literary works, reading while surfing has become a trend. It is estimated that there is more income generation through ads than actual commerce in the field. Thus, publications that are a hit among the surfers are key target of the ad agencies.Merging of publishing and Electronic commerce has provided writers and authors with the option of self-publication of their works, avoiding rejections from the conventional publications and the hectic procedure to get it done. Not only this, money involved in E-publishing is much higher as compared to traditional ones. The biggest online merchant in this regard is Amazon. Amazon allows self-publication to new and pro writers with royalty returns as high as 70 percent.Despite so many merits,

E-publication is still way behind than conventional paper publication because there is a very limited section of people who find it a convenient way. Most of us remain largely unaware of literary works launched on the internet. Writers and authors too, are in the fear of plagiarism or theft of their hard work. Hence, E-publication can do great with E-commerce, provided technology and interests of people align with each-other.

Rakesh Sasidharan, a mechanical engineer by education, has been fuelling his creative penchant by expressing himself through the medium of writing and digital publishing. With close to a decade of freelance and corporate experience in various domains, he recently ventured to change his digital India dream into reality by starting Dawnbells, an online portal which not only sells eBooks and offers e-publishing services but also helps prospective authors find a platform to express themselves and make money at the same time. Visit – http://www.dawnbells.com/