Keeping the art of storytelling alive during a pandemic – How Notion Press helped writers connect with readers during a nationwide lockdown

It’s been a whirlwind of a last few weeks for us here at Notion Press. While the whole world was coming to grips with one of the deadliest pandemics we have ever seen, we had to act fast and shift our focus from what was nothing short of a phenomenal start to the new decade where we published more than 2,100 books in the first two months of 2020, to prioritize the safety of our personnel, customers, partners, and our community to tackle the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus (Covid-19). Our 180+ strong team members have been working  hard from home to ensure that there are no compromises in any performance or service delivery related issues for our author community and credit to them for pulling off a commendable job in the most challenging of times. 

We were well on track in the early part of last month to overtake our publishing numbers from February when the Corona Virus outbreak was declared a pandemic and nations all over the world had to take drastic measures as they locked down the country and imposed nationwide curfews for their citizens.

Maintaining our unwavering commitment to helping authors 

Amidst all the doubt, fear and uncertainty, our team with the immense support of our author community pulled through to stay on track and help over 1,250 first time writers realize their dream and ambition of publishing their book last month despite what was one of the most challenging situations we have ever encountered. Although these numbers on their own marked one of our most significant achievements to date, we knew that this was just the beginning.

As the whole nation was reeling under the impact of a pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, we wanted to do our bit to help spread positivity and inspiration amongst the people as they deal with the overwhelming chaos around them.

Launching #Writeyourheartout

We launched #Writeyourheartout – A campaign to help writers across the country find their inspiration to write and connect with readers through their stories, poetry and experiences and focus on the positives by distracting themselves from everything that was happening around them. The campaign was an instant hit amongst writers and readers alike as they looked for a release and an escape during these troubling times. So far we have received more than 2,100 submissions from writers across the country and more than 3,00,000 people have read, liked and shared these stories, poems and experiences on our platform. 

Launching Read Instantly

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could start reading a book you ordered before the copy is delivered to your doorstep?  We launched Read Instantly – An online reading platform, to help readers do just that. We built Read Instantly to enable readers who order a printed copy of any book on the Notion Press Store to start reading it online on our platform instantly. We also ensured a greater reading experience by letting readers engage with the author and other readers through comments across the book. Read instantly is in Beta and available for select titles right now on the web, coming soon to iOS and Android.

As the whole world continues to come to terms with this pandemic and learns to cope with its effects we know there is still plenty left to do from our end. For now, we can rest assured that we have taken a step in the right direction. 

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Sushant Satish

A massive football junkie and a travel enthusiast who gets easily inspired by new business ideas and spends his spare time thinking up various ideas of his own that can impact the world for the better, hoping to someday implement them all.

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