Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, book critic, founder of Desi Books, and creative writing instructor at Writing Workshops Dallas. Her award-winning debut story collection, Each of Us Killers: Stories, and her literary translation, Ratno Dholi: Dhumketu’s Best Short Stories, were both published in 2020. Her writing has appeared in various venues including NPR, The Washington Post, BBC Culture, The Atlantic, Publishers Weekly, Dallas Morning News, Literary Hub, Poets & Writers, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Star Tribune, and more. Having lived and worked her way around India, England, Germany, Scotland, and various parts of the US, she now lives in a suburb of Dallas, Texas.

Can you tell our readers about your background?

I worked in the corporate world for decades as an engineer, a marketeer, and even a financial advisor. In 2012, my fortieth year, I gave up a stable and well-paying executive position in Silicon Valley to focus on my writing full-time. I studied the art and the craft through writing workshops and just sent my writing out there to various publications.

Since then, I’ve had 100+ articles and essays and two well-received books published. I also teach writing workshops at Writing Workshops Dallas, which is not only intellectually stimulating and rewarding but also helps me continue honing my own writing craft. Having grown up speaking, writing in, and studying three Indian languages and then German while at university, I’m also a literary translator and have my second translation out in 2022 with two more in the works for 2023. As writers today, we need this kind of “portfolio career.” Only the top 1% of writers make enough from their books to write them full-time. The rest of us need other sources of income. That said, I also believe that this multidisciplinary approach makes me a better writer overall.

What inspired you to start your business?

The road to publication, for a middle-aged immigrant woman of color like me, was a winding, difficult one. Especially so because I didn’t have the traditional literary pedigree or networks. I realized I needed to do something with my skills and expertise to help other writers of South Asian origin like me. Too often, we’re reduced to the one or two kinds of stories that publishing gatekeepers think sell the best or represent our entire communities. Mostly, though, these stories conform to and confirm certain tired stereotypes and tropes and negate the immense diversity and range of works that we’re capable of. I wanted to counter all of that. So I sat down and made a Venn diagram of my personal skills, experiences, and interests from both my tech business career and my writing career. It helped me understand what I had to offer to the world and to my community of writers and readers.

That’s how and why I founded Desi Books: a global multimedia forum that showcases South Asian literature and connects readers and writers through conversation and community. Our goal is two-fold: 1/ to help desi writers find their readers because traditional, mainstream media chases a few at the expense of many; 2/ to celebrate the plenitude and diversity of South Asian literature through conversation and community.

Where is your business based?

Desi Books is entirely online. However, I run it out of Dallas, Texas, where I live. Eventually, when it is feasible, I would like to host in-person literary events. But, for the most part, as the Desi Books audience is global and virtual, the online approach has been working great and we’ve been able to scale up and sustain our offerings virtually.

My husband manages all the behind-the-scenes administration work and I handle the content production and distribution with help from paid freelancers and contractors.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

Desi Books began in April 2020 as a modest, pandemic-driven podcast, where I interviewed writers of South Asian origin about their latest books. Soon, we saw that different kinds of books require different approaches to spotlight them. So we added text interviews, virtual readings, and more. We now have ten different channels, including a weekly newsletter that goes out to hundreds of subscribers, to showcase South Asian books and writers from all over the world.

We also ensured social media presence on all three platforms although we focused on Twitter the most because that’s where we’ve been able to connect most with other writers so far.

After about a year of doing the above, we’d built a small audience and could sustain the value we provided to them. Then, we registered Desi Books as an LLC. We created plans to make the venture self-funding and then revenue-generating. Our goal right now is not to make this a cash cow but to ensure we can grow it and pay freelancers and editors well enough. 

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?

For sure, this has been social media, given the current virtual pandemic-driven reality.

We’ve also had some success collaborating with other like-minded folks and organizations in the literary ecosystem. We hope to do more of this because it also helps us build our networks and our community.

What we’ve found is that it’s not about the number of followers on any particular social media platform but about meaningful engagement with them. Social media is great for creating awareness. But, for meaningful engagement, it’s critical to create value first. 

What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

We’re still a bootstrapped venture so we’ve taken things slowly. Both of us have other jobs too. Our biggest challenge has been dedicating time and money to Desi Books. Now that we’ve got a clear path planned for the next couple of years, we will be stepping things up.

Another early challenge was a rookie one: saying yes to everything and everyone. Then, we’d find ourselves over-committed or not feeling as enthusiastic about a particular feature as we would have liked.

The third biggest challenge has been getting established writers of South Asian origin to openly support us. We’re hoping that the tide will turn soon enough because we believe that a rising tide will lift all boats, including theirs.

That said, there are certain business tenets from my former business life in Silicon Valley that have stayed with me and inform most of what we do:

— Build credibility and community first and opportunities for monetization will come eventually.

— The most important assets are audience trust and loyalty.

— Organic growth of a niche audience is more important than rapid growth of a mass audience.

— Playing the long game means having not just a single backup or pivot plan but several.

— Always design and execute for sustainability and scalability.

How do you stay focused? 

Having a detailed, specific 12-month plan helps us stay focused. It’s easy to get excited about new ideas and possibilities. But we always gauge every new thing against our existing plan to see if we can or should take it on. We’re not being rigid or inflexible because the world itself is in such a fluid state. And, sometimes, opportunities or challenges we hadn’t foreseen do show up. So we’re all for course correction as needed. But, for the most part, we check against our existing business plan to stay on track.

On a day-to-day basis, staying focused is about sticking to our publication schedule and not getting side-tracked by the latest literary drama or hype. At least once a month, we’ll have a check against our key business metrics to see if we’re making headway. And this is a fuzzy one but so important, especially in the early days of a startup: we celebrate every little win and every milestone achieved to keep ourselves motivated.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition? 

I don’t think we have competition, really. Anyone else who is doing what we’re doing—uplifting South Asian literature—is an ally, not a competitor. And we all bring our own personal sensibilities and preferences to who or what we choose to uplift as well. I would be thrilled to see more ventures like Desi Books out there, truly. It gives the writers and their publicists more choices of venues to spotlight their books. As it is right now, books coverage in the media—whether it’s mainstream or niche-focused like ours—continues to shrink at an alarming rate.

Our bigger competition is not media ventures like ours that cover South Asian literature but other media forms like movies, TV, social media, etc. This is why we’ve created a multimedia forum to appeal to folks who like to read, listen, or watch their favorite books being spotlighted and showcased.

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business? 

Every small business will say it’s “word of mouth.” Certainly, that’s been true for us as well. However, beyond “word of mouth”, it’s also “word of honor.” When you’re a small venture like ours, your word is your brand and vice versa. This isn’t just about all the talk you’re trying to generate or contribute to via social and news media. This means always doing your homework before opening your mouth or sending that email or post or tweet, always being professional and prompt with responses, working with consistent principles and integrity, and admitting and learning from mistakes.

Right now, my name is often used synonymously with Desi Books. We’re fully aware of the responsibility this kind of brand recognition entails and we don’t take it lightly. Honor, principles, integrity, and professionalism—these aren’t simply buzzwords or biz-speak for us. They inform everything we say, write, put out there into the world. 

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

I’ll give you a two-fer, if that’s okay.

The number one thing I’d say to anyone looking to start a new business is to take some time to fully understand their own intentions. Then, let that inform every step, every word, every plan. For me, the question that kicked me into action was: how do I want to measure my life eventually? With my writing accomplishments, yes. But I also want to do work that has a larger impact within the literary community that I’m a part of.

The second thing comes from a book I read a decade ago called The Startup of You by Reid Hoffman (the founder of Linkedin) and Ben Casnocha. It’s a slim book you could read in an afternoon. I took almost twenty-five pages of notes from it. There's a lot of tech-biz speak throughout so it won't appeal to those who dislike such language. My biggest takeaway—or the immensely liberating permission I got from it—came from its "Plan ABZ" approach. First, the book describes, with loads of examples, how to create an actionable, detailed plan for your life's main goal as if you're a startup yourself. This is your Plan A: the quickest path to your goal, given your specific circumstances. After that, you should also create a detailed, actionable Plan B: a viable and feasible pivot from Plan A (if or when that looks difficult/impossible to achieve) that still gets you to the same goal but along a different, possibly longer, route. Every time you update/change Plan A, you should update/change Plan B too. Where this book differs from most other such books is that it also recommends a Plan Z. That's your "all hands to deck; lifeboats out; everything and the kitchen sink; no turning back" plan to get to your goal. And here's the important thing. Plan Z should also be as thoroughly planned as Plans A and B. Meaning, you must have a clear, tangible set of steps for achieving Plan Z, should you need to abandon both Plans A & B and deploy Z.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

My favorite app is JioSaavn because I get to listen to all my favorite Bollywood music. It gets a lot of play in our house. Mostly, it’s the older songs and rhythms that we grew up with in India.

My favorite blog isn’t really a blog but it helps me organize all my online reading so it’s like an uber-blog: Feedly. I save the feeds of my favorite media venues and check in several times a week to read through them. 

Picking a single favorite book is impossible for a lifelong reader like me. How about a favorite writer instead? He was also my mother’s favorite writer: Dhumketu, who’s known as the pioneer of the short story form in the Gujarati language. The Gujarati Chekhov, if you will. I’ve translated a selection of his stories and hope to do a novel or two down the road. 

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

My favorite business resource or tool of all-time is Evernote. It’s my single repository for all my plans and notes, random or otherwise. I’ve always used it for my writing projects, to-do lists, and more. I’ve created my own systems of organization over time because the tool isn’t designed to do what I do with it. But that, in itself, gives me a sense of satisfaction too.

Who is your business role model? Why?

I can’t think of a specific person in the business world whom I look up to as a role model. In the literary world, my role model is Toni Morrison because she did so much to uplift her community of Black women writers at a time when they were not getting the attention they deserved. In the late 1960s, she became the first Black woman editor at a senior level at Random House in their fiction department. And, alongside her own amazing books, she brought many others into the world. I teach fiction-writing using Morrison’s books but they are the sum total of a life lived in a certain manner as well and that’s much harder to teach anyone.

I don’t think I want to re-enter the corporate world because big publishers now are all corporations. But Morrison’s convictions, actions, and impact are all testimony to the fact that one person can make enough of a difference in a single lifetime. 

How do you balance work and life? 

I used to believe there’s no such thing as “work-life balance” and that the ideal existence is one where your work and your personal life are all one happily-merged reality. The older I get, though, the more I value a certain amount of time away from my desk. Things need breathing room, time to percolate and take root and germinate. This, I’ve found, is true of anything we undertake seriously enough that we dedicate hours of a given day to it. We have to switch gears and engage our cognitive energies elsewhere from time to time. The old adage of “a change is as good as a rest” isn’t just a grandmotherly saying.

What’s your favorite way to decompress?

Exercise. Cook. Walk. Watch a movie. Anything that doesn’t require me to have to use the same brain muscles I’m using when I’m writing or working on the business.

What do you have planned for the next six months? 

I have a book due out in May 2022 and another manuscript due by the end of 2022. So I’ll be working on those. I’m also teaching a few writing workshops throughout 2022. And we have my ongoing roster of books to showcase at Desi Books. So, basically, more of what we did in 2021 but scaled up a bit.

How can our readers connect with you?

Website: https://desibooks.co

Contact: https://desibooks.co/contact/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/desibooks

Instagram: https://instagram.com/desi.books

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/desibooksfb

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHcF-Vr1HDg7yHnucMmD6tA