Selling Your Book
in the VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS Book Shop

We Are a Book Shop

VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS runs an online Book Shop. Like a book shop in a town, it provides the setting in which any author or publisher can place their books for sale. The books in the Book Shop are published by their authors or by other publishers, not by VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS.

When a reader buys a book, the payment goes directly to the author or publisher through their own payment gateway — not to VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS.

VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS does not edit books and does not decide what authors write. As any book shop owner may, it checks books placed for sale for anything likely to cause a complaint or to be illegal, and it keeps the right to remove any book from sale (see sections 10 and 15).

Who Can Join

The Book Shop is open to authors and publishers living in India, and in the developed nations where PayPal can receive payments. At registration you choose your country from the list of countries currently supported. Authors in other countries cannot join at present.

At present, registration is open to authors in India only. Registration for authors in the other supported countries opens once our identity check for them is ready; until then no fee is taken from them.

Your book may be in any language (see section 08), but all correspondence between you and VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS is in English, and you must be proficient in English.

Fees and Prices at a Glance

Registering and Your Seller Details

To register, you will be asked for:

• Your full legal name
• Your email address, verified by a one-time code sent to it
• Your mobile number — for authors in India, verified by a one-time code sent by SMS
• Your country
• Your confirmation that you are proficient in English
• A pen name, if you use one (see section 09)
• An optional short author biography
• Your seller details, explained below

The law on online shops in India requires the Book Shop to show who is selling each book. Each book's page in the Book Shop therefore shows a Seller details box with:

• The seller's name
• A postal address
• A contact phone number
• Your verified email address

VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS does not ask for, or keep, copies of identity documents. Identity and bank checks for receiving money are carried out by your payment provider (see section 11).

Making Your Book in the Book Builder

Every book in the Book Shop is made in the online Book Builder, which works in any modern browser on a computer or phone. Files such as Word documents or PDFs are not uploaded; you type or paste your text into the Book Builder, and it produces the finished webpage edition.

In the Book Builder you enter:

• Book details — title, short description, category, language, price, and optional dedication and edition text
• Chapters — add, rename, reorder and delete chapters; each chapter has headings, paragraphs, bold and italic text, lists, pictures, footnotes, endnotes and tooltips
• Front cover — see section 07

Preview. At any time you can see your book exactly as buyers will see it, with a switch between computer and phone size. The preview has the same reading bar as the finished book: Top, Chapters, My books, and A− / A+ to change the text size.

You may keep up to twenty unfinished books at a time.

Notes, Tooltips and Pictures

• Footnotes and endnotes — place the cursor where the note mark should go and click + Footnote or + Endnote. The number is added automatically and kept in order, and a box opens for the note text. Note numbers typed by hand, or pasted from another document, stay as plain text; remove them and add the note again with the button.
• Tooltips — select a word or short phrase within one paragraph and click + Tooltip. A box opens for the explanation, which readers see when they tap or point to the word. A tooltip cannot be placed across a line break, a picture or a caption.
• A panel under each chapter lists all its notes and tooltips, with Edit and Delete. Clicking a note mark or tooltip word in the text opens the same box.
• Pictures — JPG, PNG, GIF or WebP, with an optional caption. Pictures are kept private until your book is placed in the Book Shop.

Cover, Free Sample and Bar Colour

Front cover (required). You have two choices:

• Upload your own cover — JPG, PNG or WebP, upright (taller than wide), at least 600 × 900 pixels; 1600 × 2560 pixels is best.
• Make an automatic cover — choose a design and colour, and the Book Builder places your title and pen name on it. Your first ten automatic covers are free; after that, each further set of ten costs Rs. 300 + GST (USD 3 + GST abroad).

Every cover is stored and shown as a WebP picture, at most 1600 pixels wide, and appears first in your book and on its page in the Book Shop. VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS does not do cover design work by hand. You are responsible for having the right to use every picture on your cover and in your book.

Free sample chapter. You choose one chapter that anyone may read free before buying. The first chapter is chosen to begin with; you may pick another, or choose to offer no free sample.

Reading bar colour. Choose the colour of your book's reading bar from eight colours. The buttons on the bar are always white with black text, so they stay easy to read.

Languages

You may publish in any language written from left to right that the Book Builder can display — for example English, French, German, Spanish, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi or Odia. Right-to-left scripts such as Urdu and Arabic may be added later. Whatever the language of your book, you must be proficient in English, as all correspondence is in English.

Your text is published exactly as you write it. VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS does not correct spelling, grammar or script in authors' books.

Your Name and Email on the Book

Only your pen name, if you use one, appears in your book — on the title page and in the copyright line. VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS is not named as publisher.

The copyright page of every book also shows your verified email address. This is compulsory. It is the email address of your author account, verified by a one-time code, and it is updated in your book automatically if you change and re-verify it. Check this inbox regularly: messages and complaints about your book are sent there (see section 15).

Submitting: Checks, Fee and Declaration

When your book is ready, open the Submit step. The Book Builder first runs checks that confirm:

• The book details are complete, including the English title and description where needed
• A front cover has been added
• Every chapter has text
• Every footnote, endnote and tooltip has its text
• Your country is supported, and your seller and payment details are complete

Once these checks pass, you pay the one-time setup fee (section 03) and confirm the declaration below. The declaration is kept in VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS' records with the date and time; it is not printed in the book.

The Book Shop's own check. Before your book is placed in the Book Shop, it goes through an automated check for possible copyright infringement, defamation, illegal content and other matters likely to cause a complaint. This check protects the Book Shop. It is not editing, approval or a statement that your book is free of problems, and you remain solely responsible for your book. If the check finds a possible problem, you will be told and may correct it.

Receiving Payments from Buyers

Buyers pay you directly, through your own payment gateway. The money from each sale goes to your account, not to VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS. You need a working payment account before your book can be placed in the Book Shop.

• Authors in India — through Cashfree Payments. You open (or link) your own Cashfree account, and Cashfree carries out its own identity and bank checks. VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS will guide you through the steps when you register.
• Authors abroad — through PayPal. You give only the email address (or merchant ID) of your PayPal business account. Buyers' payments go straight into your PayPal account.

Any payment details you give VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS are used only to create buyers' payments and to confirm them — never to refund or withdraw money from your account.

The Book Shop's Share (30%) and Statements

For each copy sold, the Book Shop's share is 30% of the sale price excluding tax. Because buyers pay you directly, you send this share to VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS, and you add 18% GST on the share to the amount you send.

The sales record. Every sale of your book is recorded in the Book Shop's sales system, and you can see it at any time on the Sales and statements page of your author account (dates are shown in India time).

Monthly statements. On the first day of each month, VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS issues a statement for the previous month showing the amount due, with the GST shown separately. Where your payment provider allows it, you will be asked to set up an automatic payment, so that the amount due is paid from your account without any action on your part. If the total due is less than Rs. 100 (USD 3 for authors outside India), it is carried forward to the next month's statement. Statements are paid from the Sales and statements page, through Cashfree in India or PayPal abroad.

Tax on your sales. As the seller, you are responsible for any GST or sales tax on your book sales, and for declaring your income and paying your own taxes.

Your Responsibility as Publisher

As the publisher of your book, you alone are legally responsible for everything in it — the text, the pictures, the cover, the title and the description. You confirm that:

• The book is your own work, or you hold the rights to publish it
• It does not copy anyone else's work without permission
• It does not defame anyone or break any law
• You will indemnify VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS against any claim arising from your book

Prohibited Content

Books containing any of the following must not be placed in the Book Shop:

• Content that is illegal under the laws of India, or of the country where you live
• Content that incites violence, hatred or discrimination against any person or group
• Sexually explicit content, or content that endangers or sexualises minors in any way
• Content that defames, harasses or invades the privacy of any individual
• Content that promotes enmity between groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community, or that deliberately or maliciously outrages religious feelings
• Content that infringes the copyright or other intellectual property rights of anyone else
• Bare public domain texts without original work of your own

Placing prohibited content in the Book Shop may lead to immediate removal of the book, closure of your author account and, where required, referral to the authorities. Fees are not refunded in such cases.

Messages, Complaints and Removal

Complaints go to the author or publisher. Each book's page in the Book Shop has a Write to the author form. Anyone can use it to send a message or a complaint straight to your verified email address, after verifying their own email address with a one-time code. VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS keeps a copy of every complaint sent this way.

Complaints about unlawful content may also be sent to the Grievance Officer of VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS. On receiving such a complaint with sufficient detail, VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS may remove the book from sale first and look into the matter afterwards. You will be told by email and given the chance to respond.

How Books Are Found in the Book Shop

VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS does not promote books by its own choice. Every book is treated alike:

• New books, category pages, search and your own author page list books automatically
• "Most bought" is worked out from actual sales only
• An occasional "New in the Book Shop" message may list every new book equally, without comment

You are given tools to promote your own book: a link to share, a QR code, a share picture and an embed button.

Your book's pages do not link to the Book Shop or to other authors' books. The only book links on them are to your own books, through the My books button. The foot of each book page also carries one small Sell your books link, which leads to this guide for other authors; it does not lead to any other book.

Reading, Protection and Keeping Your Own Copy

Buyers read your book online after paying and logging in. The reading page has the same bar as your preview — Top, Chapters, My books (your other books in the Book Shop) and A− / A+ — and reopens where the reader stopped. The free sample chapter can be read without buying.

The book is never served as a downloadable file. Saving, viewing the page source, developer tools and the right-click menu are blocked on the reading pages.

Optional Formatting Service

If you prefer not to build the book yourself, VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS staff can enter and arrange your text in the Book Builder for you, as a separate paid service. The fee starts at Rs. 4,000 + GST and is quoted per book before any work begins; books with many tables, notes or questions may cost more. The service has its own order and invoice and is separate from the setup fee.

Editing and Withdrawing Your Book

You can edit your book in the Book Builder whenever you wish, even after it is placed in the Book Shop. Each set of changes you send in together counts as one edit.

• First three weeks after your book is placed in the Book Shop: edits are free.
• After three weeks: each set of edits costs Rs. 200 + GST (USD 2.50 + GST abroad).

Every edit goes through the Book Shop's automated check (section 10) before it replaces the version on sale. An edited version may take effect at once, or may take up to five days. Until then, the earlier version stays on sale.

You may withdraw your book from sale at any time through your author dashboard. Buyers who have already bought it keep their access. Any amount already due to the Book Shop must still be paid.

Contact

For any question about the Book Shop, your statements or this guide, and for the Grievance Officer, write to VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS at admn@victoriainstitutions.com. Correspondence is in English.

This guide explains how the Book Shop works. The author terms of service, which you accept at registration, are the binding agreement and take precedence if the two differ.