What an idea!

It's hard enough to get your book published anywhere in the world, but imagine how much harder it would be in Bhutan? Its population is less than seven lakh. If you wrote in a foreign language like English, where would you go?

Bhutan has next to no local publisher for English fiction and no branches of international publishers. Who would edit and proofread your manuscript, design a cover and market the book? And how would you reach out to readers?

The main cities only have a handful of bookstores.

The Writers Association of Bhutan (WAB), a collective of bloggers led by Ngawang Phuntsho and Passang Tshering, has found a rather novel way out of the impasse. "You can call it a form of crowd publishing," says Tshering, who writes one of Bhutan's most popular blogs PaSsuDiary. "We go through the manuscripts, decide which ones to publish, edit and design the cover. We then estimate the cost, divide it into shares of Nu5K/Nu10K and sell them to people. Then we go to press. When the books come, we divide them among the shareholders giving each 50 per cent bonus — so if you've contributed Nu10K, we give you Nu15K — not in money, but in the worth of books.

So the contributors also become marketers, who can sell it as they wish."

And not just booksellers invest in the shares, but ordinary people: teachers, bankers, civil servants... "I remember one of them worked in a bank, and went around the entire office leaving a copy on each desk," laughs Phuntsho, who found a Varanasi-based publisher for his book on Bhutanese folktales, but realised that many young writers had no idea how to go about it, became disheartened and stopped writing.

For a small operation, besides the duo, only two-three others are involved and they don't charge for their services, they just keep 100 books for a planned cafe and library. WAB has already published six books. Among them is Khakey by 11-year-old Yeshi Tsheyang Zam. Another is Chronicle of a Love Foretold, a bestseller that's already seen its second print run, written by 26-year-old physiotherapist, Monu Tamang. "The market here is very small.

Earlier, if a title sold 400-500 copies, it was considered a bestseller. But Chronicle...has sold out its first edition (2,000 copies), and printed another 1,500 copies," says Tshering.

Several copies of Tamang's book were displayed at the DSB stall at Mountain Echoes Literary Festival that concluded at the Bhutanese capital last weekend, along with several other recent books by Bhutanese authors – evidence of an upsurge in writing and publishing in the country.

"WAB is a wonderful platform for aspiring writers," says Lingchen Dorji, whose book Home Shangrila was launched at the festival. Dorji's story is quite typical of young Bhutanese writers – he identified and wrote to literary agents in India, and when nothing came of it, self-published on Amazon. That was in 2014, and while the book got him positive online reviews, sales weren't encouraging. Finally, realising that "the readers for Bhutanese books are in Bhutan only", Dorji decided to bring out physical copies of the book himself.

While Dorji didn't use the services of WAB, his experiences underscore the value of what it offers young Bhutanese writers. "Our target," says Tshering, "is to publish five books a year." Given how many writers have started beating a path to their door – Phuntsho gets three-four manuscripts a month – that doesn't seem too difficult to achieve.