Weekend brings crowds to Delhi Book Fair

The weekend brought the crowd back to the Delhi book fair, as people explored books on subjects ranging from religious to literature and fiction categories. The organisers were amazed by the interest of young people in books on religious and spiritual topics.

“We have seen a surprising turn of events. More than women and the elderly, we have seen youth flocking to the fair throughout the week especially in the section of Gita, Osho and Kabir books,” said Shakti Malik, organiser of the book fair.

M L Bhatia, editor of the National Book Trust said, “Books on Gandhi, Lohia, Swami Vivekanand, Bhagat Singh are in high demand. We had to bring another stock to meet visitors demand during the first few days.”

As for revenue, NBT said in a week they earned nearly Rs 25 lakh through book sales which is more than 20 per cent compared to last years’ overall revenue. “Our revenue is up by 22-25 per cent over last year’s,” said Priyanka Malhotra, CEO of Hindi Pocket Books.

On Friday, the Federation of Indian Publishers (FIP) awarded several publishers for excellence in book publishing in 13 different categories. The Oxford University Press received two first prizes in the textbooks category which includes college and reference books in English. Other categories included general, art, textbooks, children and paperbacks in English, Hindi and regional languages. A new category ‘Books by Digital Printing (POD)’ was added this year, but there were no nominations and winners for this category as FIP believes that Indian publishers have not explored the digital space yet.

However, towards the end of this week-long fair, Indian publishers said they are now ready to explore the e-publishing space. Since most publishers have been in the business for over 20 years, they are finding it difficult to accept this shift to the digital platform.

After considering the profit quotient of the online business model publishers like Diamond and Abhinav, the publications have decided to convert their hard copies into e-books soon.