World Book Fair: Was it more books, less business?

There may have been a last-minute rush of visitors, but the 19th World Book Fair left many publishers complaining of poor sales and inadequate arrangements. Organisers, however, insist that the volume of international trade was substantially larger this year.

An unofficial estimate of the event held at the Pragati Maidan fairgrounds from Feb 1 to 8 said the number of footfalls touched nearly 30,000 on the last three days. No official numbers were made available to the media.

Bipan Chandra, chairman of the National Book Trust (NBT) which organised the fair, told IANS: "The fair has definitely grown bigger since last year, but it is difficult to analyse the new trends that have emerged.

"But I can vouch that children are reading much more than before and the spotlight this year was on popular science, books on the states of India and children's books."

The fair, with 2,400 stands, hosted 1,200 Indian and foreign publishers.

But several Indian publishers seemed unhappy.

"I am not very happy with the way the book fair was organised. The discipline was poor and the arrangements for publishers to display their books were inadequate," S.K. Jha, publisher of Daryaganj-based Serial Publications, told IANS.

"Recession has taken a toll on the sales and I could not even recover the Rs.42,000 I spent on renting the space. Business picked up over the last three days. People don't want to spend."

Sunil Sharma, the regional manager (business) of Palgrave Macmillan, one of the biggest publishers of educational books globally, said: "Business has not been good compared to 2008.

"First of all, we were not allotted space in the same hall with Cambridge and Sage, which isolated us from buyers. Moreover, the government has reduced grants for libraries, universities and colleges, which are our biggest buyers, resulting in loss of business," he said.

"But I think sale of books will pick in the coming fiscal in April when the 11th (Five-Year) Plan is drawn up," Sharma said.

Jaipur-based RBSA books also complained of poor institutional buying by libraries. "Cash transaction was low and we were not able to procure long-term contracts. This year, we could not even recover the rent,"a senior spokesperson said.

For buyers, budget was foremost on the agenda.

"I don't think the business environment was conducive to buying. The books on philosophy were costly and I had a tight purse," Vibhuti Kumar, a doctoral fellow in Delhi University, told IANS.

NBT officials, however, said business in language and Hindi books boomed, along with publications in English.

"The volume of international trade with 35 stalls from 15 countries and business delegations was substantially more than 2008. The bulk of visitors comprised children from not only Delhi and the National Capital Region but also places as far as Chandigarh, Karnal, Hapur and Amroha," Chandra said.

Nuzhat Hassan, the director of the fair, said given the limitations - like space crunch and tight resources - the fair had managed to create "new synergy with events, literary symposiums and interface woven around books".

"We are not in a position to cite statistics about the volume of trade. We act as the facilitator and provide a platform to buyers and sellers of books. But an Indian publisher told me that he had bagged an international order of $200,000. If that is the trend, then business must have been brisk and voluminous," Hassan told IANS.

(Madhusree Chatterjee can be contacted at madhu.c@ians.in)

Last updated on Feb 8^th, 2010 at 09:23 am IST--IANS