Tales of a fair, come-back & agassi ace

The World Book Fair in Delhi, which concluded on Feb 6, is gaining an immense stature with business worth crores being transacted. There were many orders pouring in for Indian religious texts, mostly from African countries. It is a fair devoted mostly to business and authors do not take centre-stage here.

 Though Chetan Bhagat visited the Rupa stall (total sales of all his books touched 3.5 million, according to Rupa’s R K Mehra) there were not many launches or signing sessions. The reason is the masses cannot distinguish an author from a salesman and many authors have sat in stalls for hours hoping that someone will ask for an autograph.

That could be the reason why none of the authors who were at the Jaipur festival and washed ashore in the capital, stopped by. The Penguin stall did phenomenally well with sales of over five lakh on the first Sunday itself. But the Penguin strategy of countering the Chetan Bhagat phenomenon with a new imprint called Metro Reads does not seem to have taken off. In the long time I spent at the stall talking to some of the Penguin editors, I didn’t see anyone showing any interest in those stories of, cheap romance, urban love, longing and lust.

Full report here Express Buzz

Mills and Boon answer call of India's new middle class for English novels

Publishers predict India will become the world's biggest market for books in the English language within a decade

In among the slightly decrepit halls and the rubbish strewn grass of New Delhi's Pragati Maidan conference halls is a stand decked in pink and powder blue.Beneath the posters for Ruthless Magnate, Convenient Wife, and Accidentally Expecting, Manish Singh, Mills & Boon's country manager for India, is doing brisk business.

The popular romantic novels were launched in India exactly two years ago and doubled their sales in the past year. "We are looking to expand still further in 2010," Singh says.The publisher, Harlequin Mills & Boon, is far from the only beneficiary of a boom in book sales that is sweeping India. Dan Brown's sequel to The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol, has already sold 100,000 in hardback alone.

Aravind Adiga's Man Booker winner The White Tiger has sold more than 200,000 copies since its publication in 2008. Driving the demand is the country's continuing economic boom – 6.7% growth in 2009 despite the global crisis – and the tastes of the new Indian middle class.

"It is a forward looking generation," said Singh. "The low hanging fruit for us is the single working woman who has money in her hands, the liberty to read, no responsibilities yet, no husband, children and so on."

Full report here Guardian

A fair opportunity

One of my fondest memories of the Kolkata Book Fair will be that of meeting Tintin. I was a kid, and it was unbelievable to shake hands with Hergé’s creation, reporter Tintin, who stood in front of a book stall at the fair sometime in the early 1980s. I didn’t realise then that it was a fine piece of acting by some talented actor. The memories came back while cheking the news about the recent 34th International Kolkata Book Fair and the 19th New Delhi World Book Fair. So I ventured to find out the views on and memories of book fairs from others who are deep into books.

‘With so many book stores in the city, why would you need a book fair?’ I naively ask Kolkata-based poet Subodh Sarkar. “It’s only at the book fair that we writers and poets get to interact with our readers directly. That’s not possible in some book shop,” he says. For him, the Kolkata Book Fair, which is “growing in vigour”, is the “most important” event in the city’s calendar.

Full report here  Sakaal

Kogan Page launches India arm

Kogan Page UK has launched in India, in partnership with local house Viva Book Group, and is planning to build an editorial team to "an Indian, Asian and international author base".

Helen Kogan, managing director of the business publisher, announced the creation of Kogan Page India at the World Book Fair, held in New Delhi earlier this month.She said the new firm would be "looking to consolidate the strong Kogan Page brand in India", and was planning "structured growth" over the next three years.

She added: "Kogan Page India is looking to . . . dedicate time, resource and energy in this world-leading market, uncover authorial talent in the sub-continent and forge business and publishing relationships with institutions in India and beyond . . . Our intention is to actively seek out more future international, Indian and Asian authors.

Full report here Bookseller

Hydra tales

Having spent three days at the just-concluded 19th Delhi World Book Fair, I’m ready to speculate a little about the books industry.

To start with, what most of us think of as a “book” is not what the books industry makes most of. Story, narrative, fiction, especially the stuff that wins all the famous awards, makes up a small share of the titles published every year. Vastly larger numbers of educational, business-and-management, and science-technology-medicine (STM) books are made, even if they remain invisible on pages like this one.

Trade, or the publisher-to-publisher business of books, played a larger role at this book fair than before — in India, at least. And much of this trade happened in the areas listed above, not in fiction.

Full report here Business Standard

Books for V-Day?

Everyone loves a good love story. With Valentine's Day less than a week away, the world of fine print is once again waking up to good old romance.

"So what can this bond be called which does not abide by the rules - which does not care for political correctness, which just flourishes on its own strength of love, compassion, companionship and belonging. Romance?" writes Medha Gujral Jalota, the wife of bhajan king Anup Jalota, in an anthology of 101 short tales, Chicken Soup for the Indian Romantic Soul.

The book, released as Valentine's Day special at the World Book Fair, is a compilation of voices from across the country that offers a peek into real life stories soulmates. Recalling the day Anup Jalota proposed to her, Medha says as he went down on his knees, there was a loud clap of thunder. The oppressive heat gave way to a flash of lightning and slashing rainfall. "See", he said, "even the gods approve and are giving their blessing". They married in 1995 after living with him for a year. The book has been published by Tranquebar Press & Westland Ltd ahead of Valentine's Day Feb 14. The short stories are recapitulations - mostly walks down the memory lanes that describe chance meetings culminating into lasting bonds, old loves, sacrifice, romantic omens and first crushes. We scheduled the release of the book so that it would be at the bookstores just before Valentine's Day, but it is a title that we think will do well all the year round," Deepthi Talwar, senior commissioning editor of Tranquebar Press-Westland Ltd, told IANS.

The popularity of romances as a literary genre and as a business has been fuelled by the entry of Mills & Boons in the Indian market, Talwar said.

Business for Mills & Boon India has doubled by 50 percent in 2009 compared to 2008."We are growing by 10 percent every quarter," said Manish Singh, the country manager (sales) of Harlequin Mills & Boon India, which prints and distributes M&B titles in the country. Priced at Rs.125, the books target women - mostly mothers, housewives and working woman between 30 and 35 - who live within the framework of families.

Three new titles by Penguin Books-India add variety to the cache of popular romantic literature.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Bipan Chandra gives lessons on history books

The next edition of the World Book Fair will have a special section on history, eminent historian and chairman of the National Book Trust (NBT) Bipan Chandra has said. The scholar also has clear suggestions on the type of history children should be exposed to.

“I want to devote a separate section to historical books for children aged between 7 and 10,” the chairman of the NBT, which organised the weeklong 19th World Book Fair that ended Sunday, told IANS. Chandra thinks children should read two kinds of history and he suggests a few models.

“Children should first learn about historical personages like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Akbar and Ashoka. And they should also know about the socio-cultural evolution of India. As a boy, I was bred on writer Shravan Kumar’s books. Why should we not publish them again? But the books must be written in a way that every child enjoys reading them. No child would like a history book that cannot be enjoyed,” Chandra said.

A Tale of Two Book Fairs

Even if medical books have never been part of your pleasure reads, the stall for Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers at the World Book Fair in New Delhi will make you pause. Are you back at the Auto Expo held last month? In design and quality of the stall — spacious, well-lit, proper signs, couches and chairs for the weary legs, background music, even a designer conference room — it is a far cry from the days of steel racks and tables provided by the organisers, National Book Trust (NBT) and Indian Trade Promotion Council (ITPO). The NBT stall still has them, but a look at the stall for publishers such as Rupa, Hachette, Penguin, or even niche publishers such as LexisNexis Butterworth or Osho reveal the extent to which the publishers are going to lure the traipsing customer. At Rs 42,500 a stall — and most of the larger ones take multiple ones, Hachette for example has taken 20 — this is quite an expense to be recovered in a nine-day fair.

Cut to the Kolkata Book Fair, now in its 34th year, and the contrast is telling. Barring a few of the 600-odd stalls at the new venue since last year, the cramped Milon Mela grounds, there’s been no attempt to dress it up. The fair was thrown open on January 27 when many of the stalls hadn’t even finished laying out the books and power supply was intermittent, leading to a blackout on January 30 when thousands of book-lovers were inside the premises. There was no back-up, no generator or emergency lights, no exigency plan in place in case of a stampede

Full report here Financial Express

19th World Book Fair concludes

The 19th World Book Fair, in which about 1,200 Indian and foreign publishers and exhibitors, concluded today.

The nine day-long book fair, which was inaugurated by Human Resource Development Minister on January 30, saw enthusiastic response from the book lovers in the last few days, reports PTI.

This year the theme of the book fair was 'Reading our Commonwealth: An International Rights Exhibition of Books on Sports' on the occasion of XIX Commonwealth Games 2010. Nearly 850 titles published in 13 Indian languages by around 80 publishers across the country on different genres of sports were exhibited at the theme pavilion. The theme pavilion was an effort to explore Indian sporting traditions, and the contributions of various sports personalities and Indian publications on sports, said an organiser.

A special exhibition of books on and by Jawaharlal Nehru was also held in this year's fair.

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Pragati hits, Milon misses

Mamata Banerjee’s dream of converting Milon Mela into a Pragati Maidan might not come true anytime soon, but the agency responsible for the Bypass site would do well to take a leaf out of its national counterpart that maintains Delhi’s permanent fairground.

India Trade Promotion Organisation (ITPO) officials said the process of booking space for stalls at Delhi’s Pragati Maidan required all participants to mention “micro details” of their requirements, including power consumption, much ahead of the fair.

“This ensures that there is no communication gap or misunderstanding at any point,” said Jayanta Sengupta, the marketing manager of ITPO. “The system is not unique to Pragati Maidan. We follow this wherever we let out a space for fairs, including in metros such as Chennai."
 
Full report here Telegraph

Fair is foul

 Book fairs happen, but organisational ineptitude and official apathy are failing both the industry and consumers, reports Business Standard.

It’s book fair season. Tomorrow is the last day of the 19th biennial Delhi World Book Fair (WBF) and also the 34th International Kolkata Book Fair. International fairs in Bologna, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Jerusalem, London, Paris, St Petersburg, Taipei, and so on are in progress, have just finished or will soon begin.

There are two kinds of book fairs, as publisher S K Ghai explained at a WBF event on Tuesday: “totally trade” fairs like London, Frankfurt and Tokyo, where people in the industry meet and do business, and “selling fairs”, where books are sold to the public. At Indian book fairs sales dominate trade by far.

Full report here Business Standard

Sports books not in demand at the World Book Fair

With Commonwealth Games round the corner, sports may be theme of the ongoing World Book Fair here but there seems to be very few takers of such literary works, reports PTI.


At the biennial event, which draws to a close this Sunday, book sellers rued that 2010 CWG has hardly made any difference in sales of sports books.
"Games or no games, our sales of books remains the same. There is no extraordinary surge in sales due to the Commonwealth Games. We have rather received a good response in Frankfurt and Lahore Book Fair," Vivek Thani of 'Khel Sahitya Kendra' told PTI.

Though the theme of this edition's event is 'Reading our Commonwealth: An International Rights Exhibition of Books on Sports', hardly any stall have mentioned about the October 3-14 mega-event except for the pocket book series seen at the entrance of Diamond publishers

Indian authors sell too at WBF

Indian authors are selling at the World Book Fair, reports the Times of India today. Why wouldn't they, you may ask, but ayways, here's the report:

India seems to be the  flavour of the month not only at the Grammys but also at the 19th World Book Fair being held at Pragati Maidan. Even as fair enthusiasts thronged the stalls on Wednesday looking for bargain sales, one genre that managed to hold its own against established foreign authors was that of Indian writers. From known names to fresh off the press chick-lit series, desi authors seemed to hold sway as publishing houses claimed that 25-30 % of total sales were coming from them.

Said Arati Mishra, a young lecturer from a south Delhi college who had come to browse at the fair, There are very interesting books in many of the publishers stalls, which suprisingly turned out to be written by Indians. Ive picked up a couple like First Love (Brinda Charry) and the Delhi Noir, part of the Noir series. Ive also bought Cyrus Broachas new novel. Mishra wasnt the only one interested in the desi stock. According to Lipika Bhushan of Harper Collins, a substantial part of the total sales 25-30 % has been from Indian authors this fair season.

WBF: Rare books on Islam, Buddhism a hit

Works on Islam and Buddhism are a big hit at stalls put up by publishers from South Asian countries at the World Book Fair here. Many avid book readers and scholars are happy to have spotted rare books that are not easily available in India.
At the pavilion for foreign exhibitors at the 19th New Delhi World Book Fair, two stalls by a private publisher from Pakistan and the Iqbal Academy Pakistan are doing brisk business although the government-aided National Book Foundation of Pakistan pulled out of the book exhibition which culminates Feb 7.

"On the first two days, we saw good business, on the third day there was less crowd but we have picked since then. We have mostly students, scholars, booksellers coming to us, asking us for books on Islam, Sufism, Pakistan's history," Saira Bano from the Royal Book Company told IANS.

Many scholars and even maulvis made their way to the stall by Iqbal Academy of Pakistan for rare books not available easily in India.
 
Full report here

Children's books do well at WBF

So you think children these days are simply not reading as much as they did in the past? The publishing industry doesn’t seem to think so. They say the recession period saw the sale of children’s books go up and make profits.

Shantanu Duttagupta of Scholastic India Pvt Ltd said: “It’s a misconception that children these days are losing interest in books. If that were true, we wouldn’t have published the number of books that we do every year and wouldn’t have made profits during the recession period last year!“

“We publish around 80 new books every year. Overall, there are roughly around 1,500—2,000 children’s books published every year in India. The children’s books publishing industry is thriving,” Duttagupta told IANS, while arranging a few books at Scholastic India’s stall in the ongoing New Delhi World Book Fair.

Full article here

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Children's books most popular at fair Times of India

At WBF, be prepared to walk

Unlike past years, when the World Book Fair, Delhi has thrown open its arms to one and all, this year, be prepared for some changes.

For one, unlike in the past, entry to the fair this time is ticketed. Rs 20 for adults and Rs 10 for kids. Which is fine, as it keeps out the absolutely uninterested.

More surprisingly, despite paying, you cannot enter Pragati Maidan as easily as your have done in earlier years. Entry is from gates 1 and 2, which, be warned, are the most inaccessible gates - being along the metro line. As the ticket counters are here, you shall have to make the long trek to these gates passing over rubble en route. There is also gate 10, also along the metro route. I just could not locate it. And of course, the ITPO security staff as helpful as ever - read rude and very rude.

As the icing, the pavilions this time are far from each other. The nerve centre for the babus is hall 7, which you can safely avoid, unless you want to see the rather apologetic foriegn pavilions. The theme pavilions for Nehru and sports are a joke - a case study on what the government cannot do.

Check out Halls 1-6, which has most of the English publishers. The fair is also on at some obscure halls such as 12, and if you land up by mistake at them, be prepared to walk. As you anyways have to walk extensively, this is not the best way to approach the fair, so plan ahead.

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Flipkart showcases services at WBF

Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd., a new online book selling portal, showcased its portal and its unique selling prepositions to the book lovers at the World Book Fair.

Flipkart.com with more than 6 million titles available on its portal not only makes a wide variety of books accessible but also provides fast and efficient services to its customers. In order to become the largest e-commerce website in India in coming years, the company gives a world class online buying experience to its customers, which reflects in the experiences shared by customers on different platforms and the increasing popularity.

Commenting on the occasion, Binny Bansal, Co-founder of Flipkart.com said, "This platform attracts book lovers from all over India which gives us a great opportunity to showcase our portal and talk about our most admired services. In the age of internet, where people prefer to shop online, book lovers are also shifting to the online platforms to buy books which not only make them accessible to the wide variety of books at a click but also make the purchase less cumbersome. The online book buying space is growing at about 20-30% per month in India and we are the leading website in the online book buying space with more than 6 million visitors every month. With more focused and planned approach Flipkart.com has already captured two-third market share in India. The company plans to penetrate the market further over the next fiscal and plans to launch its "Cash on Delivery" service by March 2010 and expand the titles available at the portal to over 10 million by the year end."

He added, "With a mission to become the largest e-commerce website in India and a vision to provide Indians the best online shopping experience, Flipkart.com today with a workforce strength of about 200 employees has been able to capture a major share in the online selling world just with its books that many other players with various product offerings have not yet been able to capture. The company registered a total sale of Rs. 40 million in 2008-09 and projects a sale of Rs. 250-300 million by this fiscal end with a growth rate of about 25% per month."

Flipkart.com boasts of a leisurely browsing experience which is simple, convenient and customer friendly yet offers quality services like safe and fast payment facilities and the quickest delivery service in the country by any web portal.

World Book Fair inaugurated by Sibal

The 19th World Book Fair was inaugurated by Kapil Sibal, Union Minister of Human Resource Development at Pragati Maidan in Delhi on Saturday.

Around 1200 Indian and foreign publishers and exhibitors are participating in the fair, which is spread over an area of 42,000 square meters and showcases books on various subjects.

In a message, President Pratibha Patil said: "Books are storehouses of human knowledge and it is important that books from all disciplines be made available to readers in the country." Sibal added, "Human civilisation and books compliment each other and books play an important part in carrying the civilisation further and ensuring cultural unity in a pluralistic country like India."

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World Book Fair begins in Delhi today

The World Book Fair starts in Delhi's Pragati Maidan on Saturday and will go on till February 7. The theme this year is books on sports in the backdrop of Commonwealth Games 2010.

Several publishers from India and abroad will take part in the fair including those from Pakistan but the National Book Foundation of Pakistan has decided to skip it.A prominent absentee is Pakistan’s state-run National Book Foundation. “The National Book Foundation of Pakistan has informed us that they will be unable to participate in the fair”, Nuzhat Hassan, National Book Trust (NBT) Director said. The NBT organises the book fair. Asked about the reasons for NBF’s withdrawal, Hassan said she was unaware of it.

NBT Chairman Bipin Chandra said, "This is our 19th book fair and by now it is well known not only in the country but around the world.” 22 countries, including Singapore, Japan, US, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are participating in this fair.

This year the theme of the book fair is ‘Reading our Commonwealth: An International Rights Exhibition of Books on Sports’ on the occasion of XIX Commonwealth Games 2010. 700 titles published by around 75 publishers across the country on different genres of sports are to be exhibited at the theme pavilion.

A special exhibit of books on and by Jawaharlal Nehru will also take place in this year’s fair.

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QUICK CHECK
VENUE : Hall Nos.1 to 14, Pragati Maidan, Mathura Road, New Delhi (India)
DURATION : From 30 January to 7 February 2010
TIME : Daily 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.