Regional players innovate, but price a hurdle

At the Kolkata book fair this year, there were 521 stalls and pavilions and 200 more for little magazines. With regional publishing alive and well—though there are price challenges and quality of production issues— across Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Marathi and other vernaculars, players are trying out new ways to reach the reader.

Some like DC Books of Kerala have well-entrenched distribution strategies, others are learning the ropes. Sudhanshu Dey of Dey’s Publishing in Kolkata says malls are becoming the latest outlets of Bengali books. Starmark, Crossword and other book retails chains now all have Bengali sections that are seeing brisk sales. “What this has done is improve the production quality,” says Dey. Bengali publishers are now realising that prices have to be increased to meet quality. “Of all the regional publishing in Hindi, Tamil, Oriya, Gujarati, Bengali books are priced lowest, but if we need to carry on with some innovative marketing, we need to hike prices,” adds Dey.

Full report here Financial Express

‘Kolkata will feature in my travelogue’

Two Mexican authors speak about their experience of the city during the recent Book Fair

This year’s Kolkata Book Fair broke boundaries in many ways. After last year’s successful Book Fair, the Kolkata Book Fair was recognised by International Publishers Association, Geneva, Switzerland as the largest attended book fair of the world. This year’s focal theme country was Mexico, and Kolkatans were a witness to a wide variety of Mexican delegation.

From Mexican authors to dancers, to painters to chefs – the fair brought everyone under one roof. People flocked to the Milan Mela ground to experience the Mexican-air right in the city. They enjoyed every bit of it. From their book buying spree to interacting with the Mexican participants to enjoying a scrumptious meal at the Food Court.

But how has been the experience of the guests? Mexican author, Cristina Rivera Garza, wants to come back to Kolkata. Part of the Mexican delegation who were here for the Book Fair, Cristina cannot get over her first visit to India.

Full report here Kolkata Mirror

Kolkata Book Fair revenues surge

After losses of Rs 17 lakh incurred in 2007-08 when the venue was shifted from the centrally located Maidan grounds to the Salt Lake stadium, the 34th Kolkata Book Fair closed on a successful note this year. Small and medium publishers and the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, the organising body for the Book Fair, reported business of close to Rs 20 crore this year.

The Kolkata Book Fair is the annual event that all small and medium book sellers of West Bengal, as well as publishers of other states, look forward to because of the phenomenal footfalls and sales generated over a period of 11 days. Most small and medium book sellers are of the opinion that the Kolkata Book Fair makes up for around 30-50 per cent of their annual earnings and the proportion is only increasing.

This year at the Kolkata Book fair, the small and medium book sellers’ sales jumped 5-20 per cent compared to last year. The bigger, branded publishers saw sales jump 15-25 per cent. Of a total of 650 stalls this year, around 250 stalls were put up by small and medium book sellers, occupying an average of 100-120 sq ft per stall.Around 18 lakh people visited the Book Fair this year compared to 14.5 lakh visitors last year.

Full report here Business Standard

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

Why Fair is Foul in Kolkata

When the lights went out for two hours on a peak Saturday evening, the International Kolkata Book Fair reached the nadir of its 34-year existence. Three days into the fair and little was in place, not even a back-up lighting plan. Leading up to the fair, booksellers had complained about cramped space, creaking infrastructure and dust in the air, but even when the fair opened on January 27, many of the stalls weren’t ready.

In what has become typical of West Bengal, another of Kolkata’s big-ticket events was being allowed to diminish year-on-year. Once it was the largest retailer book fair in Asia; very soon international publishers will shun it. In fact, many top publishers, having checked out the fair last year, excused themselves quietly this year. Hachette India, HarperCollins, Random House and Kolkata-based Seagull, to name a few, were prominent absentees.

Full report here Indian Express

Poem in Spain, novel in France

It might have been poetry. “It was the hour in Mogador when lovers rouse, their dreams still entangled between their legs, behind their eyes, in their mouths, lingering over their empty hands….” The writer of this poetic, sensuous prose does not believe in classification of genres.

“There is no difference between poetry and prose. The idea that prose is a reflection of reality is rubbish. The difference is cultural,” says Mexican author Alberto Ruy Sanchez, who was in Calcutta recently to deliver the Ashoke Kumar Sarkar Memorial Lecture at the Book Fair.

The tall, mild-mannered Sanchez, decorated by both the Mexican and the French governments, has an example to back his conviction. “My book Nine Times Wonder is classified as essay in the US, poem in Spain and novel in France,” he shrugs. “When you move in the middle they don’t know what to do with you!"

By “they”, Sanchez’s fingers point towards publishers, especially in Mexico’s northern neighbours, the US. “The Spanish publishing industry gives us more freedom unlike the US. We are lucky not to receive money from books. We earn from lectures and tours.” That leaves authors free to follow their impulse without having to shape their writings according to preconceived generic distinctions.

Full report here Telegraph

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

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

Kolkata book fair to have US as theme next year

The Kolkata Book Fair may have drawn its share of flak of this time, that has not prevented it from being gung ho about its plans for next year.

US is to be the theme country next year. The annoucement was made by US Consul-General Beth Payne. No concrete plans for which American authors would be present at the fair were made.

The theme country this year was Mexico.

Related news
USA to be next year's book fair theme Times of India

Book ‘Marks’

The 34th annual Book Fair has been surrounded by claims of improper arrangements right from the beginning. This gives rise to another big question - what will the condition of the Milon Mela grounds be once the fair is over?

Grounds after such melas generally bear injury marks such as holes dug all over, burnt patches, empty plastic bags, crushed bottles and the list is endless. And this is when the blame game begins with the authorities and organisers competing to shirk the responsibilities of restoring the ground conditions to the condition it was in before the fair.

Sribhindu Bhattacharya, convenor, public relation and media, Publishers And Booksellers Guild, explaining the planning process for the book fair, said, “We start planning for the next book fair as soon as one is over. For this year, nine sub-committees have been formed headed by the respective convenors. The sub-committees include ground management, seminars and medias relations, directory publication and ground security among others. All these subcommittees submit their plan proposal around five months prior to the commencement of the fair. It is only after this that we approach the government for the venue.”

Full report here Kolkata Mirror

Mamata releases her new book on Nandigram

Firebrand politician and sometime writer Mamata Banerjee is back at the Kolkata Book Fair, this time with her 23rd book. Her latest book, Nandi-Maa, revolves around the Nandigram movement, which catapulted her to the centrestage of Bengal politics.

Her last book, Maa, Maati, Manush (Mother, Land and Humans), a collection of poems, sold over 1,500 copies since its release in last year’s book fair. “We got good response from the readers. Her other books on non-fiction and poems are also doing well with each selling 1,000 copies. Her first book Upalabdhi too did well,” said Sudhanshu Dey, co-owner of Dey’s Publications.

Full report here

Book on Bt brinjal grills Jairam

As Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh prepares to brave the anti-Bt Brinjal storm sweeping the country, Kolkata, too, seems to be doing its best to resist the use of the genetically-modified seeds for agriculture. After people took part in a nationwide day-long fast to protest against the cultivation of Bt brinjal, Earthcare Books, a Kolkata-based publisher, has come out with an ‘open letter’ to Ramesh, reports the Indian Express. The book, priced at Rs 20 and named Pregnant With Poison, is reportedly flying off the shelves. It points towards hazards in cultivating genetically-modified crops.

The book has been written by writer and environmental activist Bharat Mansata, who is also the co-owner of an organic farming venture.

Kolkata book fair continues to attract controversy, attention

Kolkata may be full of book lovers, but it has not prevented its favourite annual book fair to be controversy free.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had slammed city environmentalists on Monday for protesting against the book fair and forcing the fair venue to be shifted from its traditional Maidan to Milan Mela grounds. “It is very unfortunate that there are voices in the city against the Kolkata Book Fair. They have all the right to fight for the environment but they do not have the right to be up in arms against the book fair. In 2008, the fair could not be organised because of them. Our future generations will judge who benefited from it,” said Bhattacharjee, while speaking at the inaugural function of the Kolkata Book Fair.

Referring to the 1997 fire that almost forced the Kolkata Book fair to call curtains, the CM said: “That was an accident, but I cannot accept city environmentalists raise their voice against the book fair.” The Publishers and Booksellers Guild, the organiser of the fair, paid Rs 37 lakh to the Milon Mela authorities though the latter had demanded Rs 62 lakh as rental charges.

Dim lights
A significant section was yet to get electricity. This included foreign stalls from Sweden, Spain and Mongolia. Many fans left the fair in a huff. “Many stalls are dark, while several others are unfinished. The billing counters are not working and card payments not being accepted. Why has the guild been allowed to open the fair without basic facilities?” demanded a book lover.

Even as the Indian book world has gradually shifted its centre to Delhi, Kolkata and its fair have failed to keep with the times. About150 stalls out of 650 are still without electricity, even as some frustrated stall owners confronted officials of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, organisers of the fair.


The biggest attraction this year is the expected launch of firebrand politician Mamata Banerjee's book, Nandi-Ma. The book, is expected to present her side of the story around the Nandigram killings on March 14, 2007 and the consequent movement that had the intelligentsia questioning the Bengal government's policy on land acquisition to set up a chemical hub at Nandigram in East Midnapore. It is being published by Dey's Publishing, which has already published 22 of Mamata's works, including the Trinamool supremo's first book, Upalabdhi, and the one before this, Ma Mati Manush.

The Kolkata Book Fair is on from January 27 to February 7, 2010. This is the 34th edition of the fair. The theme country this year is Mexico and the fair was inaugurated by Mexican author Jorge Volpi.