From the pioneer of Hindi and Urdu social fiction Munshi Premchandra collections to modern contemporary series, though piles of books has been kept to lure the readers at National book fair organized under the aegis of NIBM received lukewarm response on its first day.
The better-known reason for this is the presence of modern gadgets, e-books that has just made the reading habit easy, interesting and compatible but on the other hand sale of books is witnessing a huge plunge that was quite visible in this book fair as well.
“I was just hanging out with my friends here. I have not bought books since 2014 as I prefer reading books on different topics on internet and download them, if I need them for future references,” said a student, Rashika lal.
In the growing age of digitalization, habit of browsing the internet for exploring any topic, reading habits has become an antiquated concept for most of the people, badly affecting its sale.
Even the publishing house representatives have claimed that the sale of books is witnessing a decline due to the availability of modern gadgets. However, some of them opined that youths still visit these kinds of book fair as they get latest books of modern novel writers under one roof.
“We cannot deny the fact that electronic gadgets have hampered our business to an extent. Facilities like kindle and other similar mobile applications came as a setback for us few years back. However, it has not completely taken our share of business, we still sell quite a number of books, especially biographies, autobiographies and other historical books to the people. There is a good demand of books based on life of poets and lyricists,” said a representative of Crown Books Publication, Anil Prajapati.
Similarly, a representative of India Today Group said, “We find less youths coming at the counters and enquiring about specific books on any topic these days, this is due to the accessibility and reach of internet. From lifestyle series to romantic novels, including some educational DVDs as well, we have everything with us. To lure customers, the company is also giving lucrative offers and discounts on every purchase but on an average sale remains quite low.”
Yet, the organizers believe that in the coming days, the book fair will gain ample response from the Ranchi-ites. With approximately, 80 publishers participating in this fair have brought the collection of books ranging from science and technology to contemporary literatures to art, culture memoirs.
“Though the presence of new media and popularity of e-books cannot be denied among the readers, yet internet accessibility even today is a distant dream for many. Priority must be given to book reading and we expect good number of public to come here and witness this national book fair,” said NIBM Director, Manoj Kumar Gupta.