On the success of Amdavad National Book Fair 2016

By Japan K Pathak
Ahmedabad

In 1980s and 1990s, Ahmedabad used to have regular books fairs. – at least once every year by single publisher or many times several publishers together.

The most memorable I can remember is a book fair held at Gujarat Vidyapith ground in late 1990s. It was a national level book fair that came to Ahmedabad due to efforts of late Jitendra Desai.

In those years, State and city level book fairs were organized regularly at Sanskar Kendra – Paldi.

But in beginning of 21st century, Ahmedabad saw several years in row when not a single book fair was organized.

Somehow publishers couldn’t come forward and manage to hold a book fair together.

Then in year 2010, a group of publishers with support of the State government could hold a book fair in GLS college ground.

Due to lack of budget, the book fair had for the first time in Ahmedabad a provision of entry fee. To extend his support and boost the morale of publishers and book lovers, then Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi specially attended the inaugural function and delivered a nice speech. He personally visited various stalls and browsed books. Seeding of Amdavad National Book Fair happened here perhaps.

Couple of years later Modi asked BJP led Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation(AMC) to hold a national book fair every year on 1st of May which is the foundation day of Gujarat State.

The first such book fair was held at Sabarmati River Front in 2012. If it is Modi’s wish, winter could be created amid summer.

Big A.C. tents were erected on River Front location to hold national book fair in scorching heat of May. There were 161 stalls and 103 national publishers participating in the event. An AC hall for literary and cultural activities had capacity to accommodate 1,000 people. It was named as Tagore hall to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore.

From 2013 onward the venue of book fair was changed to University exhibition hall. The reason was, there were ready made AC halls here to host a book fair and other literature activities.

My publisher friends were complaining that University hall was detached location and compared to the venue at Sabarmati River Front, very few people were actually visiting the book fair in University hall.

This year, the AMC shifted the venue to Sabarmati River Front again, and all publishers I met were happy with response from visitors.

Like every year, I visited the book fair twice this time also.

Some observations:

– The AMC took extra care of visitors this time. It was very welcoming. Sprinklers were erected above a walking path to give protection to visitors against heat.

– I visited two main halls where literature related events were going on. Both were full of public. Here, there everywhere, there was no empty chair to seat. Involvement of people could be seen during interactive session. The quality and variety of questions asked from audience to authors was rich.

– Even food counters were set up in AC tent.

– There were many stalls offering books for cheap cost or say flat rate of Rs 50 or Rs 100. There was curation. The books – mostly from abroad were dumped in these stalls. For me curation is very important for a book store. My friend took me to a small book shop in Mumbai. I wondered how this small book shop could be special! But when stepped inside, I found wonderful curation of titles in this book store. The store owner had curated and purchased each book very carefully. In these flat offer stalls in book fair, most books were garbage. Not worth buying. There was no curation. One of friend book-store owners told me that such books arrive in shipment. They are purchased in Kilo and not according to cover prize. There’s no scope of selection for buyer of shipment. While some publisher friends and stall owners were worrying about this new trend of flat-prize foreign books, I told them they have no reason to worry. After all curation is important. Dumping without quality check will not last long just because of attractive pricing.

– Religious stalls were headache like always. I can understand that while AMC spends too much to organize a book fair, it is important for it to earn revenue. And for that more stalls are necessary. But then these religious stalls openly do preaching. Instead of book selling, the volunteers in such stalls – be if Islamic book stalls or Christian book stalls – are only interested in distributing propaganda literature for free outside the stall and preaching. I hate this part of book fair. If AMC can please next time bundle these religious book stalls to one specific corner or warn them strictly that they would not be allowed any activity outside their stall.

– New-technology stalls were attractive. Matrubharti is an application on ios and android platforms. It pays new and experienced authors and put their books online for free download. It earns through advertisement. Matrubharti had in its stall put up a large banner showcasing its succesful authors. I was told that each of them had attracted 10,000 downloads. Almost all of them were new authors. Some of them are college students. But they have attracted thousands of downloads. The other interesting stall was Bookpub.in. This is an initiative that offers digital printing. Whether you are a new author, or experienced one – if you want your one, two, five or twenty five books to get published to give an attempt to the world of publishing, you actually can do that through Bookpub.in. Price was very attractive and affordable for printing of few copies. If you can sell that much of copies through online or offline network/canvasing you can order more print orders. Bookpub also gives support for ISBN number procurement, online selling and more.

– Some of book-sellers publishers whom I met during previous editions of Amdavad National Book Fair were absent this time. Perhaps at University convention center venue they had not enough business – even that much to cover their travel,stay,food,logistic costs.

– One important reason to visit the book fair twice is that you come to meet interesting people. I could meet Saumil Munshi, Raghuvir Chaudhary, Ashok Dave and more at the book fair.

– Due to lack of interesting new titles, my spending was in range of Rs 2,500 around this year. In the past it used to be as high as Rs 4,000 to Rs 5,000. One of reasons of lower spending was that I am much net savvy and Amazon, Flipkart, Google Books etc provide me round-the-clock book fair experience. Add to this my life membership of Gujarat Vidyapith, Gujarati Sahitya Parishad and other libraries.

Will certainly wait for the next edition of book fair.

– DeshGujarat