Bangalore Book Festival brings little cheer to publishers

Unsold books packed after 10 days of business.

By Rajnandini Ghosh

BANGALORE (Nov. 28)—The 10-day-long Bangalore Book Festival, which ended yesterday, resulted in losses for most of the book stall owners, leading to a gloomy atmosphere at the Place Grounds as stall holders packed up Monday.

The gala festival spread over 10 days had 340 book stalls in all, of which around 80 were Kannada stalls.

Balram Sadhwani, president of the Bangalore Booksellers and Publishers Association, had hoped to sell books worth 150 million before the book festival began.

But on Monday, as the book publishers and shop owners boxed their unsold books, the picture was not quite the same.

The majority of the book stall owners voiced disappointment with the modest sales they racked up.

Mr. Venkatesh of Priyadarshini Prakashane said his total sales of Kannada books was worth 7,000 this year in spite of his offering a 50 percent discount. Last year, he sold Kannada books worth more than 10,000.

Value Books Inc. is another example of a publishing house that not only had much smaller sales than last year, but could not even recover the amount it spent in renting the stall and making other arrangements.

Laxmikanth Salecha, owner of Value Books, said this was the second time in the last seven years that his stall suffered such a loss at the book fair.

Publishers not happy with this year’s sale.

Many reasons seen for low sales

While most people blamed the low sales on a book fair that was held last month organized by Bangalore University, a couple of other reasons were cited, too.

Swami, the owner of Sneha Book House, said, “No celebrities came to visit the book festival this year.”

He had kept a 10 percent discount on Kannada books and managed to get a sale of 10,000, a decrease from last year.

Mr. Salecha said that the Bangalore University book fair should not be blamed alone, and that the festival administrators were to blame as well.

Gates for the festival closed at 8 p.m. each night. According to Salecha, the organizers lost many customers due to this. Office workers could only reach the fair by the time it was about to close.

Deccan Herald was the official media partner of the book festival. This, according to some, was not a great move, who said they felt that sales were dependent solely on the readership of Deccan Herald.

It also rained on the last two days of the festival, which stopped many customers from visiting the book fair, adding to the despair of the already heartbroken book sellers.

 “The sale of books has only touched about 10 crore [100 million], much lower than the estimated figure of 15 crore [150 million],” said Sadhwani. “The main reason for the low sales was the previous book fair organized by the Bangalore University some months ago.”

Whatever the reasons, it is the publishers and the stall owners who suffered the most in the book festival. One can only hope that next time it is organized in a better manner so the sales estimates can be met.