Despite e-commerce storm, book fair retains its charm in Vijayawada

 As the size of the Indian book market is growing at a rapid pace, ebooks and those printed are vying with each other.

Published: 02nd January 2018 01:51 AM  |   Last Updated: 02nd January 2018 08:39 AM   |  A+A-

The New Indian Express stall at the Vijayawada book fair on Monday. | Express

By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: As the size of the Indian book market is growing at a rapid pace, ebooks and those printed are vying with each other. Even though the global surveys point out that the sales of ebooks are on the rise, traditional book publishers have another reason to worry -- the extensive reach of the e-commerce websites which sell books.The issue came to the fore as the 11-day Vijayawada Book Festival began on Monday. Even though the bibliophiles in the city eagerly wait for the annual event to happen every year, a considerable number of the book sellers, who participated in the festival, saw a decline of 20 percent sales in the last two years. 

“In the past, people living in nearby towns and villages used to visit the book festival in Vijayawada. Now that e-commerce firms like Amazon have set up their centres even in rural parts of the country, they don’t find a need to travel to the city,” said R Krishna of SS Publishers, who has set up a stall at the Vijayawada Book Festival. Independent surveys by local e-commerce firms show that more than 20,000 online sales happen per day from in and around Vijayawada. Of these, the books and apparel occupy the top slots. 

Attractive deals are another reason bibliophiles shop online, according to R Malleswara Rao from Himalaya Book House, a regular participant in various book festivals across the country. “Last year, sales were not as per our expectations. High discounts and efficient delivery by the online portals is a major reason. Also, book reading habit has dipped over the years in general,” he said.

However, a few publishers and book festival organisers have a different view. They said that the sale of books has been consistent. “We sold `3 cr-worth of books in the last season of the Vijayawada Book Festival. The year before that about `2.4-cr worth books were sold. If we exclude the increase in prices of books, it shows there is no dip in the sales. In fact, the paperbacks and hardcovers are becoming readers’ favourites again,” said executive council member of VBFS B Babjee.

Stay up to date on all the latest Vijayawada news with The New Indian Express App. Download now
(Get the news that matters from New Indian Express on WhatsApp. Click this link and hit 'Click to Subscribe'. Follow the instructions after that.)

Comments

Disclaimer : We respect your thoughts and views! But we need to be judicious while moderating your comments. All the comments will be moderated by the newindianexpress.com editorial. Abstain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks. Try to avoid outside hyperlinks inside the comment. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines.

The views expressed in comments published on newindianexpress.com are those of the comment writers alone. They do not represent the views or opinions of newindianexpress.com or its staff, nor do they represent the views or opinions of The New Indian Express Group, or any entity of, or affiliated with, The New Indian Express Group. newindianexpress.com reserves the right to take any or all comments down at any time.

flipboard facebook twitter whatsapp
http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/vijayawada/2018/jan/02/despite-e-commerce-storm-book-fair-retains-its-charm-in-vijayawada-1742081.html
www.newindianexpress.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-22
109845
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:GTIYTFUV7SYFIJPHIBSGDSTL2MYSRUUW
<urn:uuid:273efb64-c1bc-4ddc-93cb-b529e9cb6b80>
2019-05-22T05:57:17Z
13.249.39.144
text/html
sha1:OTQKXOLNZYCAIMHEK3CHLQ2MY4SKOWR4
<urn:uuid:4c8050ae-d3aa-411f-84f3-bfc9a5877848>
http://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/vijayawada/2018/jan/02/despite-e-commerce-storm-book-fair-retains-its-charm-in-vijayawada-1742081.html
response
<urn:uuid:3c3e32fb-428a-45bb-b463-0d5f6f213365>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-22
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for May 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-171-61-111.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/