With the first edition of Ahmedabad National Book Fair being a huge success, expect foreign publishers like Penguin, Macmillan and IRH jostle for space among national printers next year. For the record, the Ahmedabad book fair is now the fourth largest book fair in the country after New Delhi, Kolkata and Patna.
Riding this wave of success, AMC has already started planning to take this endeavour to the next level. The 2013 edition of the book fair will see participation of foreign publishers as well - promising to give the much-needed boost to book-reading in the city.
“Next year's book fair will have many foreign publishers as well. There were a lot of them who wanted to participate in the inaugural edition but couldn't due to time constraints,” said municipal commissioner Guruprasad Mohapatra on Tuesday.
“Publishers this year were a bit skeptical about a book fair in the summer season but the first edition gained much popularity and fared way better than our expectations. Next year, we will take this event to an even larger scale,” he added.
Deputy municipal commissioner SK Langa couldn't agree more with Mohapatra. “About 40 international publishers were wary of participation as this was the first time such an event was being organised in Ahmedabad. However, the resounding success has them calling us for their participation in next year's book fair,” said Langa.
Mohapatra further said that 2013's book fair will be bigger next year - with an increased number of stalls, literary events and exhaustive content.
This year's book fair attracted people from not only Ahmedabad and other cities, registering more than 20,000 footfalls a day, which escalated to 33,000 in the weekend.The week-long fair registered sale of books worth Rs1.08 crore in total.
