East India’s second biggest book fair after Kolkata is underway in Tripura as the India love affair with books continues. As reported here a few days ago, already over 5 million people have visited Indian book fairs this year, spending the USD equivalent of over $5 million, and there’s no sign the appetite for books Read More …
If it’s February it must be the Amar Ekushey Boi Mela in Bangladesh, an annual festival of books that runs the entire month of February. Last year the boi mela sold books to the USD equivalent of just shy of $10 million. But hands up anyone who has Bangladesh on their book market bucket list? Read More …
“Book fair rakes in Rs 8 crore with 7 lakh footfall ” is the headline in the Times of India this week, reporting on the first five days of the Kolkata International Book Fair. The Indian notation equates to 700,000 visitors at the event up until Monday, spending over 80 million rupees ($1.1 million) on Read More …
In our Anglophone-centric publishing world it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture of the Global New Renaissance unfolding, and to build a faux impression that the world of translations is all about translating English to other languages and other languages to English. But important as English is on the global publishing stage, it Read More …
It was never going to be a record-breaking year for the 27th New Delhi World Book Fair. Like the imminent Cairo International Book Fair this year, the New Delhi venue is undergoing substantive renovation. But while In Egypt they simply moved the event to another venue, in India they chose to hold the fair around Read More …
The Chennai Book Fair set a new record of 1.2 million visitors last year and now looks set to just miss its ambitious 2 million target for 2019. India’s Chennai Book Fair sets the pace for 2019, extends duration and aims for 2 million visitors in January On Monday alone, reports New Indian Express, 60,000 Read More …
Unusually we Start the Day Global today in Michigan, USA, where this delightful story caught my eye over at Publishers Weekly. Girls of the Crescent: Teen Sisters Promote Stories of Muslim Girls When sisters Mena and Zena Nasiri, both avid teen readers, noticed a dearth of YA books featuring Muslim females like themselves, they took Read More …
Regulars here at TNPS perhaps won’t be so surprised by the headline. I’ve long said India is publishing’s brightest prospect. And 2018 seems to have been the tipping point at which India shifted from being just another nascent market to a publishing priority. First some headline grabbing quotes from Indian publishers courtesy of The New Read More …
Between 6-8 million people are expected to attend book fairs and festivals in India this January-February as the Indian book fair season steps up a gear. Today TNPS takes a look at how the new year is shaping up for India’s booklovers amid rising tensions between India and Pakistan and Sharjah’s presence at New Delhi.. Read More …
For a paper-importing country like India, rising paper prices pose a more serious challenge in coming years than online price discounting and the rise of ebooks. As Indian publishers strive to find and retain readers in a price-sensitive market so these challenges mount. Some, it seems, prefer the ostrich approach to dealing with arising problems: Read More …
If you’re a booklover and you’ve ever been to India’s Chennai then chances are you’ve seen, and perhaps chatted to, RK Alwar, the white-bearded old man to be seen sat in front of the street bookstore known affectionately as Alwar Kadai (Alwar’s shop). Sadly the old man himself passed away this week, aged 95, after Read More …
By a quirk of fate this is the second annual Hyderabad Book Fair this year, after the 31st Hyderabad Book Fair, scheduled for December 2017, has to be postponed until January of this year. The 32nd incarnation, which opened December 15, gets the event back to its regular end of year schedule. Hyderabad Book Fair Read More …
Palestine, Mongolia, Russia, Indonesia and New Zealand are on the menu for today’s Start The Day Global selection, and if you’re thinking none of these markets are worth a second thought, then you really need to read today’s curation. We start today’s selection in the Middle East, in a land few outside the region associate Read More …
The rise and rise of book fairs and festivals around the world has been a central theme of TNPS this past year, in blatant defiance of the doom and gloom mongers who insist interest in books is on the wane. The reality of course is that books and reading have never been more popular, but Read More …
India-Pakistan relations have always been strained, but one might be surprised to learn that the Kolkata International Book Fair (KIBF) organisers wrote to the Pakistan National Book Foundation two months ago inviting Pakistani publisher participation, and got no reply. Now the Indian Publishers and Booksellers Guild Secretary Tridib Chatterjee has written directly to Iran Khan, Read More …
The Northeast Book Fair, held under the aegis of the All Assam Publishers and Book Sellers Association, wound up its twelve day run yesterday. No final figures yet (I’ll update with any further news) but at the half-way point AAPBSA general secretary Dhiraj Goswami had said visitor numbers had exceeded 80,000 and sales worth Rs. Read More …
Impossible to second-guess why this took so long – the expectation was early 2018 – but Amazon has finally launched a beta version of Audible in India, and it has stuck to its standard model despite an almost year long head start by rival Storytel. Sweden’s Storytel beats Amazon’s Audible to the India audiobook market Read More …
On any given day there are more book fairs and festivals happening around the world than anyone could keep track of, where readers, authors and publishers congregate, seemingly oblivious to our quaint western notion that, if books aren’t being sold in bookstores or on Amazon then, well, nobody in that country reads. Take the 8th Read More …
It’s almost two years since Amazon allowed mainstream publishers to upload ebooks to the Kindle store in five Indian languages: Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati, and Malayalam. Indie authors writing in those languages were put in the ridiculous position of having to upload to Amazon via a third party aggregator to get slice of the action. Read More …
Here’s a second chance to see the TNPS post from the past seven days. Start the Day Global – 30 September 2018 Sweden’s Storytel Arabia partners with Jordan’s Jamalon to expand MENA audiobook reach Nigerian student writer wins trip to Sharjah International Book fair. They never had prizes like that when I was a kid! Read More …
