Books
Fair was foul at Delhi's annual book festival, with booksellers complaining that a variety of reasons from violence triggered by the conviction of a cult head to hiked prices, thanks to GST affected sales.
Publishers were an unhappy lot, stressing that the organisers had done little to sell the nine-day long Delhi Book Fair.
"There were no customers", "There was no publicity","We won't be participating in the next book fair", were some of their many grievances.
Where Dera violence was to blame for low turnout during the initial days, the spiked prices of books because of GST played a spoilsport all through, they said.
But, what topped the complaint list of all publishers was the lack of, rather no publicity, of the book fair, prior to the event!
"There was not even one hoarding of the book fair anywhere outside. Moreover, earlier there were regular announcements at metro stations, where they would also sell fair tickets... but this time, there was nothing.
"And the result is in front of you. This time we are finding it hard even to recover the money we spent in renting this space," said the visibly worried Kaushal Goyal, from Pigeon and GBD Books.
The cost of one stall in the fair was Rs 56,000.
According to publishers, this was some thousands extra in comparison to the last year.
"There is no next time for us. This is the last time we are participating in this fair," he said.
However, ITPO denied the allegations saying that the stalls were made available at "subsidised rates".
"Each of them got a space on subsidised rates. We never increased the price of any stall. The minor increase in prices is because of the taxes," said a person from ITPO, on the condition of anonymity.
With barely 120 publishers showing up at the fair, the count was significantly lower than last year that boasted of the presence of 180 plus exhibitors.
Hemant, who debuted at the fair this year, rues his decision to participate.
"Obviously, the poor promotional campaign is to be blamed for the low turn out. But other than that, the GST too played its role.
"So this too went against us, which only affected our business further," said a despondent Hemant.
The ITPO eventually did turn to radio for the publicity of the book fair. But it was too little too late.
Especially for Hindi publication houses, who are already in the midst of the never ending crisis of low readership of Hindi literature.
"I can certainly say that for this book fair the objective of ITPO was to make money, nothing else. There is no facility whatsoever... their help desk here is of no use. They are minting money at our expense.
"The fair was organized in the worst manner. There was no publicity. You know many people who came here were like they were just not aware of the book fair for good days," said SK Gupta, from Surya Bharti Prakashan, a well-known Hindi publication house.
He, too, blamed GST for denting the business further.
"See there is no GST on books. But, then you have GST on paper, printing, binding and so. This makes the books expensive for the customer to buy. Nothing went right for us this time, for example no one from Haryana and NCR made it to the book fair for first initial days due to the violence of Dera supporters," he said.
Many renowned Hindi publishers have given the book fair a miss due to dwindling number of vernacular readers, which includes the giants in the business like Raj Kamal Prakashan, Vani Prakashan and Prabhat Prakashan, among many others.
However, the ITPO didn't seem to pay much heed to any criticism.
Talking about the alleged "dismal publicity", they said this time they followed a "new strategy of promoting more on social media than the conventional media platforms".
"We have taken adequate measures to make the book fair a success just like the earlier ones," ITPO said.
Needless to say, there is no love lost between e-books and publishers too, as many still blame the same for the scanty footfall, more than anything else.
The fair themed 'Padhega India, toh Badhega India', comes to a close today.
What? You didn't know the theme? Well, there is a saying: 'Publicity can be terrible. But only if you don't have any'.
