STAFF REPORTER
GUWAHATI: “We are expecting to break the record that we had in the previous years by selling books worth Rs 3.50 crore. We are hoping that this year we will cross the limit of selling books worth Rs 4-5 crore,” said All Assam Publishers and Book Sellers' Association (AAPBSA) secretary Dhiraj Goswami in the 21st North East Book Fair premises.
Speaking to The Sentinel, Goswami mentioned that books worth Rs 1 crore has already been sold by the eighth day. He said, “This year, we are overwhelmed to receive immense response from our book lovers. People from each age group are visiting this book fair. 80 to 90 thousand people are visiting on daily basis. We hope it will reach 5 lakh before the day of conclusion. This proves that the book fair is actually people’s book fair.”
Speaking about the growing interest of reading books and the genre of books that have been receiving response from book lovers, Goswami said, “The fact that we’re receiving such positive response from our readers, a huge credit for this goes to Amor Jyoti Choudhury, Zubeen Garg and some other people who are continuously taking initiative on keeping the reading habits intact. You can never smell book in digital platform and now people are visiting here in search of the smell of books. We have seen that people, mostly our young generation has preferred the books written on Assam Agitation. The young generation is buying books written in Assamese. It is a good sign for our society. Till today a total of 80 books have been released. Now it is clear that if we can publish books written on serious matter it will help in enriching the Assamese language and literature.
A book seller from Mumbai Vivek R Pandey said, “We’ve not received the response as much we expected. This is because of the availability of buying books in online platform. I have seen that the numbers of readers are also decreasing because people seem to be busy in only gadgets. However we have witnessed that the craze for the books of art and literature is still intact. As far as the classic numbers of Charles Dickens, Thomas hardy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jane Austen are concerned, there’s no problem for that. The craze for some books like Emma, Pride and Prejudice are still the same. Among the young generation it has been seen that they prefer mostly the motivational books that can help them in their field of interest. Hence people still prefer classic literary fictions over the general fictions in trend.” date