Formerly a biannual event, the World Book Fair became an annual event in 2012. While the change in periodicity has increased attendance by the reading and book- buying public at the WBF 2014, it was not necessarily a commercial success for many of the publishers and distributors. Anuj Agarwal, director of children’s book publisher Suryastra, who displayed his books in the gallery of crowded Hall 11 was perhaps one of the smallest exhibitors. Interested crowds kept the gallery stands busy and Agarwal emphatically said that the WBF was great for business and should be held each year.
The bigger players in the trade books segment were also happy with Penguin, Random House, Sage, Neeta Mehta, Rupa, Orient Paperbacks all doing good retail business. Some of the large science technology and mathematics (STM) publishers and distributors on the other hand, were clearly disappointed. Nevertheless, the change in periodicity and the increasing number of professional events associated with the WBF are improving the event as a place to buy and sell content and services.
STM needs support
In past fairs, the stands of big STM publishers and distributors in Hall 12 were visited daily by around a dozen institutional buyers. This year, top STM publishers such as Taylor & Francis, Springer, and big distributors Jaypee Books, Panima, CBS and Allied were disappointed by the low traffic.
Sanjay Kumar Yadav, associate territory manager at Taylor & Francis, said that participation in the WBF was a money-losing proposition as the company spent over `10 lakh on the stand with a staff of over 25 people. Only 3 or 4 institutions visited each day. Yadav said that the marketing of .the WBF should improve and the timing of the book fair should be advanced by a few weeks to ensure that institutional buyers are not busy with exams and come to the WBF.
Pankaj Wadhera, national channel manager of Springer, confirmed that institutional visits have declined over the past 3 to 4 years. A few institutional visitors visit on weekdays though many more come on weekends. Atlantic Books, an STM publisher and an
importer and distributor of academic titles of Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, John Wiley and Bloomsbury were perhaps the only crowded stands in the category. Manish Gupta, director of Atlantic Books, reported that the crowds and sales were better than the last year, with 10 to 12 institutional buyers visiting daily.
Better planned
The WBF was better planned and positioned this year as four of the ten V days of the fair were on holidays and thus brought in great crowds. Wadhera suggested that there should be WBF bus services from Railway stations and fixed points of the city to bring booksellers and institutional buyers to the fair. A small regional book publisher said that bringing two cartons of books from the New Delhi railway station to the fair cost him over a thousand rupees.
There was some of the usual heart burn at allocation of stands as crowds do not visit all stands uniformly — partly due to distances and lack of information about stands at various distant locations. Bus services at WBF were improved but can be still augmented and managed.
Audio visual and signage systems indicating the location of publishers and distributors could have helped crowd circulation and reach since not all visitors buy or refer to the fair directory while on the move. Attendance in Halls 1 and 5 was poor and publishers were disappointed.
Harper Collins, Mapin and Vitasta found it strange that they were unceremoniously bundled into Hall 1, whereas, Pan McMillan refused to participate for the same reason. Hindi and other regional language publishers like Vani Prakashan and Raj Kamal also reported lower footfalls and higher costs than at previous fairs. As NBT continues to improve the now annual World Book Fair, it is likely to become more nimble and responsive — it could thus address the location and crowd accessibility issues more transparently and pro-actively.
Children’s books make the biggest splash
As expected the children’s book segment was the most innovative and most crowded with both publishers and book sellers performing beyond expectations. Apart from a great range of children’s books, apps and devices, Panchatantra, Amar Chitra Katha, Tin Tin, and a host of Indian and western comic characters were the flavour of the show.
On 22 February 2014, NBT presented a literary and cultural program for children including the Kathakar story telling session with skits and songs and Mr Zero and Red Riding Hood puppet shows.
The Kidz bubble at the fair was a special attraction for children as well as parents as various educators and NGOs conducted flower making, mask making, painting, string puppet, clay
modelling and clay toys, papier mache and leaf painting programs held each day outside hall number 7, where most of the children book publishers were housed. Simon Schuster reported good success of Japanese Manga comic books Naruto, Dragon Ball Z, Bleach and Bakuman.
Vishv Books launched its fun reading series while Roli books displayed its recently launched Param Vir Chakra comic books based on the lives of receivers of the gallantry awards.
Tablet power — Amazon, Repro
Amazon displayed and promoted its Kindle Reader backed by discussions
and celebrity authors sessions at Hall 12. Repro India unveiled its Rapples tablet-based student solution for school students. Launched by students from the Kaushalya World School in Greater Noida and Ryan International School who use the interactive tablets loaded with class room and other educational material.
In Repro’s demo classroom, teachers, students and parents could relive the class room experience with experts from the company as well other tablet makers including Apple. Kunal Vohra of Repro said that more than 500 school children and teachers attended the classroom sessions.
NBT rights sale begins
NBT conducted a CEO conference and a rights table where many foreign publishing houses participated and conducted business. Over 52 participants came for the rights exchange program from the US, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America although it lacked the vitality and speed of exchange of the rights sessions organized a the GlobaLocal event of the German Book Office held just prior to the WBF.
However, the actual business transactions were good with the German, French, Malaysian and guest nation Poland’s publishers successfully selling rights for several titles, while others received serious enquiries. NBT needs to think how to bring more originality to the rights trading format.
FICCI-NBT sample survey
There is an urgent need of accessing the number of publishing houses and printed books in India, said Sikandar at the Jaipur BookMark. NBT and FICCI released the findings of their first sample survey at the WBF 2014 although the sample size is not at all given.
The good news given by the FICCI survey was that the publishing industry had not been hit by the economic downturn and over 50% of the publishers confirmed that they had grown by over 10% in the last twelve months.
Two-thirds of the distributors and retail booksellers expect that growth will exceed 10% in coming years. Both publishers and distributors were bullish on the STM segment and on children’s literature with two-thirds expecting the growth in these segments to drive sales.
An overwhelming majority of the respondents were publishers and distributors with turnover of around `10 crore with only 17% of the respondents making it to the list of big publishers with a sales of over `100 crore.
Publishers felt that direct sale to end- users as achieved through online sales will be the key driver of growth. Three key challenges defined by publishers were collection of receivables, distribution bottlenecks and piracy while distributors felt that online retailers posed an additional challenge.
