In the 15th Berhampur book fair that is continuing in the city there seems to be dearth of English books in comparison to past years. Most of the avid readers like Pradipta Das do not feel this a major hurdle.
According to them now it is easy and economical to buy English books of major publishers through online shopping. “Earlier I used to visit book fairs to buy recent English fiction and non-fiction, but now I find it easier to buy them online,” he said.
One of the major reasons behind new generation readers opting for online shopping of books is the price. No bookseller agrees to provide discount of more than ten per cent on the printed price of a book in a book stall or in a book fair. But online shopping portals provide up to fifty per cent discount on price of books.
Internet shopping
With internet banking it has become easy for readers to shop books online at lower price which are delivered within a week without any shipping charge.
During the Berhampur book fair a visitor approached a book seller to buy up a recently published English non-fiction priced Rs. 500. The bookseller was reluctant to give him more than Rs. 50 discount. Immediately the customer took out his smart phone and checked up the price of the same book on an online shopping portal. The portal was selling the same book for Rs. 350 along with free shipping. When he showed it to the bookseller, he got the answer that they were also providing similar discount but only to down-the-line booksellers rather than general readers. According to him general buyers are not provided any discount at their shop and they provide ten per cent discount only during book fairs. Without discussing any further the buyer preferred to buy up the book online rather than paying for it at the book stall.
Pramod Panda of Berhampur book fair committee also accepted that this recent trend has started to affect market of booksellers. According to him it is high time book sellers thought about this disparity in price as most English language readers are also internet savvy.
But there has been good sale of Odia books during this book fair. It may be noted that most Odia publishers have not yet opted for online marketing. So, for readers book fairs are the best places to search for Odia books which are yet to reach out the internet. Source: The Hindu