Bonanza for book lovers

by Thulasi MUTTULINGAM

And for the twelfth consecutive year, Sri Lanka's most widely attended exhibition, the Colombo International Book Fair is coming alive again. The now annual feature in many book lovers' calendar is being held as usual in September, the National Literary Month.

Hundreds of thousands of people usually throng the BMICH during the week long fair every year. This time, the crowds are expected to near the one million mark, according to the President of the Sri Lanka Book Publishers Association, Ariyadasa Weeraman. The exhibition, which started yesterday (Saturday, September 18) will go on till next Sunday and will be open for 12 hours from 9.00 am till 9.00 pm.

According to Weeraman, there are 422 stalls this year with 225 publishing companies, both foreign and local participating.

Almost all the famous bookshops of Sri Lanka will have stalls of their own while also hosting stalls, for foreign publications. According to Vijitha Yapa, chairman of the Vijitha Yapa Group, they will occupy 1700 square feet of space and will have their own publications as well as sponsor publications from Periplus of Singapore, APA Guides of Singapore and Germany, Cambridge University Press, Lonely Planet of Australia as well as Parragon Publishing of UK and India.

"Our aim is to have the largest range of books available in the country," he said. "We have over 250,000 titles but only the most important ones will be displayed at the book fair."

Asked about the common perception that the younger generations have lost interest in the reading habit and whether this had any impact on sales, he said that the perception was not true, that instead the reading habit in the younger generations had shifted from cheap fiction, to serious qualitative works.

Another common perception of the book fair by serious book lovers is that popular titles are not readily available, that instead a lot of slow moving stock is off loaded on sale. Yapa refuted this saying that the focus of the book fair was on quality and not quantity or cheap fiction in order to take it to a truly international level.

The Sarasaviya book chain however has the opposite idea. "We plan to release a range of books that were very popular with old time book lovers so that they can read it all over again" says sales promotion manager, Ranjan Perera. "They are not exactly classics but books written by authors such as Earle Stanley Gardner and James Hadley Chase are rather timeless in their appeal. "The older generations can have a chance to read them again as well as introduce them to younger generations."

Sarasaviya will have 10 stalls including five for foreign publications such as Viva, Academic Publishers, Chowdry and Jaico. "We will have a wide range of books catering to all ages and needs, from academic textbooks in various fields such as medicine and engineering to fiction and a very large collection of children's books" says Perera. "There is a new trend among parents to encourage their children to read so that they can pick up the English language, which we are very happy to note."