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The Bangladesh Publishers and Booksellers Association now wants to relaunch the Dhaka International Book Fair, which was arranged by the National Book Centre a decade ago, and organise it on their own.
The National Book Centre, better known as the Jatiya Grantha Kendra, a department under the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, began arranging the fair in 1995 and for the last time arranged the fair in 2010.
The publishers want to arrange such a fair as the Amar Ekushey Book Fair is some sort of specialised fair focusing on upholding the spirit of the 1952 Language Movement despite there remains a good economical aspect.
Citing that the Publishers and Book Sellers Guild of West Bengal in India is successfully arranging the Kolkata Book Fair for the past 40 years, the publishers said they want to host a similar fair in Dhaka and as the government is not holding the Dhaka International Book Fair for the past decade, they want to relaunch the fair under their management.
Mazharul Islam, publisher of Anyaprokash and also president of the Dhaka chapter of BAPUS, said, “As Dhaka International Book Fair had not been organised for over a decade, We, BAPUS want to organise an international book fair annually.”
Mazharul said they had been planning for years to host an international book fair and initially thought of holding the fair as part of the birth centenary of Bangabandhu celebrations in 2020 but the pandemic forced them to defer the plan.
“We will start working on it once the Amar Ekushey Book Fair concludes. The preparation for the fair would require at least a year,” he added.
Officials of the National Book Centre told The Business Post that they wanted to organise an international book fair in December 2020 but the emergence of Covid 19 forced them to ditch the plan.
Leaders of the publishers association said that they wanted to organise the international book fair in December this year in the style the Guild is doing in Kolkata.
But as the next general election is likely to be held around December, the date might be deferred and the fair might take place in March, the publisher added.
Distinction between Ekushey Book Fair and international book fair
Poritosh Paul, a resident of Naihati in West Bengal of India, came to Dhaka to visit the Ekushey book fair for the first time. Sharing his experience with The Business Post, Poristosh said that the Ekushey book fair somehow looks like a festival other than a fair.
“In Kolkata, readers mostly visit the fair with a list they want to buy and spent less time roaming in the fair. In Dhaka, people are roaming more but buying less,” he observed.
Again, as a lot of people from nearby provinces visit the Kolkata fair, the West Bengal publishers publish English editions some of their popular books so that their sales could go up. This is missing in Dhaka, he added.
The publisher of Abrar Publication, Mirajul Islam Munna, visited the Kolkata book fair. He said in West Bengal, books are displayed openly like open libraries and readers can find their desired book within the shortest time.
It also provides the readers with opportunities to look into other books that might catch their attention, he said adding that the business environment at Kolkata fair is much better than the Ekushey book fair in Dhaka.
About the difference between the Kolkata fair and Ekushey book fair, Anyaprokash publisher Mazharul, who had a stall in the Bangladesh pavilion at the recently concluded Kolkata book fair, said that in Bangladesh the fair is organised to observe International Mother Language Day.
