Dignity of the book month
by Professor Sunanda Mahendra
BOOK FAIR: September is widely known as the 'Sahitya Masaya' or the
literary month or more familiarly 'Book Month' of the year. There are
two main ceremonies held this month: the annual State Literary Festival
and the Annual International Book Fair.
Public willingly join these events for more than one reason. One
striking point is the controversies abound about the awards with the
involvement of those who oppose and favour, and their ideas remain for
several months.
This is quite interesting but what is stinking is that the low
quality of the controversy where mud-slinging is an essential part by
way of critical assessment.
The Annual International Book Fair is recorded as one of the
well-known or popularly known social events where a gathering moment for
the book lovers takes place to buy books as well as to talk and listen
to various points of views on book matters and the writers make it a
point to launch their books especially at the nick of time to suit the
event as the books primarily move off when the well-wishers visit with
the intention of learning more about literature; this is the essence of
understanding the book promotion.
This time, quite a number of Sinhala, Tamil and English books are
lined up to be promoted in this manner by the respective publishers to
be launched as part of the book promotion.
One Sinhala short story writer told me that he had put out his new
collection of short stories with a book launch event where the recent
trends of the world short stories will be the main subject that is
scheduled to be discussed by the participants.
A research officer working in a media organisation told me that she
had left apart ten thousand rupees with the intention of buying books
from this Annual International Book Fair.
Family game
"I always do it when the start of the International Book Fair is
announced, as it is the most convenient book buying system that one can
adopt," she said. A journalist-friend of mine has the habit of saving a
monthly sum as art of the book buying process now being cultivated and
followed by the rest of the members of his family.
"This is a family game," he said happily, "and we are interested on
new arrivals to the fair. I think in this way we can manage to build up
our own home library."
A teacher from Puttalam wants to understand the true nature of the
present day children's books and as such she is to visit the fair with
her students as part of her teaching and learning project.
"I am planning to introduce a book-a-day in our programme format." A
radio presenter said. The mass media channels will be in action on the
days of the event at the BMICH. They will definitely have something new
to say this time from their hacked models of just chatting about what
people think and what they have bought to the fair, etc.
Perhaps a good idea is to install a book studio for both audio and
visual media purposes where the specialists as well as the common
readers can air their views. Some author publishers commonly known as
'vanity publishers' in other countries are trying to play a big role in
this annual event.
I came to know of a certain writer who borrowed quite a number of
books from his friends and requested for a mini stall. This looks a good
idea as a simple and intelligent method of book promotion as against the
big publishers or the mighty ones who are rather reluctant to sell the
books published by others or ones other than theirs.
This is a welcome variant to the conventional method where he is
going to sell his own books as well as the books by his friendly
writers.
Foreign publishers
Foreign book publishers too will have a significant role to play in
this event. They may be in a position to display their books and sell at
a reduced price. The Indian publishers have already shown this concept.
In this manner we have a number of lessons to learn from the book fair.
The poor visitor who comes from a distant place should not be taxed for
food and beverages as it happened last time.
The guiding authorities who, predominantly, are the leading book
publishers, should see that the book fair is a fair deal to the masses
and that they should not be allowed to be exploited. I had the
opportunity of interviewing a number of book publishers on their new
books. It looked as if everyone is ready with at least ten to twelve new
books.
Every writer I have met seems to have his share of book contribution
in the Fair.
Surely we have no time to read all the books that appear on the
stalls. But let us have a selection and those who know about books may
help us.
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