One million books for sale at Festival

Bangalore, July 31 (UNI) Nearly one million books will be on sale at the fourth Bangalore Book Festival, dubbed as the second biggest in Asia, after Kolkata, commencing here on September 21.

The ten-day festival has attracted Indian and Foreign publishers and the aim of the Bangalore Booksellers and Publishers Association was to inculcate reading habit among the people, Association President Balram Sadhwani told newsmen here today.

In the last event, retail sales to the tune of Rs.20 crore was achieved. In addition, the institutional sales was phenomenal, he added.

A veritable feast to bookworms, the festival would have a significant regional flavour with local language Kannada alone contributing to 20 per cent. Besides English, books in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Bengali and a few other foreign languages would also be exhibited, Mr B S Raghuram, Managing Director of Klub Class, the joint organiser of the Festival said.

For the first time in the country, in a pre-event release, the organisers would offer Book tokens to visitors, which would enable free entry for two persons. Besides, a ten per cent discount on the books they purchase is also being offered. Mr Raghuram expected that around 1.5 lakh book tokens, each of them costing Rs.40, would be bought before the show. ''This will make a huge difference to the experience of the people who buy books'', Mr Sadhwani said.

UNI