February is the month of books in Bangladesh. The month-long Bangla Academy book fair, Amar Ekushey Grontho Mela, is the annual event for which all book lovers wait throughout the year. Thus, Ekushey book fair becomes the centre of the country's book publishing business. Around a hundred publishers come up with several thousand titles in this fair.
But during the year very few of them are active in publishing and marketing their books. Rather, almost all of them queue up for government book purchase programme, mostly operated by the National Book Centre in association with the Ministry of Culture.
Thus, there is a serious lack of effort on the part of the publishers to market their books throughout the year and across the country. It is indeed odd that being businessmen, they put little effort in marketing their products.
A frequent complaint from the publishers is that there are few readers and the number of book buyers is even less than that of the readers. Thus publishing a limited number of books is not always viable for them. Due to very low consumer segment, publishers have to rely on state-sponsored book promotion, corporate and NGO-funded book procurement.
There is no denying the poor number of readers and book buyers. Despite a population of over 160 million, more than half of whom are illiterate, books in the country are still far from reaching the most of them. The Bangladesh Literacy Survey-2010, conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), revealed that 40.80 per cent of literate (who can write a letter) person never read a book of fiction, while 38.6 per cent cannot read at all. Only 2.5 per cent of them are in the habit of reading books.
This is a disheartening narrative. On an average, some 0.65 million students come out successfully in HSC and other equivalent public examinations every year. Thus, there is a good number of young people who have enough literacy skill to read books in Bengali. Nevertheless, very few of them read books and magazines regularly.
Reluctance to read books, even occasionally, is attributed to the expansion and wide usages of the cell phone and internet. No doubt, cell phone has made a kind of revolution in the country with 120 million people as subscribers. At the same time, users of internet have reached around 34 million and around 90 per cent of them use the internet through mobile network.
Neither mobile phone, nor internet, however, is a great deterrent to book reading in a country where devoted readers are always very low.
Against the backdrop, it is important for the publishers to enhance their marketing efforts and diversify it. Book is also a product and it needs marketing. The four 'Ps' of marketing (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) is also true in respect of books. Through effective marketing, publishers have to attract readers.
Comparison with cell phone or tablet marketing may sound nonsensical as book is not a consumer durable. Nevertheless, there is no alternative to book marketing. Book publishing is ultimately a business. Yes, it is labelled as a very high ethical business as it deals with knowledge dissemination. But this doesn't mean publishers have to continue publishing at huge losses and the government has to subsidise.
Moreover, like other competitive businesses, the publishing houses also have to survive through competition with quality products. There is an unhealthy competition and some publishers are doing business by taking the advantage.
The publication sector in Bangladesh is quite big and diversified but not competitively organised. With a history of more than 200 years, it is yet to become an industry. Beside the formal publishing sector, there is also a big informal publishing sector engaged for the most part in piracy. This is another challenge for the sector to flourish.
The book publication sector requires market as well as sectoral research to devise effective marketing strategy. It is important to have a good database on publishers and publications along with the turnover volume. Research will also help understand reasons for poor sale of books.
Time is changing with fast advancing information technology; e-book is gaining popularity and people are enjoying handy devices for reading. The publication sector of Bangladesh has to cope with these changes and challenges.
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