Bangla Academy book fair sees record sales

FE Team | Published: March 01, 2008 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

A FAREWELL TO THE FIESTA : The Ekushey Boimela in the city's Bangla Academy premises was jam-packed with thousands of book-lovers Friday, the last day of the month-long fair as well as a holiday. — FE photo

Mahmuda Shaolin
Publishers have sold books worth a record Tk 200 million in the Bangla Academy fair, making it the most successful publishing event in the country's history, officials said Friday.
Director General of the Academy Syed Mohammad Shahed said sales of book witnessed a record 123 per cent growth this year's fair as 2578 new books hit the stands, also a record since its inception in the 1950s.
"It is the most successful fair we have ever seen. It shows people are increasingly reading books. And the best thing is that many of them are reading better books," Shahed said.
"We are more than satisfied. There have been huge interest among the people and books of all types have seen huge sales in this fair," he said.
A total of 288 Bangladeshi publishers joined this year's fair, which concluded on Friday, drawing an estimated 2.5 million visitors during the month-long book festival, academy spokesman Morshed Anwar said.
Publishing house Anyaprakash, which sells top selling novelist Humayun Ahmed's fiction and non-fiction works, sold the highest number of books, thanks to the huge success by Humayun's new fiction, Himu Remandey (Himu on remand).
Anyaprakash would not say how many of the novels it has sold, but an insider said some 30,000 titles were sold in the fair, the highest in the fair's recent history.
Ahmed's other two publications -- the second part of his historical novel Modhayanya and Mishir Alir Chasma --were also widely sold during the fair.