Book publishing involves a social responsibility

New Delhi 5 March 2012, Amit Pandey

"Book publishing involves a social responsibility and cannot be seen only with a business point of view," said Mr. M.A. Sikandar, Director, National Book Trust, India in an exclusive interview with newstrackindia. "Books are written and published to spread knowledge among the readers. Though the book market has evolved tremendously for the last few decades with India being number three in world publishing but we should not forget the objective of writing and publishing books," He added.

'The book fair was very successful this year with the footstep of more than 7 lakhs visitors registered in four days. It is really good to see that this year apart from the students, a huge number of families were also seen in the fair. The number of participants also increased to 1300 this year with an increase of 400 from the last year.' He said.

'Book fair is organised with an objective promote the awareness and reading habits among people and to show the strengths and diversity of Indian book industry in its multilingual profile. The fair is really a success as it has fulfilled its objective to a maximum extent.'

On asking upon the influence of e-books in the book segment Mr. Sikandar added 'Though people are preferring e-books these days but the significance of printed books has still not declined and this can be depicted with the huge number of visitors coming to the book fair.'

Prof. Subramaniam, Department of History, Delhi University was also present at that occasion and said that ' It is the age of information and we need good books to convert that information into knowledge. People are getting aware about good books through such types of initiative by NBT and the publishers will definitely get benefit through the World Book Fare.'