Sales of books at Amar Ekushey Boi Mela suddenly fell short yesterday following a notable absence of visitors in the build-up to today’s BNP-led 20 party alliance-enforced hartal.
The alliance made the declaration on Friday about the 72-hour hartal set to begin from today.
On Saturday evening, as the fear of pre-hartal violence rose, many visitors, especially those who came from far, began to leave the fair early.
Vendors had been expecting weekends to draw more visitors than any other days, but were disappointed to see a drop in numbers during the latter half of the weekend.
Anup Dutt, a representative of Maola Brothers, told the Dhaka Tribune: “Sales is good on the weekends in afternoon. There will be more books in the fair than any other time because the writers and the publishers had the preparation earlier.”
Although the book fair was abuzz with visitors on Friday, the scenario changed by Saturday. Visitors said they had to go home earlier as there was no security on the roads.
Robin Ahsan, owner of Srabon Prokashoni, told the Dhaka Tribune: “We had a good preparation this time as it initially seemed like there could be no violence on the streets. Now the scene is different.”
However, the sales of children’s books rose, and was actually up to the vendors’ expectation, they said yesterday. There was a special hour for children’s book and the fair had many children visiting since the morning.
Yesterday morning, many children were seen with their guardians, browsing through the stalls and trying to requesting their guardians to buy them story books, especially of ghost stories and cartoons, as was seen at different stalls.
With the new arrivals of at least 198 books, the total number of newly-published books is 880 on the seventh day of the fair.
Among these, collections of poetry and of short stories are higher in number.
This large number of newly-published books within seven days of the fair’s opening has broken records of previous years. Last year, this figure was at 463.
But the sales of the elders’ book in most stalls was not high as they expected. Anyway, some renowned stalls made their selling as per expectation.
