Bangalore Book Festival this year has close to 325 stalls arranged in 4-5 lanes with stalls on both the sides. With so many stalls, even if one had all the time in the world, it is quite difficult to go to all the stalls one likes and explore them. More over all the stalls are so packed of books and with people that it is easy to miss out on the unique books a stall has and you were looking for. The practice of highlighting the bestsellers which are a easier sell means that a lot of stalls end up looking similar on the face. What does someone interested in digging more deeply into this sea of books must do?
Enter a Book Fair Guide (bfg)! Consider a person who not only knows tons about books but also knows a lot about the stalls in the fair. He knows that a publisher from Kolkata is exhibiting towards the tail end of fair and he will have books you might like. Or that a second-hand book stall has some rare copies of a book hard to find in Bangalore. Or that if you are a history buff, you should not miss out on these 5 stalls. Walking with him through the fair, you would be able to see beyond the bestsellers and heavily discounted imported books which mark so many stalls. Moreover you will be able to save your energy to visit interesting stalls even at the end of fair. There is even the possibility of themed tours through the book fair – for cookery fans, for sports buffs etc.
Stall owners also have an incentive to engage these guys and give them a lot of information since it may be hard to interact with each and every person who walks into your stall due to sheer number of them. More niche publishers will benefit from making sure that their target group is able to find them.
I personally feel being able to walk through a book fest with somebody like this will be a lot of fun. What do you guys think? Leave a comment with your views or suggestions.
The book festival was officially inaugurated today evening with the lighting of the lamp. The ceremony was as exciting as a ceremony with half a dozen speeches can be. And so most of the visitors and stall owners completely ignored the repeated calls of the organizers to join them in the V K Gokak auditorium for the same. They instea
d spent time where the fun things were – in the main exhibition area with all the stalls up and running.
ak auditorium. I had heard the name before but didn’t know much about him. It turns out that this is the centenary birth year of V. K. Gokak, an outstanding Kannada poet, novelist and critic. He was the vice chancellor of the Bangalore University and recipient of many awards including Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award, Padam Shree & Jnanpith award. He was also the head of the committee which recommended making Kannada as the first language of the Karnataka state. The recommendations were later accepted by govt after the now famous “Gokak Agitation” under the leadership of late Dr. Rajkumar – a famous Kannada Actor. For those of you who cannot read Kannada like me, you can 
at Stall No. 288.