Here’s to bookmarking through the pandemic

The year 2017 was the first time Tiruvannamalai-based Thannaram Publications took part at the Chennai Book Fair. The young company works to promote books on environmental conservation, Gandhian ideology and conscious parenting. And over the 13 days at the fair, it bagged a large number of orders despite the niche themes it works with.

Last year following the pandemic, several book fairs across the state — including Madurai, Erode and Neyveli —were cancelled, and for publishers like Thannaram, what this meant was not just a dip in business, but a lost opportunity to network, which is instrumental for their growth.

To bridge this gap, young, small-time publishing houses in the state have come up with innovative public engagement programmes. Many of them lead up to February 24, when, much to their relief, the Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI), has finally scheduled the Chennai Book Fair.

"After the lockdown, we decided to make free copies of close to 300 of our books available on our website — all originally priced between `400 and `450. They included social activist Krishnammal Jagannathan’s autobiography and Jeyamohan’s book of short stories, ‘Yaanai Doctor’ (The Elephant Doctor)," says a team member of Thannaram.

Following the cancellation of physical events, the team also upped its scanty online presence by organising virtual discussions on their books and authors on literary groups. "We also looked for people who — after reading some of our books — brought about meaningful changes like going sustainable, and did short videos of their testimony," says the team member. "We work out of a sustainable, service-based community in Tiruvannamalai. Since our inception, we hadn’t even made ourselves available on Kindle. Now, we’re using every online medium in our reach."

Many times, a book fair that draws up to a lakh footfalls a day is a platform to tap into newer readers. In a physical stall, authors make themselves available for interactions and the publishers have the opportunity to incite interest and curiosity among visitors.

With all this gone, the only way to reach out to readers is by going to them, realised Chaeyan Brothers, the siblings originally from Alanganallur, Madurai. The writer-publisher brothers, Chandru and Karthikeyan, first set up a stall on a stone bench on the foothills of Annamalai Hills in Tiruvannamalai. Soon after, they transformed their Royal Enfield Thunderbird into a mobile bookstore that over the last four months, has covered the Tiruvannamalai, Trichy, Madurai, and is now touring Chennai.

The brothers have set up their mobile bookshop everywhere from highway motels where they stop for tea, to a beach ride to watch the moonrise in Besant Nagar. "It started as a means to cope, but we have sold more than ever," says Chandru. "More importantly it has opened up to us a new world of patrons. We had sadhus in Tiruvannamalai buy from us and transwomen at the Marina engage in discussions on social evolution — which is the theme of our second book. It has given us more stories to take home."