Are you a 'librocubicularist' and suffering from 'Bibliotaph'?

The 9-day book fair began on Saturday, January 5 and will conclude on Sunday, January 13. As the theme of this year’s fair is ‘Readers With Special Needs’, the Theme Pavilion at Hall number 7 of the book fair focused on encouraging reading for people with sight or ear impairment, autism, anxiety problems, attention deficit or hyperactivity disorder.

Theme- Readers With Special Needs

Do you judge a book by its cover? If yes, you are like me, which is being sane at a humongous book fair. For those of you raising their brows sensing an auror; let me foretell something- You think how can he..? or maybe why should someone on God's green earth judge a book by its cover! Well, intellectuals for a long time have debated over this idiom and I don't intend to interject myself into their conversation, but of course you can judge a book by its cover. That’s precisely what the covers of books are for. Judging the book!

That’s how you know what the book is called and who wrote it, and there’s often even plot synopsis on the back. Whether there’s a picture of a pirate clutching a buxom lass with their blouses blowing in the wind, or a knight confronting a fire-breathing dragon in the cover illustration, you’re going to get a fairly accurate impression of the genre.

The font of the title, the size of the print, the kind of binding, the review quotes, all of these things are deliberately chosen to give you information about the style of the content within. There’s a wealth of information right on the cover with which you can make a pretty good judgement of a book.

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While I am not the kind of person described here👇 therefore, this blog is about my visit to the 27th World Book Fair.

Going for more than 40 years solid, New Delhi World Book Fair is among India's longest-running book fairs and has turned into a noteworthy logbook date for any distributor or book-sweetheart deserving at least moderate respect. 

In the 2019 edition, the Theme is focused on READERS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS, with emphasis on the reading needs of children with special needs. The Theme would be projected to carry forward the idea of Inclusive Learning and explore various issues and dimensions of creating, producing and disseminating content for the readers.

An exclusive exhibition of Braille books, audio books, integrated print-braille books, books for differently-abled, children with sight or ear impairment, autistic kids, children/readers with ADHD, behavioral/psychological problems/anxieties was a major highlight of the fair. The thing which struck me the most at this exclusive section was the advertising strategy or maybe being a management student I gave a lot of attention to its detail. I absolutely got spellbound by the way the organizers had put up the pictures and captions.  I have strings attached to marketing and this particular fair was planting smiles on my face,  with every turn that I took. 

Full marks to Hachette Book Group for outstanding management and marketing.

If you are wondering that this book fair was only about books and nerds, you are wrong at a point-blank range. I found amusing items at this place; from a telescope worth ₹8,500 to magnifying glasses, wall clocks, printed mugs, customised t-shirts, toys and even Arabic calligraphy! The very first thing which we came across was the UAE's third largest emirate Sharjah as the 2019 guest of honor. It was an absolute pleasure to walk around their stores and stalls. all of them resonated a feeling of bliss and rich Arabic literature. We also, came across numerous live chat shows which were filmed categorically and I learned a very interesting thing from one such interview. Also, I would be unfair if I don't mention the raining deals on a range of books. Now, getting discounts upto 50% is a thing but, when I found few stalls selling 3 novels for just ₹100 it just blew me away. It was like, next level of deals for me, and believe me folks it had Mario Puzo, Autobiographies, heavy-weight champion books and a lot more to dive in and take a look.

God knows how someone managed to click one such stall with a single human being gazing 😂

The world book fair is, a piquant affair for a person like me! With lots and lots of books and even their covers to be learned from, The New Delhi World Book fair is simply like money to a politician. The more you walk around the more you want to gain from it. Albeit, the entire experience was splendid; I, however, had a glitch for the fair. Due to the ongoing construction work, there was a lot of dust and sand constantly reminding us that we are in the world's pollution capital. Nevertheless, I had a wonderful day walking around the oceanic book fair. 

If you are reading this, it means you love reading. Right? Congrats, you made it till here. And if you want more such blogs to refresh your perspective, sign up and subscribe to TalkingUntalked. 😊