World Book Fair draws over 2 mn visitors

The New Delhi World Book Fair-2025 saw a record footfall of over 2 million visitors, highlighting India’s growing love for the written word, believe organisers as well as writers and readers who attended the nine-day-long annual literary gala.

There was plenty of jostling and elbowing as book enthusiasts flocked to Bharat Mandapam — the venue for NDWBF 2025 from February 1-9 — to catch a glimpse of the authors they admire or to hunt for their next favourite page-turner. Featuring over 2,000 publishers and exhibitors, including the giants in Hindi and English publications such as Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Bloomsbury, Raj Kamal Prakashan and Vani Prakashan, the event pulled out all stops to make the event a haven for book lovers.

“‘Republic@75’, the theme this year, served as a platform for the event to explore the country’s cultural heritage and its aspirations for the future. It proved to be a hit among the readers — young and old alike. The NDWBF started in 1972, and from that year, the ever-increasing response from the people of Delhi is what we expected, and we are getting it as well. This time, the footfall was excellent, extraordinary and my prediction is — though the exact official numbers are yet to be released — that we will cross 25-lakh mark. This is great. The footfalls have increased by almost 20 per cent compared to last year. This only shows that the reading habit in India is not declining at all. In fact, it is increasing, and the publication market is also growing at an 18 per cent rate,” National Book Trust (NBT) chairman Milind Sudhakar Marathe said.

With people from all walks of life attending the much-loved fair’s 32nd edition, publishing houses noted that the literary choices of buyers was a diverse mix, with everything from fiction and non-fiction to self-help, sci-fi and children’s books finding their audience. For instance, Penguin Random House India (PRHI) witnessed a major bump in the sales figures of its fiction works from previous years along with a spike in demand for books by Indian authors such as Akshat Gupta’s ‘The Hidden Hindu’ and ‘The Naga Warriors’, Nona Uppal’s ‘Fool Me Twice’ or aSrishti Chaudhary’s ‘Lallan Sweets’.

“It is a mixed bag. People are buying everything that we have offered them. But if I have to pick up things that are moving better than another, fiction, of course, is a lot better than I had seen in the past. Apart from fiction, I see a lot of self-help, personal development and better me (books), trending,” said Manoj Satti, senior vice-president (sales and products and division head) at PRHI.