Although the book marketing scenario looks discouraging in Goa, a lot has been happening recently as a counter to the same. Konkani Bhasha Mandal (KBM), the oldest organization in Goa working for the cause of Konkani has now dedicated themselves to the publication of children’s books. “Reading is a habit and you need to develop the habit from childhood. Hence we realized that a lot needs to be done on this front,” says Chetan Acharya, President of KBM that released 20 books of stories in January this year.
KBM has also put in efforts to develop books and CDs of Konkani rhymes for children. All this has huge demand amongst children, parents and teachers. KBM’s concern of marketing however, still lingered on. The productions had to reach the right audience and there wasn’t a mechanism in place. The responsibility was than shouldered by one of its members and Sahitya Academy award winning author Anwesha Singbal who recently started a partnership business along with Amol Kamat called Abhinav Creationz (AC). “We dealt with book publications and designing and after realizing the large vacuum that existed on the marketing front, we ventured into it,” says Singbal. Abhinav Creationz has till date visited more than 80 schools and the response is very good. Every school has a library fund that often remains unutilized. Or at the end of the year, teachers visit the nearest book stalls and buy anything available. We have been able to capture this area and the schools are more than happy to receive these books that they didn’t have access to till date. AC has also conducted a few exhibitions in schools where they had direct access to students and parents in particular since the exhibitions were mostly on annual gathering or result days.
A panel discussion on Augmenting Konkani Book sales was held at Dogears Bookshop, Margao. One of the panelists, author Walter Menezes and treasurer of the Dalgado Konkani Akademi (DKA) felt that while most sales of DKA were from institutional purchases, the need to have more retail buyers is urgent. Walter was of the opinion that that more books related to non-fiction genres needs to be published in order to generate a wider interest in the language.
While speaking on the panel, another Sahitya Akademi-award winning author, Damodar Mauzo reiterated his belief in Goan’s love for Konkani and felt that this natural affection needs to be only tapped into to create more readers of Konkani literature. Damodar felt that maybe books were not sold in the numbers that they should be primarily because books were not easily accessible to readers.
“Gadgets like mobiles and laptops have taken the place of books in several houses and it is only through these interactions that we will be able to instill their faith back in the books,” says Amol Kamat of AC. All that needs to be done now is to reach out to the right audience by using all possible marketing strategies.
