In a bid to implement something new in its 40th year, the Kolkata Book Fair (KBF) came up with a move that would not demarcate the historical and traditional fair of the city to just another event on the city’s calendar, but make the event a continuum throughout the year.
Revamping its website brought in many options for the book lovers as well as the visitors like getting regular updates of the proceedings of the fair, using hashtags, posting pictures, videos, blogs, etc.
Anirban Saha, the founder of Kolkata Bloggers, who is in-charge of the KBF website, said that the response was good and encouraging with many posts on Instagram and more than 300 applicants for the newly made ‘Bloggers Connect’.
“15 blogs are already published on the website, and the rest are in progress. This process will continue throughout the year. The ‘bloggers connect’ section saw many people participating. On Instagram, it was 960 posts,” said Saha.
The ‘guest blog’ section was graced by many dignitaries from different fields including the Chairman of The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) East, Kamal Agarwala, who is also a steering committee member of IIIT Kalyani. Other included reputed photographer Arka Dutta, Amrita Bhattacharya, who is a dance teacher in Mamata Shankar Dance Company and Sounak Chattopadhyay, a reputed Indian classical singer.
“This was an attempt to bridge the gap between different sections of the society by the common love of book reading,” said Saha.
Apart from that, one of the newest things in this year’s book fair was the instant updates of the proceedings. It took place in the form of ‘live blog’, where short write ups with pictures of every event were uploaded.
He added, “The live blog posts and tweets were well taken. The blog posts were mostly published within fifteen minutes of the event getting over. The general audience too liked the concept. This takes us to the next level in 360 degrees audience. All queries, whether in online, or radio, traditional media and offline inside the hall were answered.”
In a bid to increase the general audience engagement at the fair, a big LED screen of 10 feet by 8 feet was set up. The visitors were requested to share the photographs they were taking.
Saha said, “From Instagram, around seven people got featured. Three individuals who shot using DSLR were showcased. The first to be showcased was Nishanta Halder. This helped us bridge the gap between the online and offline world, where the photographers could see their photographs being showed on the giant screen and people stopped to watch it. It also created a good online buzz.” Earlier, Kolkata Literature Fest and Bengal Sahitya Utsav, received a good reception, but it was not so unified like KBF.
The handle for KBF this year was #boimela, “It was used for tracking conversations. There were cases when someone required help. We extended help. There was a specific instance where a lady wanted help and wanted to perform. We could not respond in time. We messaged her details where she could contact if she required help.”
Apart from these new introductions, the revamped site has digitized every offline procedure associated with the fair. From booking stalls for stall owners to getting privilege card for buyers, everything that happened offline till now can now be accessed through the website.
“The people who want to book stalls or enquire about it can all be done from the website now. People filling the book lover survey form from the site got a discount of 15 % from stalls. Although many stalls did not acknowledge it, many stalls gave the discount.”
One of the biggest attractions of KBF, which has developed over the last few years, has been the Kolkata Literature Festival. This year marked the third edition of KLF and as usual, many intellectuals of different countries were present in it. It went on over a span of three days with personas like Shirshendu Mukherjee, Bickram Ghosh, Samaresh Majumdar, Dhritiman Chatterjee and many more took the stage.
“Even if not many people got time to attend the sessions of their favourite authors and artists, they could always go to the live blog posts and check what was discussed. I don’t know if any other literary festival has used live blogging. Apart from that, there were various creative people doing online graphics. A very exciting thing was done by Shounak Das, which we shared.”
Apart from all these, a quiz was also conducted online before the book fair began from mid-December till 31 December 2015. The winners were given vouchers worth Rs 1000 from Starmark.
When asked about the future development of the website, Tridib Chaterjee, general secretary of Publishers and Book Guild, said, “The website revamping was mainly schemed to rope in the youth connect to the city. And by the response that we have got is phenomenal. Of course, there will be more developments in the site by the next year.”
A book fair website would be incomplete without information about books. And by next year, one can find information about the latest books coming in at the fair.
“All these modifications and many more like that of the heritage walk that was a special attraction this year would be available on the site soon hopefully,” said Chaterjee.
