New India Bookshop opens in Central London

steven_ber

The following news is from the India Digest - the High Commission of India's fortnightly Newsletter.
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A showroom for Indian books that intends to cater to the growing market among people from India as well as Britons interested in the country, opened in London last month.

Indian Bookshelf, 55 Warren Street, London W1T 5NW,

The store — which is spread over two floors and stocks its books under various subject heads — has been set up by Star publishers Distributors, with the backing of the Federation of Indian Publishers, It has the support of 150 leading publishers in india.

The Indian Bookshelf is something of a bookshop and a showroom, which means it will try to get for you what it does not have on the premises, and it promises a good collection to choose from on the premises.

The store has filled the vacuum created when a little shop called Books From India closed down some years ago.

Located on Museum Street, the shop was the only place in Europe where you could find, as the name said, books from India.

Run by Sriram Vidyarathi, Books From India had kept the flag of Indian publications flying in London for much of its life.

“India is the third-largest publisher of books after the US and Britain,” Amar Varma, managing director of Indian Bookshelf, said. “More than 60,000 books are published in India every year.”

Indian publishers are not as effective as their counterparts in the US or in Britain at promoting Indian books across the globe, Varma said. “But we are trying here in our own small way.”

The showroom has books in English and also in major Indian languages.

The launch of the store comes at a time when India has been declared the ‘World Capital of Books’ for 2003.
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steven_ber

Click here for the website for the Indian Bookshop