For publishers seeking growth, these aren’t obscure local events – they’re the main event. Time to wake up and smell the Kaapi!
No apologies for yet another story about India’s publishing scene. The numbers are staggering, even to a seasoned global commentator like me.
Take the fourth Kanchipuram District Book Festival, for example. Where? My point exactly. This is not New Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad or Chennai (it is close to Chennai), but with the multi-million-visitor events still to come this season, Kanchipuram, which closed on 29 December 2025, logged 8 lakh (800,000) visitors across 11 days – figures that would make London or Frankfurt green with envy.
Organised by the district administration and BAPASI (Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India), the fair generated ₹6 million ($72,000) in sales from 100,000+ titles by 1,000 authors. This, remember, a district-level event, not even a state capital. And these numbers represent pure retail revenue in less than two weeks.
The Metro Heavyweights: Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Delhi
Kanchipuram is merely the opening act. The 2025 Kolkata International Book Fair drew 2.7 million visitors with ₹250 million ($3 million) in sales across 1,057 stalls. Hyderabad’s just completed incarnation saw 90,000 attendees on a single Sunday, with total footfall approaching 1.6 million. The New Delhi World Book Fair 2025 recorded over 2 million visitors across 2,000+ publishers.
The View From The Beach
These are mostly not trade fairs, though many have professional elements – they’re direct-to-consumer marketplaces where educational titles and regional-language content dominate.
The Indian book market is valued at $10.4 billion (2024), growing at 18% annually, with 71% concentrated in educational publishing. Yet international publishers remain underrepresented.
The opportunity is stark: low-barrier entry points to test regional preferences, build distribution networks, and access the world’s third-largest English-language market – where other languages present even bigger opportunities.
As one BAPASI official noted, “Publishers laugh all the way to the bank.”
2026: The Numbers Will Only Grow
With the 49th Kolkata Book Fair (January–February 2026) expecting Argentina as focal theme, and Delhi’s World Book Fair expanding (these two events alone clocked 5 million visitors between them this year), the message is clear: India’s book fairs operate at a scale the West barely comprehends.
For publishers seeking growth, these aren’t obscure local events – they’re the main event. Time to wake up and smell the Kaapi!
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
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