There was a time when coffee table books and guidebooks made the major chunk of annual book sales. Bookstores catered to tourists and the occasional local, making the book business a seasonal one. Even until the pandemic, the vast majority of Nepalis were only reading popular bestsellers (think Paulo Coelho and Chetan Bhagat) and those mandated by their curriculum or career. Reading for pleasure or self-improvement wasn’t the norm but the Covid-19 lockdowns changed that, say those in the book business. Now, Nepalis are reading more than ever and their reading tastes are varied. Book businesses have had to up their game to cater to the demand.
“We have more books coming in than ever before,” says Rishab Sharma of Pilgrims Book House. “Our selection is based on what’s popular internationally as well as publishers’ recommendations.” Fiction, he adds, seems to be an all-time favorite while self-help and business-related books are right up there. Manish Sharma Ghimire, founder of Book Corner Nepal, agrees with Sharma and says there are more people reading self-help these days because it helps them make sense of these turbulent times. “People are also recommending books to their friends as tools to cope. We have many people looking for certain books that they heard about from their friends. ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear is one book that became popular by word of mouth,” says Ghimire.
Social media, especially Instagram and Tiktok, seems to further fuel people’s interest and curiosity in books. The book/reading communities in these platforms have shone the spotlight on many authors and their works. Fantasy series by Cassandra Clare, Sarah J. Maas, and Leigh Bardugo are a few examples of books social media helped popularize. Dhan Bahadur Lamsal, proprietor of Fewa Book Shop in Lakeside, Pokhara, says in the recent years he has had to tweak his business module to include promotions on Instagram and other social media. His daughters handle this aspect of the business because without promoting reading and his bookstore on social media, he might as well as shut shop permanently. “A lot of youngsters come to our store asking for books they have heard about on Tiktok. We need to be abreast of what’s popular and trending,” he says.
According to bookstore owners, the readership is primarily in English. Books in Nepali don’t sell many copies though there is a niche crowd that reads literature in our native language. Fiction sells more than non-fiction and even in fiction, fantasy seems to be the preferred genre. At any point of time, there seems to be a crowd-favorite. Ghimire says books adapted into Netflix series are widely popular. People often read the book before watching the show or if the show was good, they pick up the book expecting it to be better. Uday Agarwal of Books Nepal says collectors’ editions of such series have a good market as people want to own a piece of their favorite fantasy world.
Madhab Maharjan, owner of Mandala Book Point in Jamal, Kathmandu, says people are finally getting into reading. Many teenagers and young adults started reading during the pandemic as they had all this extra time that they didn’t want to waste. They were looking to improve their skills and learn about new things. “Today, our education system is multidisciplinary and isn’t limited to textbooks. That, I feel, has made reading compulsory,” says Maharjan.
However, he laments that ours isn’t a conducive environment for reading. There aren’t good public libraries and not everyone can afford to buy every book they want to read. Sharma of Pilgrims Book House says books have become expensive internationally after the pandemic because of labor shortage. Books that earlier used to cost around Rs 600-700 are now priced at Rs 900-1,000.
On a brighter note, there are some establishments that let people borrow books for a nominal fee. Book Corner Nepal lets you borrow two a month for a monthly membership fee of Rs 500. Sanu ko Pustakalaya in Manbhawan, Lalitpur, a memorial library founded by Priyansha Silwal, is open from 11 am to 6 pm from Monday to Saturday. You can borrow two books at a time for an annual membership of Rs 1,000, excluding a refundable deposit of Rs 500. Silwal says people seem to prefer fiction more than non-fiction. Those who read non-fiction gravitate towards self-help, books on startups, and psychology, she says. The biggest challenge of running a library, she says, is definitely preserving the paperbacks. Apart from maintaining the books, Sanu ko Pustakalaya wants to work on its children’s section as a lot of parents come searching for books for their 10-to 14-year-olds.
This culture of parents choosing books for their children worries Maharjan. “Many parents still don’t bring children into bookstores. They will buy the books for them but letting children roam around books and choose for themselves will foster a love for books and reading,” he says. Children, he adds, should be encouraged to maintain a reading journal. It will help cultivate a writing habit as well as develop their analytical skills from early on. However, Maharjan admits the change he has seen in people’s perception of books and reading is a hopeful one. People want to discover new writers and voices, he says. He believes access to the internet has made it possible for people to know about upcoming authors and prize winners. Hearing authors talk about their books makes them more intriguing, he says.
The good thing is that while earlier Nepalis had to wait a long time to get their hands on new releases, that isn’t the case now. Sharma says books used to be first published in the US or the UK and then the Indian edition would come out months later. Since Nepal gets books mostly from Indian publishers, that set us back at least a year. But now books are being launched simultaneously in the US, the UK, and India and publishers also take pre-orders which makes them available on release day or soon thereafter.
Sujan Chaudhary of Books Mantra says Nepali publishing houses are also getting the rights for popular titles and printing the books here. There are currently over 25 books being reprinted in Nepal. “We definitely have to work on the paper quality but this system has made books cheaper and more readily available,” says Chaudhary. Maharjan, on the other hand, believes the media can play a crucial role in
further popularizing books and reading. “Book reviews and discussions can spark an interest in those who have yet to discover the fascinating world that is reading,” he says.
