Demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes has taken fun out of book lovers. Held well over a month after the demonetisation move was announced, the Hyderabad Book Festival has seen a drop of 20 per cent in overall sales as the number of footfalls fell to about 8.4 lakh this year from 10 lakh last year.

Though short supply of new notes and ₹100 notes had impacted the overall sales, it is small publishers that had been hit most as they could not quickly mobilise swipe machines or quick enough to latch onto a mobile wallet account. The number of stalls came down to 290 this year from 360 last year. “There is no drop in sales for established publishers but small players took the brunt,” K Chandramohan, General Secretary of the Hyderabad Book Fair Society, told Business Line .

Plunging sales

For Veekshanam , a Telugu monthly which focuses on socio-economical and political issues, sales dropped by 30-50 per cent. “We have not compiled the final figures but there was a huge drop in sales, which should be 30-50 per cent less thanlast year’s numbers,” N Venugopal, Editor of Veekshanam , said.

Meanwhile, Sheik Sadiq Ali, a former journalist who sells books on a push-cart, said he could do only 35 per cent of what he sold last year.

“We sold books worth ₹3.5 lakh last year, but this year it dropped to ₹1 lakh,” he said.

Ali, who employed four boys to man the push cart, said the numbers just added up to his costs.

“After paying a rental of ₹14,000 towards the stall and wages for the four boys, I could just come out without losses,” he said.

A good number of stall owners had dropped the number of titles expecting poor turnout. “Majority of the visitors were asking for payment options like Paytm or swipe machines. We were not ready,” said a writer, who set up a stall for the first time.

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