Confusion prevails over the Book Fair venue but publishers are looking at other sites to reach out to their customers. And what better location than educational campuses?

After Jadavpur University, it’s the turn of Presidency College to organise a book fair.

The fair on the College Street campus, organised by the Presidency College Students Union (PCSU), was held on September 12 and 13.

Fourteen publishers had participated in Book Fair ’07, a first-of-its-kind event at the college. They include Penguin Books India, Macmillan, Anthem Press and “not-so-big names” like Dipayan Publishers and Paschim Banga Itihas Sansad. The students also performed street plays and screened documentaries as part of the two-day fair.

“Several people had frowned on our decision to organise a book fair in the boi para, but we have had a good response from both publishers and students,” said Dipanjan Sinha, the general secretary of the PCSU.

“One reason for holding the event was to promote the culture of reading books at the college. We plan to make the fair an annual event,” said an organiser.

For publishers, book fairs on campuses provide them with an opportunity to deal “directly with the end-customer” and fetch them the much-needed publicity before the mega event of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild.

“These smaller fairs are a good way of reaching out to students and teachers, who make up a good percentage of our customers,” said an official of Penguin India.

For the UK-based Anthem Press, a newcomer in India’s publishing arena, the Presidency fair was a “perfect” prelude to the Guild’s fair.

“Our key customers are students, especially those doing master’s or M.Phil. The College Street fair was the best platform to reach out to them,” said Partha Sarathi Mallik, the national manager of Anthem Press. “It also helped us prepare for the mega Book Fair.”

The Jadavpur University fair this year will be held on September 26 and 27.