Demand for Hindi books has risen by over 60 per cent, reveals Amazon

**New Delhi:**With increasing Internet penetration and ease of buying Hindi books online, the demand for Hindi books has seen a rise of over 60 per cent in the past six months,according to a top Amazon India official.

During this period, the selection of Hindi books has risen by close to 40 per cent,says Noor Patel,Director (Category Management) at Amazon India.

The Amazon Hindi bookstore was launched in April 2014 with over 23,000 titles. Since then,it has been offering a vast selection of books ranging from literature and fiction,inspiring biographies,children’s books,classic novels by famous authors including Premchand,Gulzar,JavedAkhtar,Harivansh Rai Bachchan,Kamaleshwar,Yashpal and a selection of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award winning books.

“Additionally, there is a vast collection of referencebooks and textbooks to help students and job aspirants preparefor interviews and tests.

Customers can also enjoy reading Hindi translation of more than 800 bestselling English books and a wide selection of books in the ‘Language, Linguistics and writing’ is also available for customers who want to learn other languages like English,Tamil,Urdu,etc.,through Hindi,” says Patel.

“We have a buyable selection of about 30000 Hindi titles -the top-selling Hindi titles are Ikshvaku Ke vanshaj by Amish Tripathi, Rahasya (The Secret) by Rhonda Byrne and Meluha Ke Mritunjay by Amish.

We have been receiving orders from remote areas and far-flung towns like Bhatinda,Rajahmundry, Solan, Ranikhet, Joshimath, Darbhanga, Buxar,Bharuch, Erode, Sagar, Hissar, Dhanbad and Kolhapur,” he told PTI.

Ikshvaku ke Vanshaj, the Hindi version of Amish’s latest novel Scion of Ikshvaku, debuted in Nielsen’s Bookscan at No 4 in August,one of the highest debut rankings for a Hindi book on the list.

Besides Hindi,Amazon India has regional book stores in Kannada and Tamil currently. “We had launched India’s largest Kannada books,movies and music store in October last year with more than 7300 books,4700 movies and 2500 music albums.

We have seen a 30 per cent growth in the demand for Kannada books just in the past three months,“says Patel.

PTI