The 40th Chennai book fair will begin tomorrow on January 6 at St. George School on Poonamallee High Road and will end on January 19. Over 700 book stalls have been set up for the fair in alphabetical order. As the cash crunch still prevails due to demonetisation, BAPASI (Book Sellers and Publishers Association of South India) has introduced an internal token system at the venue which would ease it out for people to make purchases.

Token system introduced

According to TOI report, Olivannan Gopalakrishnan, Treasurer BAPASI said that the Association which has been organising the Chennai Book Fair for 39 years has made many notches user-friendly. “Our first and immediate concern was the cash crunch resulting from demonetisation. So we introduced an internal token system in denominations of Rs 10, Rs 20, Rs 50 and Rs 100, which can be bought to purchase books and snacks,” he said.

POS machines increased

“Also, since many stall owners have been unable to get their own point of sale (POS) machines in recent months, we have increased our own POS machines to 50 this year,” Gopalakrishnan added.

He further added that a major share of the stalls will be taken up by Tamil publishers.

“Tamil publishers are usually apprehensive about exploring contemporary platforms such as Kindle, and a fair like this one ends up offering tremendous scope for the audiences they target,” he said.

source”cnbc”