New Delhi: With the growth of e-readers, tablet computers and print on demand technology, ebooks seem to be a popular trend.
At the ongoing World Book Fair here a special enclosure e-book publishers, developers and content providers showcasing their e-books and deliberating with publishers for developing e-books.
A host of publications are already available in English, and now vernacular language books are making their way onto the digital platform.
Rockstand, an eBook and eMagazine application for mobile and tablets unveiled their first regional eBook collection for its readers at the Book Fair.
"This content alone will entice readers in various cities as well as readers who are on look out for regional content like Hindi, Gujrati, Marathi. They will now have an access to all these books on our platform. In total we are introducing regional content in 18 languages soon," says Praveen Rajpal, Founder, Director, RockASAP Retail Pvt. Ltd.
The simple application can be downloaded onto android phones free of cost.
"A book when downloaded from our application is for life and even when you do not have internet access on your phone you can read the downloaded book. The application has also special features like night reading mode, various font sizes, making notes and if you are even tired of reading there the application reads out the book to you," says Rishi M Jha, Digital Head-RockASAP.
Jha further adds that the cost of downloading the book is minimum as compared to the real price of the book. "The lowest cost of a book which we had is priced at Rs 1, was a Chacha Chaudhary comic book," says Nikhil Chandra, Senior Manager, of the company.
The company has also tied up with leading publishing houses in India quite recently.
"We are pleased to announce tie ups with 50 esteemed publishers of our country like Roli Books, World Wide Media, Delhi Press, V&S publishers and others," says Jha.
With this contract Rockstand have now added more than 1000 books from these publishers to its existing stock of 2 million books. These books include books in English, Hindi and various regional languages. Some of the famous titles include Chacha Chaudhary, Billoo and Pinki by Diamond Comics, famous novel titled Tamas by Bhisma Sahini by Rajkamal Prakashan along few other titles like Bhagat Singh Ko Fansi, Chitralekha etc.
Under Katha some famous titles includes "Ambai: Two novellas and a story", "Forsaking Paradise" and "The Essence of Camphor".
Under OM Books, Rockstand have various titles such as "Housefull: The Golden Age of Indian Cinema", "Shahrukh Can" and one of the recently launched books "The Adventures of an intrepid film critic" in digital edition which is exclusively available on Rockstand. These titles have been uploaded and are live on Rockstand.
The company says it is in talks with the government to include their application into the Akash Tablets which are being distributed by the HRD Ministry to students in the country. "We have discussed with the government to include our application the Akash Tablet so that syllabus text books can also be made available for the students to access it and make notes," says Rajpal.
"After the Book Fair we will also be holding an awareness campaign in 3000 Delhi and NCR region schools so that few syllabus books can be included in our application for easy access to students," Rajpal told PTI.
A special feature of the application is that students as ranging between secondary school to far as university level and those preparing for secondary school examinations can also give mock test based on his syllabus and compare his scores with others before the exam.
"We have also approached JNU and other Universities to include books from their syllabus, so that students can avail the facilities which we are providing them," says Rajpal.
Social networking for book lovers and authors is also an option which the company has made available to their users. "We also have special feature, like facebook we also have our own social networking site where authors and readers can interact with each other. Authors can also launch their books in the application," says Nikhil Chandra.
PTI
