Amazon offers books in eight Indian languages

The world's largest e-tailor, Amazon, on Monday hosted one-lakh titles in eight Indian languages on its online platform to celebrate "Mother tongue Day", at attractive prices with discounts till Tuesday.

"Our online Mathrubasha Bookstore aims to promote titles in regional languages and boost budding regional authors and publishers across the country," said the Indian arm of the e-commerce major in a statement here.

The books are in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu.

The selection has been made to help customers find books easily by classifying them according to titles, publishing houses, genres, hard-covers, paperbacks and in board (bound).

"Regional books have retained popularity, with customers and the category growing 80 per cent and demand for them from tier-2 and tier-3 cities growing at 60 per cent annually," Amazaon India Director Noor Patel said.

Using the website's (amazon.in) intuitive search and browse experience, customers can find books from genres like business and economics, personal development and self-help, health and fitness, history and politics, romance, collection of poems, crime, thriller and mystery, religion and spirituality.

"Purpose of a Mother Tongue Day is to connect the people with their origin and roots. Besides propagation, the Day helps in evaluating if we are moving in the right direction," said 'Musafir Cafe' author Divya Prakash Dubey.

Noting that e-commerce had a key role in propagation of vernacular literature, Dubey said the reach of regional language books in towns and cities across the country had grown manifold.

Observing that mother tongue had an impact in the formation of an individual, 'Panchatantram' author T.V.L. Narasimha Rao said the first language had an important role in shaping one's thoughts and emotions.

--IANS

fb/ahm/vm