Kitab Ghar offering books for all!

Retail booksellers, academicians, librarians, teachers and students – all can be seen hurdled at Kitab Ghar, a popular book store in southern Bihar. Spread in an area of 1,000 sq ft area and strategically located in Bihar Sharif town of five lakh population in Nalanda district, this unique book shop has been into book distribution business for last 45 years. Shailendra Kumar of All About Book Publishing met Deepak Suchanti, proprietor, Kitab Ghar to discover more about this landmark book store. Started by Late Kapoor Chand Suchanti, father of Deepak Chand Suchanti, in the 1960s, Kitab Ghar has been a popular destination among educated people since those early days. Kitab Ghar is broadly segmented into three sections: front, middle and back to store books for different clientele. The books for retail have been shelved in the front while those for distribution and stock are stored in the middle and back side sections respectively. This store has been serving as an agency to various publication houses such as Student Friends and Bharti Bhawan (Patna) for educational, academic and competitive exam books for school and college students; JB Publications (Mathura) and Master Mind Publications (Meerut) for children books, along with fiction, literature and motivational books from Pustak Mahal (New Delhi).

Deepak SuchantiOther genres available at Kitab Ghar include: general, cooking, astrology, magic and others. Also, this book store boasts of supplying a huge volume of books to three districts of Bihar, viz. Nawada, Nalanda and Shekhpura, in addition to adjoining districts of Munger and Lakhisarai. “We also supply books of NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) and BTC (Bihar Text Books) to schools, colleges and libraries across the region,” informed Deepak. Around 5,000 book lovers visit Kitab Ghar every month; among them about 50 are foreigners looking for books on ‘learning Hindi’. “The foreign buyers are predominantly from Buddhist countries like Japan, Cambodia, China, etc,” told Deepak.

With the newly constructed Nalanda International University he expects more (student) readers as well as book stores and libraries. Besides, constant growing of engineering and medical colleges in the region signals a new prospect to expand business in future. “In connection to such scenario, we are planning to expand the area. The stock and distribution sections will also be shifted to another space,” he told. On asking about the threat from online book stores, Deepak replied, “As far as online book delivery is concerned, we do not face any threat since the business model is ineffective in the region. Kitab Ghar still rules in its traditional way of book distribution in Bihar,” he concluded.