To popularise books on Mahatma Gandhi and cater to the ever-changing reading habits, a city-based trust has decided to come up with their own tablet, lending people the facility to read Gujarati and Hindi e-books published by them on the Father of the Nation.
Kindle-like e-book tablet, which the Navjivan Trust is planning to bring, will have 170 books mostly on Mahatma Gandhi allowing people to read those in Hindi and Gujarati.
This announcement was made by the managing trustee of Navjivan Trust Vivek Desai here today while launching 10 different editions, including 4 e-book versions, of "Hind Swaraj", a book written by Gandhiji in 1909.
Till now, the trust, established in 1919 by Gandhiji himself, has sold around 10,500 online versions of around 170 of their books, converted into e-books, which according to Desai, is the key motivating factor for the trust to venture into the territory of an exclusive tablet parallel to online conglomerate Amazon's "Kindle" e-book reader.
"During last two years, around 10,500 e-books of 170 different titles published by them, mostly on Gandhiji, have been sold in the online market. Our English version e-books are sold on Amazon, while Gujarati e-books are sold through "e-Shabda" portal" said Desai.
"We are seeing a paradigm shift in people's reading habits, as a small tablet allows people to carry hundreds of books in it. Thus, we have decided to come up with our own tablet, like Amazon's Kindle, so that more people can read Navjivan publications, mostly on Gandhiji, through our tablet," said Desai.
Giving further details, digital and print publishing consultant of Navjivan Trust Apurva Ashar said that regional language e-books are not compatible with Kindle.
"At present, Kindle does not support Gujarati or Hindi language. Thus, we have decided to create a new platform to reach out to people wanting to read Mahatma's books in those languages. We are in process to make a tablet equivalent to Kindle. This device will allow readers to type and search in Gujarati or Hindi," said Ashar.
As part of Trust's centenary celebrations in 2019,
Desai also announced to launch a graphical autobiography of Gandhiji.
"The Trust will complete 100 years in 2019. As part of our celebrations, we have decided to launch Gandhiji's autobiography in graphical format, which will be like a comic book depicting entire life of Gandhiji. We have planned to launch it on October 2 this year," announced Desai.
According to Ashar, this graphical autobiography of Gandhiji will have 150 pages.
"Each page will have around 9 frames. It will be like a comic strip. We will showcase Gandhiji's entire life and journey in the graphical format. Each frame (picture) will have some text to describe the picture. We have planned to launch this 150-page book in Hindi, English and Gujarati," said Ashar.
