Rajamahendravaram: A publishing house churning out books for 94 yrs

Rajamahendravaram: Gollapudi Veera Swamy and Sons, a devotional and religious book publishing house is a pride to the ancient city and also a reputed book house both in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states. The publishing house was founded 94 years ago in the year 1926 by Gollapudi Veera Swamy.

The publishing house also have customers in the countries of USA, Australia, Dubai etc and have its own website bhaksthipustakalu.com along with online sale facility. The house has 1,800 own titles and of them 1,200 are running titles.

The publishing house owns the credit of having 300 to 400 book writers and hundreds of distributors in both Telugu states. The house publishes books relating to astrology,

vaastu, ayurveda, herbal medicines etc along with devotional and religious books in addition to almanac of Tirumala Tirupati Devastanams (TTD) penned by its astana astrologers Tangirala Purnaiaah Siddanthi.

After offset facility came into existence, the traditional publishing houses also changed their

printing presses and turned to offset facility. The prices of books ranges between Rs 9 and Rs 1,350.

The illustrious Gollapudi Veera Swamy used to sell the books in the trains for several years and later entered into publishing sector.

Speaking to 'The Hans India', the publishing house owner GVV Ramana Murthi said that the concept of distribution of devotional books increased among the people at the time of birthdays, weddings, upananayams and other functions.

After demonetisation of currency and increase in usage of mobile phones, the reading habit among the people started slowed down and many preferring online to read books. Meanwhile, for eight years, the government not also purchased books for libraries and because of this many publishing houses were closed due to financial crisis.

About 30,000 almanacs were kept idle in the house because of lockdown, which was announced just before three days of Sarvari Nama Ugadi festival. Running of publishing houses is a difficult task in the present circumstances, he said.