The algorithmic aesthetic at the World Book Fair, 2025
The World Book Fair in New Delhi has become a marketplace where viral-friendly books and hyper-consumerism overshadow intellectual engagement.
Every year, the World Book Fair presents itself as a grand celebration of literature, promising diversity, critical engagement, and a space for dialogue. Yet, as one walks through its bustling halls, it becomes clear that the fair operates less like an intellectual arena and more like a marketplace. Books are displayed like any other commodity, their placement determined by sales potential rather than literary merit. The space, ostensibly meant to foster reading culture, instead prioritizes market-driven aesthetics — virality over depth, trendiness over criticality, and profit over engagement.
The fair’s organization mirrors the logic of digital platforms where algorithms dictate visibility and engagement, reinforcing what is already popular rather than expanding intellectual horizons. Just as social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok reward viral, easily digestible content over deep, critical engagement, the book fair seems to operate on a similar principle — prioritizing titles that fit a “bookstagrammable” aesthetic. When books become mere props in the performance of intellectual life, the danger is that reading itself is reduced to an act of passive consumption rather than an engagement with knowledge that can challenge, transform, and disrupt the world around us.
The consequence of this shift is a literary culture that prioritizes marketability over meaning, virality over vitality and spectacle over substance. In a space where books are curated for their aesthetic appeal and sales potential rather than their intellectual or political significance, literature risks losing its role as a site of critique and resistance. When the act of reading is subsumed into the logic of consumerism — where books function more as commodities than catalysts for thought — voices that challenge, provoke, and unsettle are inevitably pushed to the margins. This is not merely a loss for the literary world; it is a broader cultural crisis, one where the space for dissent, radical imagination, and intellectual rigour is shrinking.
The curation at the fair felt less like an effort to foster intellectual diversity and more like a marketing exercise, with publishers and booksellers capitalizing on trends rather than cultivating literary depth. Walking through the stalls, the visitor is struck by the overwhelming repetition of genres that cater to escapism, self-improvement solutions to structural issues, and corporate ambition. There are plenty of self-help manuals that promise success and productivity, fantasy bestsellers that offer an escape from reality, business and leadership books written by corporate elites, and memoirs of industry titans selling dreams of meritocratic achievement. Meanwhile, politically charged, intellectually demanding works are either absent or pushed to obscure corners.
One of the most glaring trends at the fair is the disproportionate space given to the genres of self-help, spirituality and motivational literature, and to competitive exam preparations and coaching centre stalls. Their dominant presence indicates that the fair has become an extension of a competitive, careerist mindset where books are primarily tools for atomistic-advancement of individuals rather than sources of leisure, literary pleasure and intellectual engagement. Titles like Atomic Habits, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and Rich Dad Poor Dad dominate the shelves, reflecting a publishing industry eager to reinforce narratives of personal success and wealth accumulation while sidestepping discussions on systemic inequality.
The presence of these books in itself is not the problem per se — it is their total dominance that is a cause for concern. The fair, which should ideally be a space for readers to discover new and challenging ideas, instead functions like a marketplace where publishers push what is already “trending.” Books that offer radical political critique, question dominant narratives, or challenge state and corporate power are either absent or relegated to obscure corners.
A critical examination of the books missing from the mainstream stalls reveals an unsettling trend. Works that interrogate caste, gender, labour exploitation, and state violence — such as A Part Apart by Ashok Gopal, The Many Lives of Syeda X by Neha Dixit, From Phansi Yard by Sudha Bharadwaj, India’s Forgotten Country by Bela Bhatia, or feminist, queer and Dalit literature in general — are either side lined or completely absent. The absence of independent publishers (like Zubaan Books), the primary platforms for such voices, further limits access to dissenting perspectives.
Beyond the books themselves, the nature of engagement at the fair raises deeper concerns about the transformation of reading culture in the age of social media. Ideally, a book fair should serve as a space for intellectual exchanges, debates, and discovery — a site where readers, writers, and publishers converge to celebrate literature in its most expansive form. Yet, the event increasingly feels less about fostering a community of engaged readers and more about performing literary consumption.
The rise of social media has fundamentally altered how people interact with books. Reading, once considered an intimate, reflective practice, is now entangled with digital self-fashioning, where books are as much about aesthetics and social capital as they are about knowledge. At the fair, this manifests in highly performative behaviours — selfies with stacks of bestsellers, vlogs documenting book hauls, and Instagram reels featuring meticulously arranged bookshelves. Buying books is no longer just an intellectual investment; it has become a means of constructing an aspirational persona, signalling seamlessly arranged progressiveness, and curating an identity that aligns with a particular online aesthetic.
This shift has led to the commodification of reading culture in ways that mirror the broader trends of consumerism. Books, much like fashion or luxury goods, are increasingly marketed as objects of desire rather than repositories of critical thought. The obsession with the “bookstagrammable” shelf shows how literature is being absorbed into the broader logic of influencer culture. Just as social media thrives on aspirational imagery and lifestyle branding, reading too is now subject to a kind of aesthetic performativity, where owning the “right” books matters more than engaging with their ideas.
The book fair, rather than resisting this trend, seems to accommodate and thrive on it. Stalls are arranged to maximize their photographic appeal, with eye-catching displays and neatly stacked bestsellers designed to be visually appealing in a digital space. The very architecture of the fair reinforces a culture where books are consumed as symbols rather than tools for critical engagement. Conversations about literature, if they happen at all, are often secondary to the act of capturing the moment, of documenting one’s participation in the literary spectacle rather than immersing oneself in it.
This raises troubling questions about the future of literary culture. If reading is increasingly shaped by the demands of visibility and virality, what happens to books that do not lend themselves to easy consumption? Dense, challenging, and politically charged literature does not fit into the fast-paced aesthetics of digital culture. It resists summarization into a viral quote, refuses to be reduced to a trendy hashtag, and demands patience rather than instant gratification. The fact that such books were largely absent — or pushed to the margins — at the fair is no coincidence. The event, much like the algorithmic structures that govern online engagement, rewards what is easily consumable and market-friendly while sidelining works that provoke discomfort, dissent, or deep thought.
If literature is to serve as a space for critical inquiry rather than mere entertainment, readers, writers, and publishers must push back against this market logic. This means actively seeking out independent presses, demanding better representation of marginalized voices, and resisting the lure of algorithm-driven literary consumption.
If the book fair is a reflection of our reading habits, then its transformation into a hyper-consumerist spectacle signals a deeper erosion of public engagement with critical thought. The question we must ask, then, is not just what we are reading, but what we are being discouraged from reading — and who benefits from that erasure. The result? A flattening of literary culture, where the fair becomes a space of hyper-consumption rather than intellectual exploration. When literature is reduced to lifestyle branding and viral aesthetics, where does that leave voices that challenge, provoke, and unsettle?
Anjali Chauhan is a PhD research scholar at the department of Political Science, University of Delhi.