This year's 'Boi Mela' saw the tightest-ever security and the publication of increased number of books compared to that of last year. Around 1,200 books were published last year while the number increased to 1,349 this year (as of February 27).

Another significant aspect of this year's fair was a new rule that barred the participant publishers from displaying and selling books published by other publishers, although most of the participants did not follow the rule.

Like previous years, the participants displayed and sold their own publications along with books published by others, ignoring the restriction. The fair organisers did not take any action against the violation of the rules.

"We introduced the rule to encourage the genuine publishers and discourage the seasonal publishing houses at the same time. This was appreciated by all the participants," said Jalal Ahmed, deputy director of Bangla Academy.

He said the rule will be strictly enforced from the next year.

The participants feared that they would lose customers as the tight security might discourage the regular visitors. But every day they saw hundreds of visitors waited in queues for checking in metal detectors before entering the fair.

Although it was annoying for the visitors and disrupted the fair's free environment, they responded positively to the security arrangements. Except the Valentine's Day bomb blasts at TSC near the fair venue, nothing untoward happened.

"This year the sale was better. But the number of customers was less than we expected on holidays and of course on the Ekushey February, the day we sell almost half of the whole month," said Mohammad Tanveer of Pearl Publications.

"Still we are happy with the total arrangement," Tanveer added.

Undoubtedly, Humayun Ahmed was the best selling writer in this year's book fair, according to most of the participating publishers. They however hold differing views on the best selling publishing house.

Officials of Bangla Academy claimed that they are the best selling house in this year's fair. But a few other publishing houses also claimed to be the best, although they would not make their sales figures public.

"We have sold 10 times of the sale of Bangla Academy," said Sanaul Kabir Chowdhury of Anya Prokash. Bangla Academy published 54 new books ahead of this fair.

This year Bangla Academy is celebrating its 50th founding anniversary. To celebrate the golden jubilee, Bangla Academy arranged a number of special discussions apart from the regular discussion programmes of the Ekushey.

The academy has also celebrated the birth centenary of seven prominent writers -- Syed Mujtaba Ali, Muhammad Monsuruddin, Maulana Akram Kha, Ismail Hossain Sirajee, Kaliprosanno Ghosh, Hari Prasad Shastri and Nabinchan Sen.

Four organisations arranged voluntary blood donation programmes at the fair.

"We have collected 1,649 bags of blood so far from this fair with three more days in hand. The total collection of last year was 1,400 bags," said Sheikh Mohammad Faisal, coordinator of Quantum Foundation, a voluntary organisation.

At the closing ceremony of the 28th version of the Bangla Academy Book Fair, three best stalls will be awarded. This year the number of stalls was 304.