South Asian books for readers, libraries and schools across North America
India Bookworld, formerly Asian Publications, has distributed South Asian books and media since 1993. We work in more than ten languages and buy directly from publishers in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the United Kingdom and the United States — so a title that exists in print anywhere is a title we can find. Libraries, schools and organizations rely on us for collections in the languages their communities read, and readers find us in our bookstore or through our website, wherever in the world they happen to be.
Our history
We began with a single question from a local librarian: where do we find books our readers can actually read? Answering it has taken us from a single multilingual supplier to a bookstore, a publishing house and an online store serving readers around the world.
Public libraries in the region were serving communities who read in Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and Gujarati, with almost nothing on the shelves to offer them. We started as Asian Publications to fill that gap, supplying fiction and non-fiction in the languages their patrons asked for.
Word travelled from libraries to schools. We began supplying multilingual learning books to public schools, and in 1996 became the authorized vendor of South Asian material for the BC Ministry of Education.
The internet was new and largely untested for bookselling. We launched our website anyway, on the reasoning that readers looking for South Asian books were scattered far beyond driving distance. Within a year we were filling website orders from customers in the United States and the United Kingdom.
South Asian studies programs were growing across North America and needed original-language holdings, not just translations. We began supplying multilingual books to academic libraries across the continent.
After years of hearing which books did not exist, we opened our own publication division and published our first title.
Local customers kept asking to browse in person rather than order sight unseen. We opened our retail bookstore and rebranded as India Bookworld.
We outgrew the original shop and moved to a bigger location, which let us keep far more of the collection on the shelf instead of in the catalogue. The new store also hosted our first author signing event, to a full room.
Every expansion of our collection began with a reader asking for a book we did not yet have. Distributing knowledge is the work we care about, and doing it for this community of readers is a privilege we do not take lightly. We support the local literary community year-round — at literary events, book launches and public dialogues, and by putting the work of diaspora authors in front of the readers who have been waiting for it. We intend to keep growing with the same energy we began with.
Our collection
Thirty-one categories, from language learning to Bollywood, with a particular depth in religion, culture and history. Books by South Asian Canadian authors run through all of them.
Languages we carry
Original-language editions and English translations, in the scripts our readers actually read.
From the catalogue
All new arrivals →
Libraries, schools and government agencies are core to our business. Consultation is free of charge.
Publishing division
Our publication division handles editing, design and production for print and electronic editions. Manuscripts are invited in English, Punjabi, Hindi and other Indian languages, and we particularly welcome bilingual picture books from children’s authors.
Our sales team promotes published titles through newspapers, magazines, radio, television, public meetings, exhibitions and online retailers.
Member of the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association.
We are grateful to the Government of Canada for financial support under the Canada Book Fund.