Hutch & Crossword launch the Hutch Crossword Popular Book Award
The Popular Award offers all readers an opportunity to vote for their favourite book

Tuesday, 28 February, Delhi: CROSSWORD, India’s leading chain of lifestyle bookstores, and Hutch, India’s pure play cellular service today announced the Hutch Crossword Popular Book Award, a new Award category in the Hutch Crossword Book Award 2005, which offers a unique opportunity for readers to vote for their favourite book.

Through this pioneering initiative, readers are given the power to decide the winner for the Popular Award from the 12 shortlisted books for Hutch Crossword Book Award 2005 across the English Fiction and English Non - Fiction categories. 10 randomly chosen lucky readers who vote for the book that receives the maximum number of votes will also win a set of all the winning books in the English Fiction, English Non-Fiction, Indian Language Fiction Translation and Popular award categories.

The author(s) who win the Hutch Crossword Popular Book Award will receive a total cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh and a certificate at an Awards function on Tuesday, the 21st of March 2006 at Nehru Auditorium, Mumbai.

The Hutch Crossword Book Award is the only Indian award that recognizes and rewards good writing and also promotes the authors and their books. The literary Awards that are given out in the categories of English Fiction, Indian Language Fiction Translation and English Non-Fiction are representative of the best of Indian writing across various genres.

Speaking on this new initiative, Mr. R. Sriram, CEO & MD, Crossword Bookstores Ltd said, “Our three literary Awards recognize and reward the best of Indian writing in three categories. Now, through our Popular Award, we offer a unique opportunity for readers to vote for their favourite book. “

Mr. Naveen Chopra, Chief Marketing Officer - Hutchison Essar Ltd, said “Further to our endeavour to promote Indian authors, we are pleased to join hands with Crossword to announce the Hutch Crossword Popular Book Award. This is a SMS based contest that will enable book lovers to vote their favourite authors from the shortlist and the most popular author will be felicitated with this award”.

VOTING PROCESS

The 12 shortlisted books in the categories of English Fiction and English Non-Fiction are eligible for the Hutch Crossword Popular Book Award.

The shortlisted books in the English Fiction category are:

A) The Tiger Claw by Shauna Singh Baldwin

B) Tokyo Cancelled by Rana Dasgupta

C) Surface by Siddhartha Deb

D) The Radiance of Ashes by Cyrus Mistry

E) Magic Seeds by V S Naipaul

F) Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie.

 
The shortlisted books in English Non-Fiction category are:

A) One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices by Meena Menon & Neera Adarkar

B) Pundits from Pakistan by Rahul Bhattacharya

C) Finding Forgotten Cities by Nayanjot Lahiri

D) Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

E) Diddi: My Mother’s Voice by Ira Pande

F) Chasing the Monk’s Shadow by Mishi Saran
 

To vote, readers need to do the following:

1. SMS FICTION or NFICTION TO ‘123’ from their Hutch phone to see the list of the books eligible for the Popular Award in the respective English Fiction and English Non-Fiction categories.

2. SMS FICTION or NFICTION along with their choice to ‘123’ from their Hutch phone.  E.g. FICTION E for Magic Seeds or NFICTION D for Maximum City.

The final date for readers to participate in the Hutch Crossword Popular Book Award is 14th March 2006. Each SMS to 123 will be charged at regular infoservice rate of Rs 2. For more information on the shortlisted books, please visit www.crosswordbookstores.com and www.hutch.in
 


About Crossword:
Crossword is India’s leading bookstore chain, which has pioneered the lifestyle bookstore concept in India. Its innovative approach to book retailing and its achievements have received wide acclaim in India and has won the ‘Reid & Taylor Award for Best Retailer of the year – Leisure & Specialty’ at the India Retail Summit 2005  'Images Retailer of the Year award for the books, music and gifts category for 2005'. Businessworld rated it as the '5th Most Respected Retailer in the country' for the year 2004; the only bookstore to feature in the top ten. Launched in 1992, Crossword currently has 31 stores across 10 cities in the country in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune & Vadodara. It is a fully owned subsidiary of Shoppers’ Stop Limited – India’s leading department store chain (promoted by K. Raheja Corp.).

About Hutchison Essar Limited
Hutchison Essar Limited, with over 13.7 million* subscribers after the BPL Mobile Cellular Limited acquisition, is one of the most reputed telecom companies in India. Over the years, it has been named the ‘Most Respected Telecom Company’, the 'Best Mobile Service in the country', and the ‘Most Creative and Most Effective Advertiser of the Year’. *Figures from Cellular Operators Association of India, 31 January 2006