The Comics
The original printings of Amar Chitra were not in full colour—because of budgetary constraints, the panels were printed using yellow, blue and green. Subsequent issues, however, changed to full colour. All Amar Chitra Katha books stuck to a monthly (later fortnightly) 30-page format, with emphasis on lucid, entertaining storylines. In addition to the 'singles' format the stories are also available as hardcover 3-in-1 and 5-in-1 bundles. There are special editions of the epics like the Mahabharata which is available in a 3 volume 1300+ pages set.
Occasionally there were "bumper" issues with 90 pages, most collecting stories of a similar type from individual issues( Example: Monkey Stories From The Hitopadesha, Tales of Birbal and some being longer stories The Story of Rama). As the epic stories became more popular, the team began to publish stories based on Indian history, of men and women belonging to different regions and religions and also on stories based on Sanskrit as well as regional classics. The continuous popularity of the comics led to reprints being issued frequently, which ensured that the back-issues remained in print throughout the seventies and the eighties. At the height of its popularity, in the mid-eighties, it had been translated into Bengali, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Telugu, Tamil and Urdu and selling half a million copies a month. Some titles were also translated into French, Spanish, German, Swahili, Fijian, Indonesian, and Serbo-Croat.
Towards the mid-nineties, the original comics were reprinted in sleeker and more durable editions, with thick cardstock covers and better colour separations. Today, Amar Chitra Katha has a national footprint across all major book retailers, hundreds of small bookstores, and tens of thousands of vendors. It is the best-selling children's publication in most large format stores.
In 2007, the publisher created a new online store that offers all the titles with shipping worldwide. The titles are divided in following categories
- Fables & Folktales (e.g. Panchatantra)
- Mythology (e.g. The Ramayana)
- The Epics (e.g. The Ramayana)
- Humour & wit (e.g. Birbal)
- Biographies (e.g. Mahatma Gandhi)
- Literary Classics
- 3 in 1 Titles
- 5 in 1 Titles
- Special Issues
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