Lisa Dempster › Arabian Publishing – reality and ambition

“Economic development without culture [books] is like a human without a soul.” – Fathy Al Bas.

A few nights ago I went to a lecture titled ‘Arabian Publishing – the ambition and the reality’ at Sharjah Book Fair. The speaker was Fathy Al Bas, and he took a dim view of where Arabian publishing currently stands.

To summarise:

• Arab publishing is in crisis
• Arabs spend less than 6 mins per year reading
• Output of books from Arab publishers is smaller than the smallest European houses
• It is frightening how small the Arabic publishing industry is
• Arabic publishers put out on average 30-40 titles a year
• The UK publish one book for every 500 people, in the Arab world it’s more like one book per 12000 people.
• Distribution is basically non-existent, and where it exists is badly organised
• Government support is basically non-existent
• Publishers don’t have the money for advertising and Western modes of marketing/talking about books (magazines, reviews etc) are basically non-existent
• Publishers aren’t making any money which means that authors are similarly impoverished
• Culture doesn’t flourish without books
• Epublishing is becoming a major threat to print but there is no money or resources being put into developing this sector in the Arab world
• Culture doesn’t flourish without books and literature. Arabs are being defeated in the economic arena so it is important to be strong in the cultural arena – Arabic leaders should recognise this and support literature and arts initiatives. (He did note that Sharjah is leading the way in cultural and literary development.)

I was shocked at the reading statistic because pretty much everyone I have met here in Sharjah has been very well-read! But it is a Book Fair so perhaps that’s a given.

At the end there was a great question for the speaker from Dania El-Kadi, asking if maybe reading of Arabic books is so low because publishers aren’t putting out what people want to read? She cited the example that sales of English pop fiction in the UAE seems to be flourishing based on the number of bookstores there are, so perhaps Arabic publishers should focus more on popular or modern books than high lit? Unfortunately Fathy Al Bas didn’t really address her question, but she has expanded her thoughts on her blog at Arabic publishing, the reality?

When I had lunch with Amna at AUS the other day, she said that she prefers to write and read in English. Dania agrees that many Arabs are the same, because the written Arabic word feels quite heavy and traditional, and is not modernising in the same way that spoken Arabic is.

Yesterday there was a lecture at the Fair by an agent, Yasmina Jraissati, who also spoke about the failures of Arabic publishing. She said that books weren’t reaching readers due to two main reasons – distribution problems, and diffusion problems, i.e. that there are no forums in which to talk about books. It seems while we in the West bemoan the cuts to review pages in papers, the Arabic world has never really had them to begin with. There is little culture of critiquing writing, which makes the fact that Arab Lit is the only Arabic literary blog now make sense.

Yasmina was speaking at the festival to launch a literary social media platform that she hopes will create a space in which people will start talking about Arabic books – Mubtada Wa Khabar.

The tool is a user-generated site that wants to create an independent, reliable and multilingual one-stop-shop for people interested in reading Arabic books. It comes in English, Arabic and French and will feature news, info and reviews. She really hopes that it will form all sorts of literary connections, not just between readers, but booksellers, publishers and writers.

This is all new and fascinating information for me, and it’s interesting to see this debate play out at the Book Fair, where to my eyes, there are plenty of people reading and engaging with books!

In particular, publishers Bloomsbury Doha and Saqi Books seem to be putting out books by Arab writers that people want to read; and the rise in social media is forming connections and information sharing between readers and writers; and blogs are creating review opps that papers aren’t; so perhaps change is afoot in Arabic publishing…

Lisa Dempster › Home sweet hotel

I have been staying at the Corniche Al Buhaira Hotel in Sharjah, but everyone refers to it as the Millennium because that’s what it used to be called – hey, habits can be hard to break, right?

Excited wheeee shot upon entering 716 for the first time

It is my 9th night (I think – you do the math) and it started to feel like home, oh, 8 nights or so ago. It’s a 5 star hotel and as lovely and plush as you would expect. My room is palatial. The lobby is huge. There is a good-for-a-hotel gym (plus two pools, steam room and sauna). The breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets are enormous and about a third of it is vegan friendly. (The highlight is breakfast – foul medames; muesli with stewed dates, figs and apricots; hommus; need I say more? Ok the coffee is shit filter and the waiters hover like vultures.)

View from the gym

Some people get tired of staying in hotels but I NEVER DO. I could move in here quite happily.

Hotel love

Lisa Dempster › Universities of Sharjah

While I was here I was lucky enough to have a look around two different universities – American University Sharjah and Sharjah Fine Art College.

It might surprise you (as it did me) that the majority of schooling in UAE is in English, and I’m talking from primary right up to university level here. So hanging in the caff at AUS didn’t feel all that different from chillin’ at the (Melbourne) Uni Lounge back in the day…

Sharjah Fine Art Uni

My guide for Sharjah Fine Art Uni was my driver, Mohannad, and his brother, who works there. (Did I mention that I have a driver? And that he is ACE?)

American University Sharjah (AUS)

My guide for AUS was a totally spunky amazing 21yo old chick Amna, who blew me away with how cool and punk and smart she is. She talked a lot about what it’s like to be an individual in a collective culture and man, she totally rocks it, hijab and all. AND she can bench 40kgs – TOTAL SUPERSTAR.

Shopping spree at Sharjah International Book Fair – who said Arabs don’t read? | R A Y A | agency for Arabic literature

By the year 2002, two key studies linking Arab human development to the book industry had been published: The UNESCO report on Arab book production and the Arab Human Development Report, ADHR.

Both reports are alarming regarding the small volume of the production (1.1% of the world production although Arabs constitute 5% of the world’s population according to the UNESCO report), the lack of artistic and creative productions (0.8 % of the world’s production in 1996), and the very little number of translations, suggesting that Arabs’ did not read enough books. In 2005, another survey by Next Page Foundation on Arab readership confirmed that although a substantial percentage of the tested Arab populations considered themselves readers, still very little time was spent reading books.

Other numbers seem to suggest that the Book is in a crisis in the Arab world. For example, the Arab publishers’ association explained that on average, a book that does well, sells 3,000 to 4,000 copies. For a market of 320 millions speakers, 115 millions of which are potential readers (i.e. are literate and older than 15 years old), this number is stunningly low. In France, where there are 48 million of potential readers, an average good sale amounts to 8,000 copies, all type of books included. These numbers may not be specific enough, but they clearly express why publishers may be reluctant to publish more, or to invest in translations and in fiction or creative works. These figures also give a rough idea of the market’s atrophy: in a nutshell, in a market at least twice as large as France, sales are roughly half the volume.

Still, according to Next Page Foundation’s survey, when asked what would make them read more, 64% of Egypt’s non readers, 66.7% in Lebanon, 25% in Saudi Arabia, 39.5% in Tunisia and 83.3% in Morocco, said that they would read more if there were more interesting books to read. Admitting that the participants to the survey felt the need to justify their non reading habits by positively answering to the question ‘Would you read more if there were more interesting books to read?’, it would be hard to say that in such a large sample (1,000 participants across 5 countries), all non readers were compelled by the same feeling of guilt. At least a portion of these non readers must have been sincere.

But how exactly can we understand these numbers? Does this mean that there are no interesting books out there? That the quality of Arab books is found to be wanting?

Let’s look at this the other way around. In the AHDR and UNESCO studies mentioned above, the absence of reliable statistics and numbers on the book production has been regularly evoked: “There are no reliable figures on the production of books” is the mantra. The absence of figures on the book production actually results from an absence of logistical structure in the book industry. ISBN numbers, for example, have only recently started to be used in most Arab countries, and are not systematically used by all publishers. There is also no distribution network and no diffusion, or more generally no independent information whatsoever on the Arab book industry. The main distribution channel in the Arab world consists in the book fairs. There is approximately one book fair a month in each main city of the Arab countries, and publishers use this opportunity to physically transport their books from their country to another, and sell their books to readers and book sellers alike. Anyone who took a walk at the Sharjah International Book Fair last Friday evening, could see people massively buying books. In fact, people so massively buy books at book fairs that the organizers of the Sharjah Fair offered shopping caddies to its visitors, most of which were amazingly full.

This shopping spree for books contradicts the image of the Non Reading Arab that has been haunting us for the past years. Something does not fit. If Arabs do not read, then why are book fairs so crowded? Why do people buy books so massively that they would need shopping caddies to be able to walk around the fair more easily, if they didn’t read? Can it be that people literally stock up books to which they do not have regularly access? What if people had more regularly access to books? If their attitude towards books during fairs is so positive, why wouldn’t it remain positive throughout the year? Can it be that when non readers say that they would read more books if they were more interesting books to read, it is because they do not have access to the existing interesting books? If there are more interesting books on the Arab market, but Arab readers don’t have access to them, or don’t even suspect their existence, how would they even want to read them?

The point is, as long as readers cannot buy more books, publishers will not publish more books or take many risks in publishing new kinds of books or in translating. If readers do not buy more books, it is not necessarily because they are not interested in reading, but maybe simply because they do not have access to books, or to information on books. To this day, nothing allows us to confirm that Arabs wouldn’t read more if more books and information on books was available.

Such is the challenge we decided to take up by building a web collaborative platform for the Arab book industry – Mubtada wa khabar. More on this at a conference at the Sharjah International Book Fair, Tuesday November 2nd, 2010, at 5:00 pm, where a beta version of the platform will be presented.

30-Second Review: Book and Interactive CD for the Award-Winning بيت للأرنب الصغير

بيت للأرنب الصغير, one of only two books that was longlisted both for the Etisalat Prize for Arabic Children’s Literature and on the Anna Lindh Foundation Honor List, is not just a book: It’s a book with an interactive CD that features games, art projects, songs, a dramatic reading of the book, print-outs, “wallpaper,” and probably more functions we haven’t yet explored!

About the CD, author and publisher Taghreed Najjar says:

We tried to make the games challenging and fun. The important issue for us was that we did not want to give people the idea that the CD would replace the book. We explained to people that the child would be enriched by the CD and it would make reading the book a richer and easier experience.

The seven-year-old’s two favorite things on the CD were the “build your own story” page, and the dramatic reading of the book and song that accompanied بيت للأرنب الصغير. The song, which comes from the text of the book, is fantastically catchy:

أنا أرنب الأرنوب … حزين حزين حزين … لو عندي بيت جديد … أكون سعيد سعيد … أكون سعيد سعيد.

But beyond its catchiness, what I love about this book is that it has an interesting storyline but is also easy to read. While the texts my seven-year-old brings home from school are not only dull, but littered with hard words, this entire book is built on repetition, assonance, rhythm, anticipation, and simple constructions! It’s not only a pleasure to read, it’s also possible.

Of course I want my son to learn new vocabulary, but I also want him to feel a sense of mastery and accomplishment.

The seven-year-old’s own review of بيت للأرنب الصغير includes raves about the illustrations (a picture from the book is now his father’s computer “wallpaper”), and he added that he likes it “because he finds Arnouba! It’s just a nice story. Every part of it is nice.”