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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 February 2000 Issue No. 468
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Profile Travel Books Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A difficult silence
By Youssef Rakha
Book sales, readership and the subtle yet ineffable role of the publisher in a changing cultural environment: these are only some of the issues raised by the 32nd round of the Cairo International Book Fair -- an event that, in sheer magnitude, surpasses any other in the Arab World.
As a publisher Ibrahim El-Mo'alem is as astute as they come; he is practical, informal and eloquent. While others wax lyrical or rhetorical about the publisher's sacred mission, the lone alienated reader, how to enlarge the reading public and improve its knowledge of writers and writing in a Third World society with high illiteracy rates, El-Mo'alem talks about actual authors, readers, publishers and bookshops -- the concrete, tangible four-way junction at which the printed text continuously hovers, uncertain of which direction to take. Tolerant and open though he remains, he has little patience for all that goes against the liberal humanist grain; and when it comes to his nonchalantly treasured trade, he is unabashedly interested in buying and selling:
Dar Al-Shorouq's choice of which books to publish, for example, will inevitably depend on the book market, the number of people interested in and capable of buying the books under consideration; were this not the case, the publishing house would go bankrupt. After all, financial survival and profit-making are necessary for the continuity of both investment and the quality of service that "real readers" are given to expect; they are also crucial for the well-being of the author, without whom no books would exist in the first place. If his is to be a viable business (and that is what it should be), the publisher can only work within the limits of the market, which he can attempt to influence but cannot ultimately control. Educating and eventually edifying a reluctant potential readership with little purchasing power is not properly part of the publisher's job.
El-Mo'alem's opinion of the book fair clearly reflects this perspective, raising the question of private versus public sector publishing in a particularly lucid way and drawing attention to the international context.
The fair is arguably the General Egyptian Book Organisation's greatest socio-cultural achievement; as a rival, though public sector publisher, GEBO organises the one event that brings books and booksellers to the foreground in the Arab World, drawing not only the attention of the media but a growing turn-out of "ordinary readers" and consequently giving rise to a brief annual increase in book sales. Yet exactly what is the book fair doing for the publishing world? Overtly or covertly, the public sector assumes responsibility for an alleged mission that El-Mo'alem, as a private sector publisher, reserves the right to relinquish, but exactly how is it fulfilling that responsibility?
These are questions that El-Mo'alem asks of his interlocutor, with penetrating but nonetheless respectful irony. He is willing to acknowledge the quantitative achievement of the fair. No football match, he says, has been attended by 1,500,000 people; no event is as thoroughly covered by television; and the statistics on publishers participating, books displayed, books sold and seminars are astounding. Yet the yearly "triumphant regurgitating of numbers" leaves something to be desired. A logistic and corporate revolution in the way things are done could lead to the "qualitative leap" that would improve the physical and professional aspects of both the fair and the publishing world at large, bolstering that twilight realm whose continuity is indispensable to literature.
Even as it is, however, the fair remains a significant part of the publishing business and can still be regarded in a positive light: "My honest opinion is that the publishing business in the Arab World is healthier than people think it is, far greater than the coverage the media accords it and generally innocent of the accusations constantly levelled at it. There are many more first-class books on an impressive variety of topics than are publicised in the media, though there is no doubt the business remains far from reaching its optimum potential and does not live up to our ambitions as members of the Arab Publishers' Union."
As for the fair, "the fact that so many publishers and visitors attend indicates that it is an event of some measure, but you can't claim that it reflects the whole picture."
What are the problems? As far as statistics go, there are none. Yet to mention but a few of the problems statistics do not reflect: "These fair grounds were constructed in the 1960s in an area that was as yet far out and surrounded by empty space; the concept behind its construction is very specific to that time and is no longer viable anywhere. Each saraya [building block] is like a separate factory within an assembly plant; the distances between the buildings are enormous and car access is terribly restricted, so the space itself has neither the beauty nor functionality that would be an application of new methods of constructing and designing exhibition spaces. And despite the efforts of the Fairs Organisation and its devoted chairman to improve and develop the space, these limitations restrict their capacities; some things they just can't do anything about.
"As the official, state sponsored publishing house that rents the fair grounds every year in order to organise a major international book fair," moreover, "is it really the responsibility of GEBO to construct extensions and kiosks, employ engineers, designers and carpenters? This is something that may be open to discussion in the future, perhaps. Why should a publishing house undertake such a task on its own, given the obvious fact that it doesn't possess the means to accomplish it effectively? These tasks are beyond what GEBO is capable of, so there should be other, specialised bodies to undertake them. You can't call on GEBO to construct toilets, for example, any more than you can ask the organisation's chairman to sweep the floor. It's utterly inconceivable.
"So there are restrictive circumstances that limit the scope of what can be done. At the same time," El-Mo'alem asks, "what is the book fair? It's an exhibition of books, this is ultimately its most essential function -- to exhibit, trade and organise the publication and marketing of books. Yet the media concentrates almost exclusively on the seminars, and in this sense one can only blame them. Imagine that you are a high-ranking government official involved in the organisation of the fair; the media are of the utmost importance to you, so whatever you find them paying the most attention to, you will naturally focus on that, and the most important aspect, the only important aspect of the event is unduly ignored: the books are often ineffectively displayed and there is a lack of information as to where and how they can be procured."
"Now even judging by the quantitative standards that prevail, the greatest seminar could not physically accommodate more than 1,000 people, so where do the rest of the 1,500,000 end up? And why doesn't the media pay attention to them? Which brings us to the final point: the fact that the restrictive circumstances I was telling you about cater to a different kind of audience. The long distances, the lack of attention paid to aesthetics, information and organisation have turned the fair into a healthy enough but essentially popular venue with which the older and the more sensitive among us, who make up a very significant percentage of the regular readership, cannot cope. Those who buy so much during the fair cannot be real readers in the sense that real readers do not go book shopping only once a year, and do not favour that environment. The bookshops are there throughout the year so why don't they visit the bookshops?"
Consider, on the other hand, the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair (which the chairman of GEBO, Samir Sarhan invoked while speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly prior to last year's round, comparing Frankfurt's methods of display to Cairo's). A smaller event of shorter duration, the former is exclusive to specialists, mainly publishers, yet "weeks before the event begins all the hotels in the surrounding area are already fully booked", and a lot more is accomplished in terms of buying and selling intellectual property and copyright.
"There is much innovation and movement," El-Mo'alem insists, and in his tone of voice a note of regret can be discerned. "So another crucial point is that publishers have a very hard time with a fair like this, in which they can hardly even find the books they want to see, let alone get on with their real work on any significant scale. Unlike Arab book exhibitions, which coax as many readers as they can by whatever means -- any readers, anyone willing to buy then and there -- spoiling them with bargains and price reductions, book fairs around the world are purely intellectual affairs in which specialists get together in order to get work done. I'm not saying that book fairs open to the public are in any sense a bad thing, but the ones catering to specialists are very important too." Quantity does not improve quality, but neither will the annual burst of increased book sales resolve the problems of publishing in the Arab World.
There are, for one thing, the problems of public sector publishing, which the fair amply demonstrates: books are distributed haphazardly in a matter of days and most of the time never reach the bookshops; the fact that they are published in massive numbers and made available at affordable prices means that their physical quality is inferior; and it is not a very careful choice of titles, at least in the sense that they have no guaranteed readership.
El-Mo'alem has three main points to make about public sector publishers: they employ bureaucrats whose abilities are limited and allow no scope for innovation; they flood the market in a random way that leaves no room for private sector publishers; and, particularly with regard to educational books used in schools, they permit no competition, with the result that text books are never remotely as good as they might be even though they cost more to produce, yet it would still be possible to exercise the same surveillance and control over private sector publishers if these books were written by better equipped authors -- many of whom are hanging around the culture café jobless and financially deprived. All of these are symptoms of the general bureaucratic malaise Arab countries are suffering. When and how will it be cured?
Yet El-Mo'alem blames the government for only one thing: the fact that they do not procure copies of new books from the private sector for public libraries, a tendency that deprives younger authors of the opportunity of being read by the public and prevents their books from being constantly available in the long run. It would actually save resources if fewer, better chosen and more presentable books were published by the government and more money went towards the maintenance of these libraries. In their as yet early stages, the Maktabet Al-Ossra and Reading for All campaigns have already made an impact, but with less missionary spirit and more practical know-how, this impact would be infinitely stronger. By next year's fair perhaps the technical and organisational side of public sector publishing will have improved enough for one to expand on this latter point, but so far one has to make do with a difficult silence.
The Arab perspective
Jordanian publisher Fathi Al-Bassa, treasurer of the Arab Publishers' Union, spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly during the 32nd round of the book fair:
"The Cairo International Book Fair reflects an accurate picture of the realities of publishing in the Arab World: it has both the very good and the inferior; I'm not referring simply to the quality of the books on sale, though this is obviously crucial, but also to the actual activities that publishing involves. There are excellent publishers who abide by the laws and regulations, uphold the honour of the occupation and live up to its ethics; and there are also those who are irresponsible, though their number I believe is dwindling, particularly in the light of the well-coordinated work of the union and its collaboration with other unions throughout the world. We are hoping that those who do not abide by the ethics of the trade will eventually disappear. I am often shocked by what journalists sometimes write, that those irresponsible publishers are the ones who constitute the publishing business in the Arab World, that they in some way embody or represent it. This is, of course, entirely false, and by the way whatever one's reservations concerning the public sector may be, I believe public sector publishers are perfectly responsible and law abiding, and that they respect the ethics of their job. The faults of the book fair are, generally speaking, the fact that it is chaotic, but I must add that this gets better every year, it really does -- very simple things like minor improvements in cleanliness make a real difference. And one must also add that the union's attempts to intervene meet with an acceptable degree of responsiveness, which we are hoping will improve in future years."
