showdaily

06

The Arabic Book

23rd Abu Dhabi International Book Fair

24 - 29 April 2013

Celebrating the Life and Work of

Albert Camus

by Olivia Snaije

This year, 2013, marks

the centenary of the birth
of French writer and
philosopher Albert Camus.
An exhibition about his life
and work is on display at the
Business and Rights Centre,
Hall 10 H-46.

For those who are unfamiliar with the authors

work, we offer this brief introduction:
Three years after he won the Nobel Prize for
Literature, the Algerian-French writer and
political philosopher, Albert Camus, died
in a car accident at age 47 along with his
publisher, Michel Gallimard. The unfinished
manuscript of what would become his
posthumous novel Le Premier Homme (The
First Man) was recovered from the wreckage.

2013 is the
centenary
of the Nobel
Prize-winning
Algerian-French
writer.

The First Man was published in 1994,

unedited, with notes by the author, which not
only gave an insight into how Camus worked
but also into his childhoodit is entirely
autobiographical.
Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913,
which at the time was a French colony. His
father was killed one year later during the
First World War, and Camus was raised by
his mother and grandmother in the working
class neighborhood of Belcourt in Algiers.
Camus grew up in poverty, his mother, who
was illiterate and partly deaf, worked as a
cleaning lady. A good student, Camus was
taken under the wing of one of his teachers,
Louis Germain, who he tenderly described in
The First Man.
Several letters between Camus and Germain
are included in the appendix of the novel,
including Camuss letter to Germain shortly
after he received the Nobel Prize:
when I heard the news, my first thought,
after my mother, was of you. Without you,
without the affectionate hand you extended
to the small poor child that I was, without your
teaching, and your example, none of all this
would have happened. I dont make too much

01

of this sort of honour. But at least it gives

me an opportunity to tell you what you have
been and still are for me, and to assure you
that your efforts, your work, and the generous
heart you put into it still live in one of your
little schoolboys who, despite the years, has
never stopped being your grateful pupil
Germain replied to Camus, noting that he
had never known just how poor Camus was
as a boy.
Camus studied philosophy at the University
of Algiers, (as well as passionately playing
football) but also contracted tuberculosis at
the time, which he struggled with throughout
his life. He wrote for a local socialist
newspaper, which was critical of the French
government and its policies in Algeria. Camus
left Algeria for France in 1940, on the eve of

the German occupation, and soon joined

a resistance cell and newspaper. During
this period of time Camus formalized his
philosophy of which morality, derived from
his own experiences, life-long support of
human rights, justice and pacification were
the foundation.
During the 1940s and 50s he published his
work, non-fiction and fiction, among which
Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus),
LHomme Rvolt (The Rebel), and his bestselling novels, Ltranger (The Stranger) and
La Peste (The Plague). Camus was a leading
voice for social change and the French
working class, but fell out with the left wing
intelligentsia and modern philosophers such
as Jean-Paul Sartre, following his rejection
of communism and later on the subject of
the French-Algerian war. Camus positioned

www.adbookfair.com | Wednesday to Monday 09:00 - 22:00 | Friday 16:00 - 22:00

Abu Dhabi International Book Fair 2013

himself neither for nor against independence,

denouncing a reign of terror on both sides.
Instead, he called for peace talks, favoring
a federation that would include a mixed
population of Algerian, French and other
ethnicities, with equal rights for all.
Ultimately Camus, who remained true
to himself, was a solitary man, born in a
colonized country with French nationality, yet
feeling he was an exile in France, unable to
forget an Algeria he felt so close to.
Camus will also be the topic of discussion
at a panel entitled The Man Behind The
Stranger with writers Jrme Ferrari,
Rachid Boudjedra, Jacques Ferrandez
and Vital Rambaud of Paris-Sorbonne
University Abu Dhabi. The talk takes place
at 17:45 at the Discussion Sofa on Monday.

06

Why the
Abu Dhabi
International
Book Fair stands
out among
others.
Editorial by Edward Nawotka,
Editor, Show Daily

MASTHEAD
Editor:
Edward Nawotka
Deputy Editor:
Irum Fawad
Design Manager:
Nada Baroudy
Bylined articles do not
necessarily reflect the
views of the editors.
Thank you to all of our Show Daily
contributors:
Olivia Snaije
Roger Tagholm
Chiara Comito
Michael Bhaskar
Benedicte Page
Daniel Kalder

M. Lynx Qualey
Chip Rossetti
Vinutha Mallya
Claude Combet
Dennis Abrams

Abu Dhabi International Book Fair 2013

All rights reserved.
Duplication, either in whole or in part,
permissible only with the prior written
consent of the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

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50,000 miles, Five Continents and

A World of Reading Transformed
Since the beginning of the year Ive flown
more than 50,000 air miles to attend
a dozen book fairs, literary events and
publishing conferences. My home is in
Houston in the United States, near to the
border with Mexico.
But sometimes I feel like my real home is
in the window seat in coach where, more
often than not, Im waiting for the plane
to level off at 35,000 ft. so I can pop open
my MacBook to try and finish editing a
last minute missive from one of the farflung correspondents who contribute to
the international publishing trade journal,
Publishing Perspectives, which I run and
edit each day.
The real pleasure for me comes once Im
finished and I can turn on my ereader or
pull out a book, likely something urgently
pressed into my hands by an eager
publisher, and start reading. I am lucky
that way: Im never without something
new and interesting to read.
So far this year Ive spoken publishing
events in New York City, Milan, Bologna,
Stockholm, London, Paris and Berlin. In
two weeks, Ill be in Beijing. And later
this year, so far at least, I have plans to
go to Rio de Janeiro, Lviv, Guadalajara,
San Francisco, Melbourne, and, naturally,

Frankfurt for the grand-daddy of all book

events, the Frankfurt Book Fair.
All of these places have their unique
appeal. But of all the events I highlight on
my calendar, the book fair in Abu Dhabi
stands out and not because it is one of
the last remaining places on Earth where
you can still shop at a Borders bookstore
(which was my hometown bookstore
when I was growing up outside Detroit).
Despite the ancient sands that shimmer
on the horizon, Abu Dhabi feels like a
young city, one bustling with energy and
ideas. The book fair reflects that from
the eZone and its myriad of established
and start-up digital publishers, to the
yoga gurus who promise to transform
your life, to the entrepreneurial selfstarters, and of course, the hundreds
publishers from all over the Arabicspeaking world who work daily to deliver
a world of books to waiting readers.
Just look into the eyes of the any of the
thousands of children careening around
the halls, disassembling the carefully
arranged piles of books in the booksellers
stands, and playing the Creativity Corner
and youll remember what its like to
be young and in awe with the world of
reading and books. Abu Dhabi makes me

feel a bit like that each time I come.

In few places will you find so many
publishers from such diverse
backgrounds so fully engaged with each
other. Abu Dhabi where publishers from
Finland and Turkey are busy selling
rights to their colleagues from Lebanon
and Egypt, rights agents are snapping
up the latest works from Kuwait, Tunisia
and Algeria, and Syrian authors and
illustrators despite the ongoing
violence at home show resilience in
their mission to publish and tell the world
their stories. Thats just a small sampling
of the activity Ive witnessed over the past
week.
And lets not forget the Emiratis. When
I first came to Abu Dhabi a half-dozen
years ago, there was little indigenous
publishing culture. Today, the industry
is thriving, with new publishers,
organizations, authors and illustrators,
all of whom have all contributed to
forming a true community around books
and literacy. Its something of which the
nation should be genuinely proud.

23rd Abu Dhabi International Book Fair

24 - 29 April 2013

Amazon and the Arab World

Editorial by Michael Bhaskar

If there is one factor which

makes a difference to
the trajectory of digital
publishing, then its Amazon.
Its only a small exaggeration
to say: no Amazon, no digital
publishing market. This is
not for want of people trying.
Weekly, sometimes daily,
I get emails from startups
or tech companies touting
their latest offering, always
highlighting the rapid spread
of smart phones and tablets
as evidence of a willing and
ripe market for publishers
content. Unfortunately,
things arent as simple.
Device penetration alone,
does not make a market.

So, why is Amazon so important and why

does the number of touch screen devices
count for so little? There are a couple of
factors at work. Firstly is the marketing
budget deployed whenever Amazon
launches the Kindle. Jeff Bezos has spoken
many times about how Amazon always
keeps one eye on the horizon, is always
going to play the long game and sacrifice
short term profit for major investment
to ensure long-term market share and
consumer lock in. This translates to eye
watering global marketing budgets for the
Kindle. Wherever it launches, only Apple can
match the ad spend firepower put behind
the launch. Amazon are far sighted enough
not to care if this huge outlay is recoverable
on sales in an annual, or far beyond annual,
time frame.
Moreover Amazons spending isnt solely
about conventional marketing. They
effectively subsidise the price of devices and
content on the devices. They always try and
push prices of hardware and media lower,
incentivizing consumers to switch to digital.
The second reason ties into the first and
provides an answer as to why smartphones

and tablets are not in themselves crucial. The

presence of good, old-fashioned e-reader
devices has time and again proved vital in
establishing a thriving e-reading market.
In the UK for example Sonys e-reader
was the first to launch. Prior to that there
was widespread public skepticism about
e-reading. People felt it would never take
off, trotting out the usual clichs about no
one wanting to read ebooks in the bath, in
their arm chair or on the beach. E-reading
technology quickly overcame these worries,
showing itself to be more than adept at
beach reading in particular (saving valuable
luggage space for summer holidays).
However the presence of e-readers went
beyond that. It stimulated dinner party
conversation and newspaper comment
pieces in a virtuous circle which saw digital
reading going from being futuristic and
unnecessary to useful and even mundane.
Heavy book buyers, those initially thought
to be most skeptical, could trial to the
technology and come to understand some of
its benefits. They realised this wasnt about
the end of books, but a supplementary
activity.

When will the

worlds leader in
ebooks come to the
market? Only time
will tell.
Sony broke down the cultural barriers to
e-reading in Britain, which then allowed
Amazon, with those marketing budgets and
seamless payment mechanisms, to step in
and take a dominant position. The wider
impact of both the Sony and Amazons
offerings was to create awareness of digital
reading and in particular inculcate digital
reading as a habit amongst the key book
buying audiences.
Compare this to the spread of tablets and
phones. Email, Angry Birds and whatever
app you are fascinated with today are all
siren calls on the users attention. There
are plenty of cheaper, easier and, I am
tempted to say, superficially more appealing
activities at your fingertips. Without the
headspace created by eReaders, long form
reading has struggled to make inroads on
digital platforms. This is a pattern we have
seen from Brazil to Malaysia. Two partial
exceptions are China and Japan, where
fiction on computers and mobile phones
respectively has found enormous audiences.
South Africa to some extent has an audience
for text message based books. Generally

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however, tablet reading comes after, not

before, e-reader-based digital reading.
What can all of this tell us about Amazons
intentions with regards to the Arabic world?
We know they are playing a global game.
However as yet they have shown little
interest in Arabic publishing. The Kindle,
for example, does not support right to left
text or Arabic characters, which means it is
effectively useless for Arabic literature. Its
conversion and display of PDFs is lacking.
And, perhaps of most importance, there is no
Arabic store.
Amazon likes to bide its time. A Japanese
store has just opened, as has a Brazilian
Kindle store. Meanwhile Apple iBooks can
comfortably work with Arabic text. Googles
localization to the Arab world has always
been very effective, much more so than
many US firms efforts.
The main barriers are neither linguistic nor
technological. If Amazon can produce a
Japanese store, then it can produce an Arabic
store. I suspect the main barrier to Amazon
is the multi-state nature of the market. There
are many jurisdictions, local cultural factors
and the like for it to customize and Arabic
store to. The complexity, to Amazon, of
establishing an Arabic Kindle is therefore
greater than other potentially lucrative
markets, like in India (where it is now selling
a rupee denominated offering), Russia, Latin
America or as yet Kindle-less territories in
Europe.
In the short run this probably limits the
size of the Arabic ebook market. This is not
necessarily a bad thing; many in the book
industry complain about Amazon, more than
they laud its successes. Arabic publishers
and book sellers have some breathing
space.
In the long term the Arabic market will, I
think, be too big and important for Amazon
to ignore if it wants to be a genuinely
global company, as its rare public missives
repeatedly state that it aspires to be. This
means eventually there will be considerable
investment and the ebook market is sure
to see lift off in the region. The only real
question then is whether a home grown
or rival ebook service will get there first, or
whether an alternative model, like Japanese
keitai fiction, will thrive in the interim.
While I have learned an awful lot at the Abu
Dhabi Internatinal Book Fair I dont feel
qualified to fully answer either question.
In the meantime, I for one will be watching
closely and would be gratified to see both
the presence of local alternatives and new
forms of reading, writing and distributing
words taking hold.
Michael Bhaskar is Digital Publishing
Director at Profile Books. He can be found
on Twitter as @ajaxlogos or online at
www.michaelbhaskar.com

06

Arabia Books Celebrates its 5th anniversary

by Olivia Snaije

The whole point

was to bring Arabic
literature to as wide an
audience as possible
in the wake of 9/11
and events that divide
us, in order to build
bridges between
cultures, said Barbara
Schwepcke, founder
of the London-based,
English language
Arabia Books, an
imprint of Haus
Publishing
We all share the same dreams, have the
same loves and the same ideas that we think
about and the best way is to meet is through
other cultures that are writing, thinking, and
dreaming.
Arabia Books is celebrating its fifth
anniversary this year. When it was founded in
2008, a 3-year co-publishing and distribution
agreement with the American University in
Cairo Press (AUC) was established, which
brought Arabia Books big names such as
Hoda Barakat or Bahaa Taher. Arabia Books
also published the immensely successful
Rafik Schami, the Syrian author of The Dark
Side of Love and The Calligraphers Secret,
whose travel book on Damascus had already
been published by Haus. Since 2011, Arabia
has been flying solo, said Schwepcke. It
was a wonderful opportunity to have AUCs
support and advice at the beginning; they
played the role of the god parent.
Arabia Books has advisors such as the
Arabist Peter Clark, Arabist and translator

Kuwaits Nova
Plus and
Platinum Book
by Vinutha Mallya

Young people are the treasures of every

country, but we dont push them enough to
read, says Adbulwahab AlSayed, publisher
of the Kuwait-based Nova Plus publishing
house. The company publishes novels, short
stories and poetry for young adult readers,
often age 12 or 13.
Horror stories, romance stories and movielike themes are popular among readers
of this age group, says Meshary AlObaid,

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Emily Danbee, was mentored by Marilyn

Booth.

Marilyn Booth, and professor of modern

Arabic literature Rachid Al Anani. Margaret
Obank and Samuel Shimon from the literary
magazine Banipal have been invaluable.
Arabia Books published Tunisian author
Habib Selmis The Scent of Marie-Claire
on Banipals recommendation; Selmi was
shortlisted last year for the Arabic Booker
IPAF award.
During the Syrian uprising, Haus Publishing
brought out author Samar Yazbeks memoir
A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the
Syrian Revolution.
She recently completed a fabulously
successful, book tour in the US, said
Schwepcke. Yazbek was scheduled to attend
the Abu Dhabi book fair, but at the last
minute failed to obtain her visa because
of difficulties with her travel documents.
Yazbeks first novel translated into English,
Cinnamon, about a lesbian relationship,
was recently published by Arabia Books,
benefitting from a translators mentoring
programme in which a young translator,

whose collection of short stories has been

published by Nova Plus.
AlSayed, a writer himself, with 14 books to
his credit, started Nova Plus eight months
ago. His list already has 26 titles to its credit.
The language is simple and the themes are
attractive for a young reader.
This being the first time that Nova Plus
has taken a stand (8C 32) in Abu Dhabi
International Book Fair, it is happy with how
it is organized, said Abdulaziz Malalah,
another writer whose novel is published by
Nova Plus. We notice that the attendance
is better on school days, and we hope next
year the Fair is open on more school days,
AlObaid said.
Young people are also the focus for
Platinum Book, another Kuwaiti publishing

Austerity hasnt
only hit the
libraries, but
the entire book
trade. I wanted to
especially support
the independent
booksellers. They
all received the
very first book
we published;
Ibrahim al-Konis
Gold Dust
company, which runs a successful selfpublishing progam. Their stand (9B 27)
was abuzz with young girls on Sunday, who
were choosing books from among the 100

Young publishers
attracting young
readers
or more titles on display. Our books are
different and so Emirati readers, especially
the youth readers, like us, said Jasem M.
Ashkanani, general manager of the company.
Although the company gives writers a

While AUC previously retained Middle

Eastern and North American rights to
Arabias publications, Arabia now buys
world English language rights and is
competing with AUC. It has a new sales
team in the US and translator Max Weiss
(of Pushkin Presss recent Nihad Sirees The
Silence and the Roar) represents Arabia
there. Weiss had translated Yazbeks A
Woman in the Crossfire.
Arabia will begin to publish non-fiction,
a direction that became evident, said
Schwepcke, following the success of
Yazbeks memoir, which was published
by Haus, because it did not fall into the
category of fiction. This does not mean
Arabia will publish less fictionanother
Haus imprint is Swallow Editions, founded in
2011 with Rafik Schami, which gives young,
previously unpublished authors a chance
and can spill over to Arabia. They will also
be publishing two translated novels (from
French) by the prize-winning Algerian author
Rachid Boudjedra, The Barbary Figs this fall
and The Funerals in 2014.
At a time when public spending on culture
has been hard hit by government austerity
policies; in the UK the effect on public
libraries has been devastating. Arabia Books
decided to celebrate its anniversary by
giving a gift, rather than receiving one.
We sent a full set of books we published to
all libraries in the UK including three prison
libraries, through an organization called The
Reading Agency, said Schwepcke.
Austerity hasnt only hit the libraries, but
the entire book trade. I wanted to especially
support the independent booksellers. They
all received the very first book we published;
Ibrahim al-Konis Gold Dust. It was a
message to say thank you for your support.
Lets stick together.

chance to become published authors,

they choose the manuscripts carefully.
The publishing company received 400
manuscript submissions in the past year,
from which they chose to publish 50. We
have received manuscripts from many
countries of the world, like Finland, Russia
Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Yemen
and more, said Ashkanani. They have
published about 1012 titles by Arabic
writers who have written in English. The
company, founded in 2009, distributes its
books in the rest of the Arab world.
Platinum has participated in ADIBF for four
years now. We like it here because it is
special, and different from other book fairs in
the region. It is well organized and they give
us a clear schedule, Ashkanani added.

23rd Abu Dhabi International Book Fair

24 - 29 April 2013

African
Books for
African
Readers
by Chip Rossetti

by Roger Tagholm

countries, but to date, African books from

outside South Africa are hard to find there.
Youd think that books from other countries
would have some reach in the South African
market, but distribution networks dont give
non-South African writers an in into that
market, says Adebowale.
Adebowale describes the African market as
a collection of regional hubs: one such hub
is Dakar (and Francophone West African
countries more generally, which share a
common economic zone and single currency),

Founded in 2009, Amalion Publishing is an

as are Dar es Salaam, Lagos, and Nairobi,

up-and-coming house that only publishes

for example. These hubs effectively serve

books by African authors. Based in Dakar,

as key bookselling markets and points of

Senegal, Amalion distributes its books

distribution for publishers, which are useful

across the African continent, which requires

for collaborations among publishing houses.

different strategies for Africas various regional

Collaboration efforts between African

and national markets. (They also have

publishers could be the answer for us. Other

distributors in Europe and North America.)

publishers are doing interesting things with co-

It publishes works on social science, media

publications now, and making them work.

studies, economics, and business, as well

Radio and newspapers play a primary role in

as contemporary poetry. It also publishes

book publicity for publishers in Africa, says

memoirs, such as Tina Okparas My Life Has A

Price, her riveting account of the torture and
abuse she suffered as a teenage girl at the
hands of a prominent Nigerian football player
and his family, after she had gone to live at
their house in Paris.
Somewhat unusually for a new publisher,
Amalion has been publishing in both English
and French from the beginninga reflection
of their continuing dominance as written
languages decades after the colonial era. By
comparison, Joloff (the language most widely
spoken in Senegal) is not formally taught in
schools, and thus is much less used in written
form.
Amalions founding Director, Suleiman
Adebowale is originally from Nigeria, but he
has lived and worked in Senegal since 1996.
For sales to most West African countries,
Adebowale says, Amalion ships books from
Dakar, with the exception of the outsized
Nigerian market, where he has found a very
good local distributor. But for many other
African countries, Amalion does fulfillment
through its U.K. distributor. The one exception,
however, is South Africa, which is a hard nut
to crack, as he puts it.
Basically, its an untapped market for African
publishers. Its a very cosmopolitan country,
with considerable pockets of Africans from
elsewhereZimbabwe, Mozambique, Congo,
and Nigeria, for example. They include not
only poorer migrants, but a professional elite.
That literate, middle-class elite should be an
obvious book-buying market, one particularly
interested in books from their respective

Adebowale, but he cast some doubts on their

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Battling Digital
Piracy in the
Arab World

effectiveness: In reality, a book gets some

noise, but how effectively can we calculate
tangible sales gains from these efforts? I feel
they are overrated much of the time. Instead,

Basically
its an untapped
market for
African
publishers

the most crucial element to Amalion books has

been our authors themselves. When they get
their networks involvedwhether via social
media or their extended families and friends
their efforts are far more effective in selling
books.
Despite Amalions own success in reaching
different markets, distribution within Africa
remains an issue, Adebowale points out. We
need more distributors. For publishing in
Africa to become successful, the distribution
sector needs to improve. People need to see
distribution as the opportunity it is.
Nevertheless, he remains optimistic about the
long-term prospects for the African publishing
industry: The business is certainly getting
better. If the situation is bleak, why are there
so many new African publishers coming out
now?
Amalion Publishing is located at Stand 11B39
at the ADIBF.

Piracy of printed books is

killing the Arab book market
and action needs to be taken
against Google and other
search engine giants to have
file-sharing sites taken down
or, at the very least, pushed
to the back of searches so
that they are much harder
to find. Thats the view of
Lebanese online bookseller
Salah Chebaro of Neel wa
Furat nwf.com who says
the situation is crippling the
industry.

Speaking to the Show Daily, he said: The

situation is very bad. I would say that around
60% of all Arabic print books are pirated
and certainly all the bestsellers. Almost
immediately the books are published, the
PDFs are available to download for free
on the Net. Everything is being destroyed
by this the publishers, the authors, the
bookstores and it is the giant search
engines who are making money from the ad
clicks when people use them to visit these
sites.
His anger and frustration led him to write
to Googles General Manager for the Gulf
in 2011, asking for help. But I received no
reply. So I wrote again in 2012 and this time
I copied in 50 of the most important Arabic
publishers. I wanted Google to take the sites
down, or to put them on page 100. Right
now, these sites appear before legitimate
booksellers. We can give them the names,
although they will know them anyway.
But they threatened me with legal action
on grounds that I was trying to scandalise
them.
Google succeeded in pushing him off
for now but Chebaro says he wants to
take the matter up with the International
Publishers Association (IPA). Closer to home,
he has been a little disappointed with the
reaction of Arabic publishers who tend not
to work collectively. They say its not their
responsibility what can we do?
Born in 1974, Chebaro has publishing in his
blood Arab Scientific Publishers (ASP) is
his fathers company, and was responsible
for publishing this years IPAF winner The

Lebanese
bookseller Salah
Chebaro of Neel
wa Furat wants
Google and Arabic
publishers to take
real action
Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alaanousi. After
studying Computer Science at Lebanese
American University in Beiruit, Chebaro spent
some time working on computer books for
ASP and then founded Internet World, the
first Arabic magazine about the Net.
Having watched the growth of Amazon, he
saw the possibilities for an Arabic equivalent,
and started NWF in 1998. Its name comes
from the Nile and Furat rivers (the W is the
Arabic and), the latter being the river that
flows through Syria and Iraq.
Today, NWF has a staff of 30 and offers some
450,000 Arabic printed books from Lebanon,
Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well
as 5,000 ebooks in ePub format.
Other countries are taking action against
piracy successfully, whether it be removing
the links or pushing them back. But this isnt
happening in the Arab world. The IPA is the
last door that I havent knocked on. This is
an important issue that needs addressing.

06

Publishers &
Bookseller
Al Balsam
caters for
Cairos
children
by Benedicte Page

Balsam Saad set

up Cairo childrens
publishing house
Al Balsam in 2005,
believing there was
too much focus on
publishing foreignlanguage books for the
international schools,
and not nearly enough
high quality childrens
books in Arabic.

Eight years later, and Al Balsam has

produced around 30 books, including
Arabic translations of Eric Carles classic
picturebooks A Very Hungry Caterpillar and
The Bad-Tempered Ladybird.
It has also published original titles,
including Malek Al-Ashaa (The King of
Things) by Dr Tarek A Bary, a middle-grade
adventure story about a boarding school
boy who can talk to objects in the physical
world, which complain of the way they are
treated by the human world. Another big
project has been a gift edition of Ilabnaty
(To My Daughter) by Dr Nemat Ahmed
Fouad, first published in the 1950s and
aimed at teenagers, in which a mother talks
to her daughter about life and motherhood.
Three years ago, Saad also opened her
own bookshop, a few minutes walk from
Tahrir Square. There she stocks not just her

own publications, but those from among

the many other childrens publishers she
admires, including UAEs Kalimat, Lebanons
Asala and Egypts Dar Al Shorouk.
Publishing in the Arabic language is not
easy, Saad acknowledges. The profit
margin is smaller, because the purchasing
power is smaller, she says. Arabic books
are cheap, so booksellers do not focus
on them, while foreign schools with big
purchasing power want other languages.
I knew from the first it would be very difficult
to make it work. But there are people who
believe in its importance you need to
know your own language, to appreciate it
and love it.
Distribution problems are perhaps the
greatest problem Saad faces, calling it
like cutting into stone. She says: To
enter other markets is tough, to know who
is trustworthy locally and abroad is not

easy. Good booksellers are increasing and

several booksellers in Egypt have grown
into chains, but there is still not a good
reach into the provinces or into other Arab
countries.
But Saad is also exploring e-books and
expects to begin publishing them in the
next few months. We are working on
acquiring digital rights, and here at Abu
Dhabi we have been meeting several
people and looking at options, she said.
The political upheavals in Egypt have
inevitably taken their toll, particularly given
the Al Balsam Bookstores central location.
Sometimes when there are protests
in the street, just two people come into
the bookshop, or we hold an event and
nobody comes, Saad says. But part of
why we need to be around is to improve
literacy, because education and reading can
contribute to our future.

Hachette Antoine: Young FrenchLebanese Publisher is Growing Fast

by Claude Combet

Hachette Antoine is a relative

newcomer to the Arabic
publishing world. Emile Tyan,
who hails from Lebanon but
studied at Sciences P Paris
(the famous French Institute
of political science) and was
the Sales Manager of the
Librairie Antoine, runs the
new company launched in
February 2010 in Beirut.

Hachette Antoine is a joint-venture

between the international publishing group
Hachette and the Librairie Antoine, the
Beirut bookstore founded in 1933. There
are 333 million people speaking the Arabic
language and 45 % of them are under 14
years-old. Hachette provides me clout and
help if I have a problem explains Emile
Tyan, who has a strong understanding of
the Arabic market.
Hachette Antoine publishes 200 titles a
year in Arabic,including literature, lifestyle,

06

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Mr and Mrs of Roger Hardgreaves,

Tchoupi (the famous character for the
youngest published by Nathan) or Les
incollables from Playbac. Childrens
books is a wealthy market because of the
institutions and schools who purchase
books, he says. In the Arab world,
covers and presentation are of particular
importance, and he cites the work of
Algerian writer Ahlam Mosteghanemi as
one example of books that feature covers
that are modern and attractive, but play
with and incorporate Arabic graphics.

academic and childrens titles. Some

80% of them are translated from different
languages. Tyan buys rightsnot only from
Hachette, but from a wide variety of agents
and publishers he meets at the Frankfurt
Book Fair, London Book Fair and Bologna
Childrens Book Fairs, as well as Abu Dhabi,
though he notes, it is still developing its
rights market.
Tyan and his team are particularly focused
on childrens titles. Hachette Antoine has
published, for example, Disney titles,

Despite the
challenges, the
publisher puts out
200 titles in Arabic
per year and sells
3,000-4,000 copies
of its bestsellers

The trade in the Arabicworld is much

different as it was five years ago. The
market used to be deserted by publishers.
Today everyone is publishing and there
are perhaps too many books for a
market that doesnt seem to growing fast
enough,Emile Tyan notes, noting the
numerous challenges: the war in Syria,
the devaluation of the Egyptian pound,
political and social complications in Iraq,
the lack of a true network of bookstores.
Nevertheless he says, he still usually
sellsbetween 3,000 and 4,000 copies of
his best-sellers.

23rd Abu Dhabi International Book Fair

24 - 29 April 2013

Illustration of the Day: Sumaia Al Amoodi

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23rd Abu Dhabi International Book Fair

24 - 29 April 2013

www.adbookfair.com

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