Bodour Al Qasimi: Opportunities Are Ripe For The Arab Publishing Industry To Grow And Thrive

Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Vice President of the International Publishers Association (IPA), has stressed that publishing industry – in the Arab region and other countries around the world – are faced with the same challenges, but opportunities are ripe to consolidate their role in promoting their own businesses, as well as the authors’ efforts and readers’ access to quality reading materials.

The assertion was made during an opening speech she delivered on the second day of IPA’s First Middle East Regional Conference, organised in collaboration with the Union of Jordanian Publishers (UJP), on the sidelines of the 19^th  annual Amman International Book Fair (AIBF), which concludes today (Tuesday).

“The publishing industry in the Arab region is facing specific challenges, namely, the lack of distribution channels, good editors and professional literary agents. Others manifest as financing difficulties, restricted freedom to publish, lack of knowledge about intellectual property rights (IPR), and subsequently, poor compliance in some markets, or publishers’ apprehensions to go digital in their production and content development processes. Addressing these challenges will be the first step in identifying the course on which to steer the region’s publishing industry”.

Emphasising that the conference brought to light these challenges frankly and transparently, Sheikha Bodour continued: “The publishing industry in the Arab world needs strong and consistent support. We are at a turning point in the history of our publishing sector, being brought about by new influences like Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, which are transforming methods of learning, reading and knowledge dissemination. We cannot predict the way these methods will further transform in future. What we can do is take proactive steps to achieve our goals. We are bringing up a generation who are the children of digital revolution; they see technology as an integral part of their lives. We cannot impose our thoughts on them. We have to meet their needs for change and development”.

“We should remember that the announcement of Sharjah as the UNESCO World Book Capital 2019 isn’t just Sharjah’s achievement, but is a representation of the collective quality of books and culture that publishers spanning the entirety of the Arab world have contributed”, Sheikha Bodour concluded.

The IPA Vice President has called on all Arab publishers to collaborate with the Association by joining their technical committees and attending training workshops, which are organised on the sidelines of book fairs worldwide. Participation in these events, she emphasised, will offer them global exposure and diverse platforms on which they can learn from a variety of publisher experiences, exchange ideas, and explore new markets for their products. She explained that the world is changing and needs of readers are transforming as well, as they increasingly seek out content produced all over the world. This, she said, was an unmissable opportunity for Arab publishers to take their content to international readers.

The conference was attended by a group of local officials and cultural figures, notably HE Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, UAE’s Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development; HE Dr. Mohammed Suleiman Aburmman, Minister of Culture and Youth, Jordan; HE Faisal Al Fayez, President of the Senate, Jordan; HE Ahmed Ali Mohammed Al Balushi, UAE Ambassador to Jordan; Hugo Setzer, President of IPA, and Fathi Al Bass, President of Union of Jordanian Publishers.

The sessions explored and stressed the importance of building a generation of talented authors, artists and publishers, in addition to sharing promising visions and perceptions that are in the interest of reinforcing people’s knowledge and the role of libraries in empowering communities culturally and enabling them to face the challenges of modern technology. The sessions addressed the mechanism of expanding the outreach of Arabic content and Arab publishers globally. The technological progress and its impact on freedom of expression and publication, as well as the dire need to develop unified policies and strategies to protect copyrights in the Arab world, featured among the conference’s discussions.

The Regional Conference builds on the success of IPA’s series of regional seminars and conferences. The debut regional conference was held in Lagos, Nigeria in 2018, and the second edition of the conference held in Nairobi, Kenya, in June this year.