Did Culture Min. Succeed in Saving Egyptian Publishing?

The Egyptian publishing business faced huge losses especially since the coronavirus outbreak back in March.

This led all publishers to cooperate together through the Egyptian Publishers United with Dr. Enas Abdel Dayem reopened all the book fairs in the country including new ones to test the possibility of having the Cairo International book fair.

[caption id="attachment_159729" align="alignright" width="300"] Dr. Enas Abdel Dayem[/caption]

The Alexandria book fair was a great success even with the precautionary measures that included, decreasing the number of visitors to only 600 visitors; this is according to the director of the fair managing department Islam Bayoumy.

The figure is only one-third of the regular number of visitors.

All the visitors were given numbered cards so, that when one visitor leaves another one enters, imposing the social distancing and wearing face masks.

Bayoumy said that the Alexandria book fair is only the beginning seeing as the Mansoura book fair is currently getting ready to welcome The Egyptian publishing houses.

The Mansoura book fair is set to start on October 20th and it is the first-ever book fair in Mansoura.

He also added that the first Opera House book fair is set to start on November 1st to benefit from the Arabic music festival crowds.

[caption id="attachment_159734" align="alignright" width="300"] Islam Bayoumy, talking about Saving Egyptian Publishing[/caption]

Finally, he affirmed that the Alexandria book fair was a great success 150 thousand pounds of profit made with only the General Egyptian Book Organization.

On his part, Mohamed ElSaqa, the president of the “Ebdaae” publishing house, considers these fairs as a compensation to the lockdown period where they only paid their employees without having any profit.

Unfortunately, this led so many small publishing houses to go out of business.

Furthermore, Mohamed Ibrahim, the chairman of the Nahdet Misr publishing house, regards these fairs as an impressive step that should be permanent in all the cities and not just temporary.

Ibrahim also suggested that some seminars and activities be available along with the fairs online to all the remote cities around Egypt.

Contributed by Sara Goda