It may seem like a great risk for a new publishing house like "Risha" to start launching its first publications, specializing in biographies, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has not yet finished from overwhelming the world.
The house was ready to launch its first publications in March until the virus started to emerge, resulting in months of disruption, closures, and layoffs," said Chairman of Board of Directors at Risha Publishers Hussein Osman.
"I have always been passionate about writing and this dream continued to haunt me until I achieved it, and because I am a sales manager, I focused my attention on the administrative side, which I consider the basis for the success and continuity of the publishing industry, and I left the artistic side to journalist Mohamed Tawfik after I touched on several biographies that attracted the public," Osman said.
"Biographies of personalities have an impact on our lives and success stories contain challenges, which gives the magic of storytelling and the advantages of a novel, yet, we focus on information and rare pictures and manuscripts that are published for the first time," he added.
"We launched the first set of publications and we were successful in choosing our first appearances, as they achieved great success, and interaction, beginning with the memoirs of the director Salah Abu Seif and musician icon Hany Shenouda, written by Adel Hammouda," Osman pointed out.
As for the book written for the Egyptian football star Mohamed Salah, it contains a psychoanalytic biography, which reveals a lot about his secrets.
The book was written by Psychiatrist Mohamed el Mahdy through life situations and expressive body language inside and outside the stadium. "We plan to deliver the book to Mo Salah and his family," he noted.
Risha plans to publish "The Joker" in 2021, which tells the biography of the late artist Hassan Hosny, written by the critic Tarek El Shinnawi, and another tripartite biography series "Malek We Ketaba" about the press in Egypt, which is almost 200 years old.
Risha Art director Mohamed Tawfik said that specialization in biographies requires competitiveness in a market that contains nearly 2000 publishing houses.
"We have to achieve a special form and character for the house that appears even in its covers, under a plan targeting certain types of audiences, providing more than 30 books in the process of being ready," Tawfik added.
"We plan to expand the idea and go beyond people's biographies, including ones of places or paintings, and present them strictly so that our publications become references and a reliable source for our audience," he pointed out.
He continued: "We discuss everything with the writer during his work and until the completion, and an example of this is the experience of the journalist Nihal Kamal, whose memoirs about popular poet Abdel Rahman el-Abnudi includes scenes from his private life, family and friends."
Risha will also publish the memoirs of the late popular singer Mohamed Rushdie, which was written by Saeed El-Shahat in 1990, and kept away from the public since then, so it was necessary to reconsider their writing and likewise with Adel Hammouda.
On the other hand, visual artist Abdulrahman Al Sawaf says that he has been working in the field of book covers since 2009, noting that Risha is his second experience after "Battana" in terms of his responsibility for the visual identity of the publications.
"The aim is to leave a special impression on the reader and distinguish the book from other ones as brand creation, especially in the midst of the momentum of bookshops. An interesting cover is the first element that attracts the audience, yet, it remains the first element that cannot achieve success without a good title and strong content," Al Sawaf pointed out.
Contributed by Taarek Refaat
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