Publish MENA #9 - 25 June 2020
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Welcome to Publish MENA # 9
Back to a semblance of new normal
After the last bumper edition of Publish MENA to catch up on the quiet period during the early days of the pandemic, we're back into some semblance of a schedule now, and this issue brings you the latest news items from across the MENA region as well as some international stories that have ramifications for MENA publishers.
We open this issue with news from the Arabic audiobook subscription service Kitab Sawti, which saw a big boost in demand during the regional lockdowns. No reason to think that wasn't repeated across the other competing services in this field, and hopefully by the next issue of Publish MENA I'll have further news about how audio subscription is doing in the Arab markets.
In the USA the digital audio market is now worth $1.1 billion and still growing, and that's one of our international stories today here in Publish MENA. See below.
And staying with international audiobooks we take a look at the exciting audiobook market in China and how Artificial Intelligence is being used to narrate audiobooks.
Other international perspectives include an extensive report from the US-based distributor PublishDrive, which looks at how global demand for English-language titles has grown during the pandemic; a look at Bookbeat's new data tool for publishers; how Google's Loon project is bringing internet connectivity to Mozambique; and in Poland a video game has become part of the national school reading list.
Closer to home, our MENA stories include updates on the Palestine Book Awards; a Qatari author winning an Indie Award, and two items looking at Arabic-Korean and Arabic-Norwegian translations.
The big Arab stories are of course Bodour Al Qasimi's initiative in the UAE to support Emirati publishers (we also have a brief item on a similar move in Egypt) and how the UAE's Dubai Cares and the IPA are looking for new proposals to improve distance-learning across Africa, including of course Arab-speaking North Africa.
And we round off this edition with a look at how Netflix is to add 44 Arab movies to its video catalogue at a time when Saudi Arabia has just reported 4 million visitors to its recently opened cinemas.
Just to add here that if MENA publishers and other publishing stakeholders want to see their news included in the Publish MENA newsletters, or if you see a MENA story you think would make a good item for Publish MENA or TNPS, be sure to add us to your press release mailing list or email me direct:
Mark Williams - info@thenewpublishingstandard.com.
And breaking news as this edition of Publish MENA goes live:
The IPA's Bodour Al Qasimi and APNET's Samuel Kolawole will be discussing African Publishing during the Covid-19 Pandemic" on Monday June 29 at 1PM CEST (GMT 1 PM).
be sure not to miss that!
We'll have a review of that in the next editions of Publish MENA and Publish Africa.
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Kitab Sawti sees subscribers double during regional lockdown
Partners with Careem in Saudi Arabia
With 31 million people online the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the second largest Arabic digital market after Egypt (49 million internet users), and as a nation of booklovers (the Riyadh International Book Fair pulled in 1 million visitors last year, while the Jeddah Book Fair typically attracts around half a million visitors) a natural choice for digital books operators to focus.
Ebooks have yet to gain a real hold in the kingdom, but audiobooks have performed well, thanks to home-grown players like Dahd, and regional operators like Kitab Sawti, which describes itself as,
The MENA leader in Arabic audiobook production and distribution (with) the biggest library of Arabic audiobooks in the world.
As the pandemic spread across the Middle East and North Africa region, with Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Saudi Arabia among the worst hit, lockdowns began to hurt the bookselling industry in a region where booksellers are sparse, book fairs central to book sales, and online and digital book-buying opportunities few and far between.
But as elsewhere around the world, the few digital booksellers that were available soon found they were struggling to keep up with demand.
Kitab Sawti, founded in 2016 by Sebastian Bond & Anton Pollak, told TNPS:
The platform has seen unprecedented growth during the past few months as global and regional lockdowns started shifting consumer behavior. In the past 4 months, the number of installs and registered users on Kitab Sawti’s app has doubled, even more, the platform saw a 204% growth in total paid users, and a 6x growth of new paid consumers from January through to May 2020.
With supply-chains coming close to a halt in many countries the demand for digital products grew significantly.
Sebastian Bond said:
New habits have flourished during lockdowns across the Middle East, and we have seen that coincide precisely with the growth in the number of users on the app across markets.
As people shift to the new-normal we expect these new behavior patterns to persist as part of their routines. Audio content provides a resilient production cycle, even though affected by the pandemic, it’s faster and cost-efficient to adapt to new times.
Having raised $6M funding in 2019 from Bonnier Ventures, KAAF Investments –
Kitab Sawti has just announced,
a key partnership with Careem in Saudi Arabia that allows Careem riders to exchange points for subscriptions on the Kitab Sawti app.
Earlier this year Kitab Sawti partnered with Sharjah World Book capital making its library available to 5,000 readers, and,
launched a campaign with UNHCR to donate part of the revenues from annual subscriptions to support refugees in collaboration with influencers in Saudi and Kuwait.
That will come as no surprise to those familiar with Kitab Sawti’s origins offering audio to Arab refugees in Sweden.
Kitab Sawti quotes Deloitte as expecting the global audiobook market to grow 25% in 2020 to reach a value of $3.5 billion USD, with annual global consumption by a half billion consumers.
It is not clear how much of that $3.5 billion might be originating in the MENA markets, but with Kitab Sawti, Dahd, Booklava and Storytel among the key players regionally, and some 220 million people online across the Arab markets, we can expect the MENA share to grow even as the cake gets bigger.
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Bodour Al Qasimi launches AED 1m ($270,000) Emergency Fund to support Emirati publishers
“With every crisis comes an opportunity” - Bodour Al Qasimi
In partnership with the Sharjah Book Authority and Sharjah Publishing City, the Emirates Publishing Association (EPA) will be handling a fund worth AED 1 million provided to see publishers in the United Arab Emirates through the worst of the pandemic’s impact on the publishing sector.
Bodour Al Qasimi, President of the EPA and Vice President of the International Publishers Association, said:
The global publishing industry is among the vital economic sectors that has slowed down considerably due to the pandemic. With every crisis, comes an opportunity, and we need to rope in appropriate mechanisms to boost industry resilience and emerge out of it stronger. Today, we stand with our publishers to support and lead them onward to fulfilling vital projects that will boost our knowledge and creativity.
It is with the unfolding of a crisis that cooperation and teamwork gain more value than ever. The publishing sector and the cultural community in the UAE have strongly upheld this approach as we navigate current uncertainties and work towards securing our future. The ‘Emirates Publishers Emergency Fund’ is a fresh step in the direction, reflecting a more collaborative approach in promoting the written word. Safeguarding publishers and promoting the local knowledge industry is the need of the hour as the pandemic has proven beyond doubt the efficacy of the book as the most sustainable tool for spreading awareness, promoting values of peace and coexistence, and encouraging cultural dialogue.
The press release concludes:
All guidelines and conditions relating to provisions of the fund and how to avail of it will be announced later. These will be developed in collaboration with EPA with strategic partnership of the Sharjah Book Authority and the Sharjah Publishing City.
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Sweden: Bookbeat's new data-sharing tool
A watershed moment for subscription publishing?
We’ve long known the attraction of digital subscription books to consumers. But the benefits for publishers have been more challenging to quantify.
By definition, subscription is a counterintuitive notion for publishers, whereby a publisher can sell a single ebook for $10 or a single audiobook for $20 or let consumers read / listen to an unlimited number of ebooks for a token monthly sum, often lower than what a single book would cost.
Discoverability, backlist availability and various other benefits helped win publishers over, but the biggest carrot in the subscription operator larder has until now being at best occasionally dangled in front of publishers.
Data.
When a print book is sold it leaves the store and after that is anybody’s guess. Did they read it? Stick it on a shelf, unloved and forgotten? Rip the pages out one by one for toilet paper?
Did they read part of it and give up? Did they devour it in one sitting? Did they make notes on the pages?
With print books publishers can have no idea. With digital books the vendor will know all that and more. But sharing that data with the publishers who could then use that data to improve their operation? No way.
Until now, that is.
Bookbeat Insights is what Bookbeat is calling the tool that, if let loose outside the Nordics, threatens to transform subscription from a sideshow for publishers to a key strategic operation.
The data, after all, is likely to apply just as much to the print version as to the digital version of the title.
As Boktugg notes, the Norway-based subscription service facilitator Beat, headed by Nathan Hull, has long been touting publisher data as a key selling point, and when Denmark’s Gyldendal announced its subscription service it also made the point that date flowing to publishers would be a key attraction.
Boktugg explained:
BookBeat’s collaborative publishers have long been able to track their books’ daily consumption in the “BookBeat for Publishers” portal. Now the portal also launches a customer insight module – “BookBeat Insights”. In it, publishers can initially see their book’s ratings as well as the “finish rate”, a measure that indicates the percentage that completed a book by everyone who started the book. BookBeat also shows the average across different genres for comparison.
“This is part of a long-term initiative with the ambition that BookBeat will become the book industry’s foremost insight engine and answer the question of what people are really reading and listening to digitally,” Bookbeat writes in a press release.
Bookbeat’s Director of Business Development, Jeanette Löfgren, said Insights would be available to Swedish publishers from this month, and would be rolled out across Bookbeat’s international operations in due course.
Bookbeat has no designs on the Arab markets of MENA, but Bookbeat’s bigger rival Storytel is already operating in the region, based in Dubai.
A similar data-sharing move by Storytel, or indeed by the other digital books subscription services in the region – Dahd, Booklava, Kitab Sawti - could make subscription a lot more appealing to Arab publishers.
At which point its worth adding that Bookbeat, already operational in Finland, Germany and the UK, and just launching in Denmark.
Denmark has a population of 5.7 million, 5.6 million of whom are online. There are less than 6 million Danish speakers in the world.
Yet Bookbeat competes with Storytel, Nextory, Bookmate and Politken to get a share of the lucrative Danish digital books market.
MENA publishers should be in no doubt about the potential of digital, but it needs the will of publishers to be willing to make more content available in order for the infrastructure to be expanded to make Arab publishers' digital books viable across the region and globally.
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Egypt govt. to support publishers during pandemic
EPA signs agreement with Min. Culture and GACP
Egypt’s Minister of Culture, Inas Abdel Dayem and Ahmed Awwad, Head of the General Authority for Cultural Palaces, have signed an agreement with Saeed Abdo of the Cairo-based Egyptian Publishers Association (EPA) to provide support for publishers hit by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Egypt Today reports that the EPA is asking publishers to provide the General Authority for Cultural Palaces’ library administrators with curated lists of titles that a Cultural Palaces committee will select titles from to be available across the country’s public libraries.
With 56,906 coronavirus cases as this post is written, Egypt is the second most infected country in Africa and sadly leads in fatalities, with 2,278 deaths.
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Debut children’s author from Qatar makes shortlist for international indie book award
HBUK Press English-language title acclaimed
Published by Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press (HBKU Press) and written by debut author Ameera H Al Naemi, The Firefly is a finalist in the Children’s Picture Book (illustrative 6 years and above) category of the prestigious 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
The awards, presented by Independent Book Publishing Professionals Group in cooperation with Marilyn Allen of Allen O’Shea Literary Agency, is one of the largest international awards program for indie authors and independent publishers.
A press release from HBKU Press notes that The Firefly, written by Al Naemi and illustrated by Greek artist Nico Yanopulos, was selected as a finalist,
because it successfully highlights the selflessness of charity to children, teaching them an important lesson on how to positively contribute, even in the smallest way, to the global community.
HBKU Press Executive Director Bachar Chebaro said,
We are extremely proud to be able to provide a publishing platform that recognises the literary value and important messages of our books and authors from around the world. This type of recognition is sure to increase a book’s visibility and readership internationally and helps HBKU Press participate in cross cultural communications in a global context.
Said to be,
Perfect for children aged 5-12 (the book) can be purchased in bookstores across Qatar, or through the Snoonu and Rafeeq applications in Qatar and delivered to your door. It is available as an eBook on Kindle, Overdrive, and the StreetLib platforms.
Full disclosure: StreetLib is the publisher of TNPS and the Publish MENA newsletter. The inclusion of the reference here is in the context of making the point that digital Arab titles are increasingly available across the MENA markets and globally as Arab publishers expand their global ambitions.
Follow Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University Press - @HBKUPress.
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Arab literature travels well - given the chance
Arab literature in Norway
Over at ArabLit, a look at how Arab literature is finding a receptive audience in Norway, a country of just 5.4 million people, 5.3 million of whom are online.
Oda Myran Winsnes is an Arabic-Norwegian translator and winner of the 2016 Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize for her translation of Samar Yazbek’s بوابات أرض العدم (in English The Crossing) reports ArabLit, explaining that Winsnes' translation works include books by Khaled Khalifa, Mazen Maarouf, Dima Wannous, Ahmed Saadawi, Samar Yazbek, and Abdelaziz Baraka Sakin.
ArabLit questioned Winsnes about the challenges and rewards of translating Arabic - the fifth most-spoken language in the world with over 400 million speakers - to Norwegian - language spoken by by slightly more people than the population of Riyadh.
Excerpts from the interview below. Head over to ArabLit for the full and illuminating exchange
ArabLit: You have a view on several languages. How do you think Norwegian publishers differ — in their interest in Arabic literature, in how they select books for translation, and how they promote Arabic literature on their lists — from English-language publishers?
Winsnes: The Norwegian market is small — only five million speak the language after all — so it has been largely derivative of other markets, in the sense that Norwegian publishers would wait for books to be picked up by British/American, French, or German publishers. In the past, translations from Arabic were sometimes made from these intermediary languages instead of from the original, which is very unfortunate, but these days most publishers seem to appreciate the close engagement with the original text and author that a direct translation affords and not settle for diluted translations that have already been filtered through another European language. I started out translating books that had not yet been published in other languages, which was a challenge because editors would have to rely on summaries, promotional material, and my assessments when choosing what to go for.
ArabLit: Are there Arabic translations that circulate widely in Norway? If you were to ask an ordinary Norwegian bibliophile what Arabic literary works they knew, how would they answer? (Outside of the 1001 Nights, naturally.)
Winsnes: Not that I know of. Nobel Laureates are closely watched, so Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy would be the work that has perhaps garnered the broadest fame, although the translation skews towards the French rather than the original. And then there are certain books that are written “for translation” or at least somewhat adapted for a Western audience by the author themselves like The Yacoubian Building. But broad appeal and wide circulation are rarely afforded books that do not fall into a few restricted categories such as crime novels from other Nordic countries or best-sellers in English-speaking countries.
ArabLit: Are there ways in which you would like to change the reception of Arabic literature in Norwegian? Among critics, among librarians, among publishers, among readers?
Winsnes: I don’t want to criticize my book-loving compatriots, but if I could offer some “positive reinforcement,” it would be to keep exploring literatures that are not immediately digestible and easily consumed, and to not let the old (somewhat racist) stereotype of a Middle East in constant conflict define and restrict what works you engage with. I have translated two of Khaled Khalifa’s novels, No Knives in the Kitchens of This City and Death is Hard Work. The former deals with Aleppo from around 1960 up until the Iraq war, with obvious but veiled reference to the tyranny that Syria experienced for most of that period. Promotional material and reviews did however frame it as a peek behind the curtain of the pre-civil war Syria and drew attention to the Assad-family dictatorship, which the book itself is circumspect in invoking. These are by no means egregious distortions, but it shows how books like these are forced into a certain pigeonhole when they enter our literary ecosystem. Death is Hard Work is set during the civil war, and was therefore an easier sell, but now I am about to translate Khalifa’s latest novel, No One Prayed over Their Graves, set during Ottoman times in the early 20th century, and I will be really interested to see what kind of reception that book gets, when there is no obvious connection between the literature and the current state of news coming out of Syria. But the success of the previous books hopefully draws in the readers so they can appreciate a wider array of topics dealt with by a master story-teller.
ArabLit: How does it usually work, for an Arabic translator to bring a project to a Norwegian publisher? I understand (I think) that Cappelen Damm asked you for a reader’s report of Samar’s The Crossing, which you went on to translate. What about your other works?
Winsnes: I have sometimes been asked for a reader’s report. And while I am eager to get translation work, I have tried to play the role of “expert” and “facilitator.” When a book is interesting but will require a lot of effort and particular interest to find its Norwegian audience, or will inevitably incur only marginal interest, I say so. Publishers will only pick up a tiny amount of chatter about Arabic novels, though. Most of them are fairly tiny publishing houses, often with only one or two editors responsible for all translated fiction, so it goes without saying that they cannot be acutely attuned to the developments, novelties, and breakout stars in every region of the world. I therefore suggest novels sometimes, not least based on what is discussed on ArabLit. And sometimes I get lucky and have a publisher pick up something I have suggested. It can be frustrating though. When Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi won the IPAF in 2014, I enthusiastically suggested it for translation, but got nowhere. Then Jonathan Wright’s brilliant English translation came out in 2018, and suddenly two different Norwegian publishers were interested, and both ended up bidding for it and asking me if I wanted to translate it. I am happy we got around to doing it, but I also looked back at my old emails thinking “I told you so…”
ArabLit: What do you think are the biggest differences between how Norwegian editors work with translations and how English-language editors work with translations from Arabic?
Winsnes: As I have mentioned, Norwegian publishers will be hesitant to go for something that bigger language communities have not already picked up. This is perhaps a consequence of being a very junior member in the society of cultured European nations. But it is also a consequence of size and resources. An editor might have to juggle everything from the latest Icelandic crime novels to big hits from Japan, staples of American literature, and then the very varied world of Arabic literature.
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PublishDrive May 2020 Report
Monthly market insights from US-based aggregator PublishDrive
PublishDrive have issued their latest ebook sales update showing us how the pandemic has impacted their operation.The numbers reflect PublishDrive's global reach and so will be of interest to MENA publishers.
The May 2020 report by PublishDrive CEO Kinga Jentetics opens:
Since the (Covid-19) outbreak, we’ve experienced a 20% growth rate in March and 23% in April. With the world opening back up, that rate has slightly flattened in May 2020. However, when looking at May 2020 book sales compared to May of last year, book sales have increased by 60% on PublishDrive.
Interestingly, the growth is significantly higher when compared to last year than last month. Another note: in 2019 we recorded a 0.8% growth rate. In 2020, the growth from just April to May was 6%!
PublishDrive adds that based on mid-month indicators they expect 50% YOY growth for June.
On genre impact, PublishDrive tell us:
In May 2020, popular genres included fiction, especially fantasy books, science fiction, thriller, and crime books. Interestingly, romance and erotica saw a slight decrease in April, but made it back to the top in May. Nonfiction self-help titles maintained solid performance as well, especially regarding education, family & relationships, computers, social science, health & fitness, and even body, mind, & spirit.
In May, we saw a shift in consumer behavior with the rise of educational content, sci fi, and thriller book categories.
Publish MENA note: As ever a reminder these are percentage comparisons, not actual sales volumes, so this chart is NOT telling us Music is outselling everything else and Romance is hardly selling at all, just that these are where the most growth was recorded.
With that in mind, the territorial reports from PublishDrive make for interesting reading:
Amazon’s bestselling books were in fantasy, romance, and thriller the most. There was also a significant increase in non-fiction like body, mind & spirit. Amazon’s traditional markets like the UK and US experienced growth. There was notable growth in South Africa, in Asia such as Japan, and in Latin America like Chile.
Publish MENA note: Amazon does not have Kindle stores in South Africa and Chile, so these sales will be happening through the Kindle US store.
Apple saw growth in romance and fantasy, and saw a significant boost in thriller. Non-fiction titles skyrocketed as well, especially business, historical, social science, health & fitness, and family & relationships. Latin America such as Brazil or Chile and Asia such as Japan had growth.
Publish MENA note: Japan and China are the only countries in Asia that have Apple Books availability, but Apple Books is available across much of Latin America.
Barnes & Noble saw growth in romance, thriller, erotica, and fantasy. Actually, most non-fiction genres were popular. (Note: Barnes & Noble only represents stores in the US.)
Bookmate saw growth in romance and erotica. Its non-fiction titles saw growth, like foreign language study and health & fitness. India, Russia, UK, and Latin America like Chile and Mexico saw the most growth in sales.
Dreame focuses on the US and Singapore market. Mystery, thriller, romance, sci fi, and fantasy had remarkable growth.
Google Play Books saw growth mostly in romance, science fiction, foreign language study, health & fitness, and body, mind & spirit. We saw these growth hikes in many countries, particularly: UK, US, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Russia, and South Africa.
With Kobo, we’ve seen an increase in both fiction and nonfiction. Thriller, literary, erotica, health & fitness, self-help, and body, mind & spirit all saw boosts. Most of this growth came from English speaking countries, plus Italy and the Philippines.
Odilo focused on the Spanish library markets, so it’s not surprising that their biggest growth came from Latin America, especially Chile and Colombia. Genres like computers, business, and education were popular.
Scribd did especially well with non-fiction titles like health & fitness, body, mind & spirit, and medical. It’s interesting to see literary fiction or nonfiction genres like poetry and literary criticism growing. Most of the sales came from India, South Africa, Turkey, and Latin American markets like Brazil, Chile and Mexico.
Publish MENA note: Scribd recently launched a dedicated operation in Mexico having picked up $58 million in new funding.
Next PublishDrive shows us how international sales have grown compared to our staple, the US market. Again, these are comparative percentages, not sales volumes.
The US market grew, but international book sales are growing exponentially.
Right now, English-language books are in global demand. Sales from the US grew by 11% in April, then another 4% in May.
When we look at its ratio from the overall sales, it shrunk from 35% in March to 32% in April, then stayed consistent at 31.6% in May. This shows the impact of rapid growth from international markets.
The next chart from PublishDrive shows “the top 20 bestselling countries and their growth rates from April to May 2020, compared to last year in the same period (May 2019).”
The US and UK are the top countries based on sales value, and sales are increasing month by month. Other countries also stand out: New Zealand, Belgium, Netherlands, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Russia, and South Africa. As countries reacted to COVID-19 with different lockdown periods and measurements, we’ve seen new markets for English-language content pop up.
Publish MENA note: For more on the exciting English-language books market in countries where English is not the first language, refer to our numerous TNPS reports on Big Bad Wolf, which until the pandemic hit was regularly shipping literally million of English language books to countries as unlikely as Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Taiwan and many other places.
With the sub-header “Device-related retailers are seeing spikes in sales,” PublishDrive advise:
Book royalties come from different sources today, not just from selling one copy to a consumer. Typically, these sources can be categorized:
• Retail: Major outlets that reach global readers with the usual one copy purchase business model. E.g. Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Google Play Books, and Kobo.
• Subscription services: Usually applications or stores that provide unlimited access to books in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. E.g. Scribd, Bookmate, and Dreame.
• Digital library providers: Book borrowing for not just individuals, but institutions like public libraries, schools, universities, or corporate libraries. E.g. OverDrive, Bibliotheca, Mackin, and Odilo.
• Regional stores: Outlets that cover a specific region that serves the local community. E.g. Tolion, Chinese stores, Hungarian outlets, and German network.
The next image shows us how different consumer points challenge the notion that Amazon is the only show in town.
As Kinga Jentetics says,
With book sales, many think of selling ONLY on Amazon. Although Amazon is great, there’s an entire mass of readers you can find elsewhere with other stores and business models.
58.48% of PublishDrive’s book sales come from retail (Amazon included). The other 41.52% comes from subscription business models (33.81%), libraries (2.43%), and regional stores (4.9%). Reader experience has shifted in the last couple of years.
Since March 2020, more people have been actively using subscription services. With the flattening period, retail sales growth started to dominate more than subscription or library services (which makes sense).
We’ve also seen trends in ratios according to different business models (see the chart below comparing the data to last year’s). Regional stores grew significantly by 136%, telling us that people looked to local stores for digital books first.
Compared to May 2019, the countries where subscription services seem to be catching up the most are: Australia, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, France, India, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Spain, and the US. For example, Scribd just ran a promotional campaign where they extended its free trial period allowing more readers to join without any financial restrictions.
Retailers grew by 65% compared to last year and another 4% compared to April’s sales data. This is above the usual trend based on last year’s data. The growth was dominant in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Spain, US, and South Africa.
When looking at the biggest growth numbers behind some of the stores, we found that the biggest winners were stores with mobile/tablet device-related apps or subscription services/libraries focusing on international markets. See the chart below.
Amazon, Google, Bookmate, and Dreame are growing full speed ahead since April, hitting over 25% in May. Also, Barnes & Noble is catching up with its 11% monthly growth rate.
Publish MENA note: Many PublishDrive clients will be going to Nook direct, so we may be missing the full scale of Nook’s come-back. Earlier this month Barnes & Noble’s new CEO James Daunt said Nook was outperforming his expectations and he would be investing in the Nook operation, not shuttering it. Great news! Daunt also said he would re-open the Waterstones ebook store in the UK, but don’t hold your breath for that.
PublishDrive says,
Google is unique in the ebook market as their reading app and store are preinstalled on a large amount of devices worldwide. So whoever has an Android can access different types of books easily with their preinstalled apps. The outstanding growth is understandable during this period with the plethora of device type and usage out there.
Publish MENA note: While the Google Play app comes preinstalled on Android devices worldwide, it should be noted Google Play Books is only accessible in 75 countries/territories, not globally. In Africa, for example, Google Play Video, Music and Games are widely available but Google Play Books is only an option in Egypt and South Africa, although Google Play Books is accessible in most Middle East countries.
The next image shows the reality of Google Play Books reach, where the light blue areas means a limited service is available.
Read the full report from PublishDrive here.
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Google Loon balloon-internet for Mozambique
The limits to our audience reach diminish by the day
Last month Google Loon, the project that aims to launch high-altitude balloons carrying internet relay equipment to bounce signals to and from the least accessible parts of the world, signed a deal with telco Vodafone Mozambique to float Loon balloons in the stratosphere 20km above the country.
What it means in effect is a floating network of cellphone towers over Mozambique offering 4G connectivity supporting Data, Voice, SMS and USSD and mobile financial services like M-Pesa.
A press release explained:
Using the Loon solution, Vodacom will expand mobile network access to Cabo Delgado and Niassa provinces (of Mozambique), two regions that have proven hard to cover in the past due to the vast and logistically challenging geographical areas, together with low population density.
The service will be available to any Vodacom subscriber with a standard 4G-VoLTE enabled handset and SIM card. Users will not need to do anything special to connect to the service; they will connect just as they would to a normal cell tower.
Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub said:
Vodacom’s partnership with Loon is a perfect example of how technological innovation can connect the most rural communities in Africa. We are pleased to be part of this initiative in Mozambique, which is helping to bridge the digital divide. This is even more pertinent in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, where more Mozambicans will now have access to healthcare information through our Loon partnership. We look forward to forging similar partnerships and projects across the continent, as we ensure that no one is left behind when it comes to accessing the global digital economy.
For Loon, CEO Alastair Westgarth said:
We’re extremely pleased to be partnering with Vodacom, one of Africa’s largest mobile network operators, to begin serving parts of Mozambique in the coming months. Vodacom has a big footprint in Southern Africa, and provides service to tens of millions of people across multiple countries every single day. We view this as the first step to a larger partnership that will allow us to serve more of those users throughout Africa.
The press release adds:
In the coming months, Loon and Vodacom will work together to continue installing terrestrial infrastructure, which will serve as the physical connection point for Loon’s balloons to Vodacom’s internet and core network. Loon will also begin flying balloons above Mozambique to learn the stratospheric wind patterns on which the balloons must navigate to remain above the service area. Network integration testing is ongoing in order to ensure that this innovative solution works as intended. Loon and Vodacom expect to begin providing service to users in the coming months.
The balloons are launched from the USA and then navigated around the world to take up position as needed.
Check out this and this video on YouTube for a better idea of how it works.
While there are no instant rewards here for publishers, the long-term prospects are exciting, as every mobile device connected to the internet is a potential recipient of digital books, always assuming any publishers have bothered to make them available.
As a Portuguese-speaking nation Mozambique is a potential audience for both domestic and international publishers. Not least those in or targeting the Portuguese-speaking markets of Brazil and Portugal.
Mozambique’s 31 million population may be at only 21% internet penetration, but that’s still 6 million people – more than Denmark, Finland or New Zealand, all of which have vibrant digital book economies.
And across Africa, 2020 began with a total of 526 million people online.
That’s more people online in Africa than in the USA (312 million).
Or North America (345 million).
Or South America (307 million).
Or the EU (397 million).
Whether you’re on the continent or outside it, Africa is too massive and exciting a potential digital book market to be ignoring or treating as an afterthought.
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TikTok owner ByteDance moves into the 560 million listener $1.1 bn China audiobook arena
With AI narrations
Steeping outside MENA again briefly, we next take a look at the phenomenal progress in the digital audiobook market in China.
From TNPS: When it comes to AI-narrated audio the publishing industry has a relaxed, even complacent stance. It will never happen. And when it does (the industry loves to deny something is possible whilst simultaneously explaining why it is doomed to fail) it will be unsellable rubbish.
Enter, stage left, TikTok. Or rather, TikTok owner ByteDance which, not content with disrupting the social media video industry, launched into social media music earlier this year and now aims to set the audiobook world on fire.
The good or bad news, depending on where you sit, is that just as the TikTok music venture is for now only in India, the TikTok venture into audiobooks is for now only in China.
For reasons not totally clear ByteDance has chosen not to use the TikTok brand steamroller to flatten the opposition, but is keeping the identities separate. The India music launch goes by the name Resso, while the new audiobook operation is called Fanqie Chang Tin (番茄畅听), which translates as Tomato Unlimited Listening according to RadiiChina, which describes the app as:
a long-form audio platform with a library of audiobooks and audio dramas; interestingly though, much of the content is narrated not by humans, but by AI.
The app features a range of books — from fantasy novels to self-help guides — and users can select from “standard,” “emotional,” or “boutique” male or female AI narration.
The content – both AI and real – is produced by Fanqui Novels, owned by ByteDabnce.
The move comes hard on the heels of tech titan Tencent launching its own audiobook operation in April.
This after EnPeople reported iiMedia in January 2020 as valuing the China audiobook market at 8.2 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) with an expected 562 million audio consumers this year.
EnPeople reports that one of the leading Chinese audiobook players, Ximalaya FM (competing with Dragonfly FM and Lychee FM), ran a promotion event in December 2019 where consumers spent 828 million yuan ($116 million), blowing apart the widely held view that Chinese consumers expect free content online.
Ximalaya FM founder Yu Jianjun said:
More users are willing to pay for high-quality content, and content creators can also benefit.
Which brings us full circle to the 452,000 yuan ($64,000) question: Can ByteDance’s AI-narrated content hit the mark and produce narrated audio that warrants cold hard cash being handed over to listen to?
We can safely say in 2020 we haven’t reached that stage yet with AI narration in the European languages, but I can only speculate if maybe the Chinese language lends itself better to AI narration, or if China’s tech guys are ahead of the curve.
It’s clear TikTok parent company ByteDance thinks this is a runner, and publishers, producers and narrators alike should be watching this closely, Because one thing we all need to understand is that AI-produced content doesn’t have to be perfect to be commercially viable. Just good enough.
And this latest development in China suggests that point may not be too far off.
This isn’t a “Be afraid – Be very afraid” moment for the industry. Not yet, anyway. But it could be the first tremors in a seismic shift in how audiobooks are produced.
AI audiobooks on video, for example, may be the next big thing, with AI producing the content and then an AI-created author reading it aloud on video.
Quite why anyone would want to watch the author – even a real author, let alone a cyber-author – read a book is another question entirely.
But worth noting that China’s automated-content industry is expected to be valued at USD 14 million by 2026, according to 36Kr.
My thoughts: Is that all? I would expect the forecast to be much higher.
As I noted above,
AI-produced content doesn’t have to be perfect to be commercially viable. Just good enough.
I’m sure we can all point to mega-bucks authors whose books we regard as of laughable quality and that even the non-writers among us think they could have done better.
But the reality is if the reading and listening public just wanted Shakespeare there would be no publishing industry.
Trade publishing caters to a wide audience, many of whom want nothing more from a book than to be entertained and left feeling their money hadn’t been wasted.
If AI can deliver that then AI is ready to compete.
Be afraid. Be just a tiny bit afraid.
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Palestine Book Awards 2020: Shortlist Announced
Middle East Monitor announcement
The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) has announced its shortlist of authors in line for the 9th Palestine Book Awards, which selects from books about Palestine written in English. Thirty-eight books were submitted this year.
The 2020 shortlisted authors are:
- Susan Abulhawa - Against the Loveless World (Bloomsbury Circus)
- Finbarr Barry Flood - Editor - There Where You Are Not: Selected Writings of Kamal Boullata (Hirmer Verlag, Munich)
- Nathalie Handal - Life in a Country Album (University Of Pittsburgh Press)
- Rashid Khalidi - The hundred years' war on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company)
- Sahar Khalifeh (Author), Sawad Hussain (Translator) - Passage to the Plaza (Seagull Books)
- Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian - Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding (Cambridge University Press)
- Gardner Thompson - Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel (Saqi Books)
The winners will be announced in November.
More details, including the list of judges, over on the Palestine Book Awards website.
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Qatar translations award puts Korean in the spotlight this year
Alongside Persian, Pashto, Hausa and Swedish
We stay with translations for our next item, this time from Qatar’s The Peninsula, where the question of translations between Arabic and Korean was in the spotlight.
Qatar’s 6th Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding (SHATIU) held a virtual symposium titled “The Status and Prospects of Translation in Korean language to and from Arabic”, moderated by Dr. Amr Othman, a professor of Islamic history in the Department of Social Sciences at Qatar University.
Participants included Dr. Musa Gondo Kim, Professor of Arabic Language and Culture at Myeongji University in South Korea, who spoke about,
Korea’s experience in translating into Arabic and vice versa.
Gondo Kim explained that since 1965 when the departments of the Arabic Language and translation from Korean to Arabic were established, there were now six departments in five Korean universities, that annually graduate about 220 students.
The press release noted that,
The number of PhD holders in Arabic reached 45 Koreans, calling for the necessity of making official and individual efforts to raise the proportion of translation from Arabic to Korean. Regarding selection of Korean language by the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding at its current season, Gondo Kim said this is a great gift to the Korean people and a valuable opportunity to open the door to taste the beauty of the Arabic language by Koreans.
Dr. Lee is editor-in-chief of the Arabic version of Koreana Magazine at the Hankook University for Foreign Studies. He said that most translators from Korean to Arabic and vice versa looked for work in simultaneous interpretation due to its high financial rewards, and called for support to make text translation more attractive to translators.
Dr. Nabila Yoon Eun Kyung, Head of the Department of Arabic Language at Hankook University for Foreign Studies, noted that the translation movement in Korea has witnessed tremendous growth recently, and said that the number of literary works translated from Arabic to Korean had reached 30 books and from Korean to Arabic 40 books.
The Jordanian researcher Muhammad Qawabba, who holds a master’s degree in the Korean language, spoke about the,
difficulties faced by the Arabic translator in the Korean language, whether formal or cultural linguistic difficulties, indicating that the Korean language differs in its morphological construction from the Arabic language in that it is an adhesive language suffixes are added to the roots.
Dr. Hanan Al-Fayyad explained that the Sheikh Hamad Award chose a number of languages each year to focus on, and this year Persian was chosen as the second major language alongside English, while the five new languages for 2020 were Pashto, Bengali, Swedish, Hausa and Korean.
Interested parties can find more information and submission guidelines on the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding website here.
Related: earlier this month the Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and International Understanding held a virtual symposium using Zoom, broadcast live on Facebook, in which winners of the past five editions of the award shared their experiences.
Read more here.
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Computer game becomes part of Poland’s official school reading list
Blurring the definition of books and reading
For the purists among us who think that a book isn’t a book unless it was written by hand with a quill pen, printed by hand between two inked rollers, bound with a calfskin cover, with print so small you have to squint to see it, this post is not for you.
For the purists who think an audiobook is not a book because you’re not holding it in your hands inches from your face, maybe you too should give this post amiss.
For the rest, you still might want to be sitting down for this. After all, it’s not every day a national government declares a computer video game is to be part of its national school reading curriculum.
But that’s exactly what has happened in Poland, where the computer game This War of Mine is now part of the school reading list.
Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, as reported by Notes From Poland, told Polstat News:
Poland will be the first country in the world that puts its own computer game into the education ministry’s reading list.
Young people use games to imagine certain situations [in a way] no worse than reading books.
By incorporating games into the education system, we will expand our imagination and bring something new to the culture.
Grzegorz Miechowski, CEO of 11 Bit Studios, which produces the game, added,
Of course, games are already being used in education for teaching maths, chemistry, and developing cognitive abilities, but I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a game being officially included in the educational system on a national level as a school reading. I’m proud to say 11 bit studios’ work can add to the development of education and culture in our country. This can be a breakthrough moment for all artists creating games all around the world.
This War Of Mine was released in 2014 to widespread acclaim and reports suggest that, unlike most war-themed games, it focuses on the experience of civilians rather than those doing the fighting.
The reading list is aimed at students studying sociology, ethics, philosophy and history, and it should be noted that the definition of school here is also in a gray area. The video is 18-rated and as such only students aged 18 or over will be able to see it, at least on school premises.
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UAE and Spain discuss cultural cooperation
Digitising cultural content
Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, UAE Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development, and Jose Uribes, Spanish Minister of Culture and Sport,Noura Al Kaabi, has a bilateral cultural cooperation discussion online this month to explore mutual development of the cultural and creative sectors between the two countries.
Sharjah24 reports:
During a remote meeting, Al Kaabi briefed Uribes about the precautionary procedures adopted by the UAE and the experience of its cultural sector in maintaining the sustainability of innovation, through digitising cultural content and the launch of a national programme to support talents, which provided 87 financial grants to individuals and companies.
A digital policy guideline proposal and the "UAE’s significant interest in intellectual property, to protect creative talents and artists who do not present their work in the digital sphere" was also on the agenda.
Bilateral cultural ties have been developing for some while, with Sharjah guest of honour at the LIBER International Book Fair in Madrid 2019 and Spain will be at Expo Dubai 2021.
Spain and MENA of course have long-standing historic cultural ties thanks to the proximity of the two countries where Europe meets Africa and thanks to past territorial challenges by both sides.
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IPA and Dubai Cares invites proposals for projects to digitise Africa’s education infrastructure
Pandemic and post-pandemic solutions wanted
The International Publishers Association ( IPA) is offering grants (funded by the UAE-based Dubai Cares operation Africa Publishing Innovation Fund (APIF) to projects which offer the promise of transforming remote-learning opportunities across the continent.
With much of the continent – and the world – under lockdown, with schools and colleges closed the education of kids and teens has been hit particularly hard across Africa where, with few exceptions, the education sectors have little or no digitisation of teaching and the availability of teaching materials is sparse as publishers have been slow to embrace the digital advantage.
So this is a problem that involves but is not exclusively the domain of publishers. Little point providing digital materials for use in and outside of schools when there is no digital infrastructure to get that material in front of students in a meaningful way.
The exceptions – eKitabu in Kenya for example – are well ahead of the game and eKitabu leads the continent in digital learning provision. Whether eKitabu will pitch for APIF funding to develop its programme at a pan-African level remains to be seen, but the continent certainly needs more initiatives like this.
Per the IPA-APIF project website, Africa-based entrepreneurs and innovators are invited to pitch an outline idea and if the idea excites the board then the pitchers will be invited to make a full proposal.
The winners will be chosen by the IPA Africa Publishing Innovation Committee, led by IPA Vice President Bodour Al Qasimi, with “senior publishing leaders” from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tunisia and South Africa making the final decisions.
It’s worth noting that of those countries all are at national level English-language apart from Tunisia (French/Arabic). Tunisia has long led the way in digital education in North Africa.
It’s not clear if these countries are solely representative of publisher involvement, or just a sample of a wider list.
The press release. explaining that the APIF is a four-year, USD 800,000 fund provided by Dubai Cares, a UAE-based global philanthropic organization, and administered by the IPA observes:
Distance learning in Africa faces multiple difficulties, notably poor internet coverage in rural areas, cost, and students’ lack of technical means and funds to follow courses. According to UNESCO, 89 percent of learners in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to a computer, 82 percent have no internet access, and around 56 million learners live outside mobile networks. These challenges create a worrying digital and remote learning gap.
Bodour Al Qasimi, said:
The immediate effects of lockdown are clear, but the risks of serious, longer-term harm to education are only beginning to be understood. Covid-19 has taught us that technology can protect people and enable life and learning to continue. But this technology is not accessible to everyone. We are looking for bright minds and clever solutions to overcome these challenges in Africa by bringing learners, teachers and educational materials closer at a safe distance.
Dubai Cares CEO Tariq Al Gurg added:
The COVID-19 pandemic could be seen as a tipping point to digital transition in the publishing industry in Africa. This global health crisis also represents an opportunity for African publishers to put forward innovative solutions that will help them map strategies to overcome future challenges. We look forward to witnessing a high turnout among entrepreneurs and innovators in Africa along with their unique solutions and ideas in support of the publishing industry.
This new initiative forms the second round of bursaries under the MoU signed in 2019 between the IPA and Dubai Cares.
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'1001 Titles' adds 5 new titles in Arabic
KwB expands its catalogue
Sharjah's Knowledge without Borders (KwB) was launched in 2016 with AED 5 million that in its first two years paid for 1,001 first-edition Emirati titles within the first 2 years.
Now, reports Sharjah24, 1001 Titles is,
Expanding its range of titles while also offering guidance to writers and publishers in creative content and design, and helping local publishers navigate the challenges of the global publishing market.as announced the release of 5 new books for Arab readers including novels, short story collections, critical studies and translated literary works.
The five new additions are:
- 10 Things You Might Not Know about Nearly Everything, by Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer, translated by Four Corners Group and published by Dar Molhimon Publishing and Distribution
- Smart Technology and the Globalization of Literature by Dr. Ibrahim Ahmed Melhem, published by Nabati Publishing
- Back To the Future, a novel by author Muhammad Al Qubaisi published Landmarks for printing & publishing and distribution;
- The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood’s Man Booker Prize winner translated by Iman Asaad and published by Rewayat, a subsidiary of Kalimat Group
- The Seller of Used Books by Olegovich Malikov, translated by Ayyad Eid and published by Hamaleel Media Foundation
Read more over at Sharjah24
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If your books are available worldwide, let people know!
Twitter in action
This example from the digital publisher Boukouture, that knows a thing or two about selling ebooks.
Great graphic, with a clear message that the ebook is available from four international stores with over 150 consumer points across more than 75 countries.
All it cost the publisher is the graphic design and a few minutes to put the message on twitter.
The same image can then be used (re-sizing may be needed) for other social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Social media is not the enemy of publishing. It's our best friend. And it's free to use (with advertising options to reach even bigger, targetted audiences).
Not sure how to get a design made? Drop a line to us at TNPS.
info@thenewpublishingstandard.com
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US audiobook market value up 16% to $1.2bn in 2019. Unit sales also up 16%
But how much does the delivery model hold back the format?
These latest figures about the US audiobook market resulted in this op-ed over at TNPS, which raises issues that relate to MENA publishers.
Touting the fact that the US audiobook market had seen double-digit growth for the eighth successive year, the Audio Publishers Association, referencing a survey of 24 reporting companies, paints a rosy picture of the US audiobook scene without questioning whether it might be even more dynamic were publishers to be more open to opportunities.
Chris Lynch, co-chair of the APA’s research committee and president & publisher of Simon & Schuster Audio, summed up the understandable excitement among mainstream publishers:
Eight straight years of double-digit revenue growth is simply phenomenal. Even more encouraging are the continued upward trends in consumer listening behavior—both in how many titles they listen to per year and in their finding more time in their day to listen.
The latter point declines to note the pandemic-induced lockdown which might be responsible for all this extra time consumers are finding to listen to audiobooks, and stands at odds with another common theme being touted by publishers: that audiobook consumption was down because fewer people were commuting to work.
Of such contradictory and confusing sentiments are publishing urban myths built.
Not that the rise and rise of audio is an urban myth, although we should remember that back in the day ebooks were regularly seeing triple-digit growth, until mainstream publishers reigned in their ebook engagement and deliberately raised prices to stifle demand, leaving an open goal for self-publishers to seize a hefty chunk of the market.
With audiobooks the self-published element, while growing, is still a small part of the scene, and as audiobooks generally are not seen to cannibalise print sales in the way ebooks supposedly do, audiobooks for now are the publishing world’s darling format.
Audible, Hachette Audio, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster were among the survey contributors, collectively reporting 60,303 new audio titles produced in 2019, up 18% on 2018. There was no breakdown of how Audible’s output compared to the Big 5’s in this figure.
A separate survey found US audiobook consumption by title up from 6.8 in 2019 to 8.1 in early 2020, with mystery and thriller leading the way, in stark contrast to “reading” books where romance heads the genre choice in the US.
Quality of narration (professional voice-artist vs author read-aloud) was deemed important to consumers.
More than 50% of audiobook fans said they were listening to more, making extra time.
Most significantly 43% of consumers queried said they preferred shorter length audio (1-3 hours). What isn’t clear from that response is whether that is related to the time needed to listen to a book or simply the fact that shorter length audiobooks tend to be considerable cheaper if buying as a unit.
What the report studiously avoided deliberating on was the issue of retail and subscription.
We’ve seen time and again how, where unlimited subscription is an option, consumers flood to the format.
But in the US only Scribd is a significant player in the unlimited consumption arena, and many publishers do not place all or even any of their catalogue with Scribd.
While Audible is of course the market leader, the Audible subscription model is for one title per month for a fixed price, and that simultaneously encourages and depresses engagement.
Put simply, if a consumer is paying $14.95 per month to get a choice of any one audiobook they are going to look at titles retailing at at least that value, ideally more, to increase the perceived value for money. That pushes sale towards the more expensive, longer-duration audiobooks, yet this latest survey suggest consumers prefer shorter titles.
Having spent that monthly sum for one audiobook, how many more audiobooks are they likely to buy? Especially in the pandemic and post-pandemic recession?
And all-importantly, how many authors and titles will they risk experimenting with?
The one-unit subscription model favours consumers sticking with safe choices, and depresses discoverability.
With the unlimited subscription model the consumer can try as many titles as they have time for, seek out new genres, new authors and narrators and new titles, knowing there is no risk.
For publishers the question is, how far are they willing to go down this route?
Many, it seems, are not willing. At least not at this time. But as the success of the unlimited model shows where it is given free reign, not only is this the consumers preferred model but publishers and authors can, by sheer volume of engagement, do well too.
As so often with publishing, it is a matter of “this is how things have always been and this is how they will stay.”
The rapid proliferation of audiobooks subscription services around the world suggest global demand that will quickly dwarf the US market so long as single-unit subscription remains the predominant model in North America.
That global demand of course also to be seen in the growing number of audiobook operators serving MENA and sub-Saharan Africa.
African and Arab publishers alike should be looking at the extraordinary possibilities audio - not just regular audiobooks but podcasts and other variants of the format - offer to reach new audiences both at home and abroad.
And especially so in countries where the oral tradition of storytelling prevails and low literacy means text-based books cannot reach their full potential.
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Netflix globally releasing 44 Arabic films from across MENA
Once again video shows the global potential of content as publishers dither
Netflix is releasing a catalogue of 44 Arabic films combining cinematic masterpieces with contemporary rising stars from the Arab world's entertainment industry, reports DigitalStudioME, including the works of notable directors like Youssef Chahine, Youssry Nasrallah, Nadine Labaki, Moustapha Akkad, Anne Marie Jacir, Laila Marrakchi.
DigitalStudioME explains:
Netflix subscribers will have access to discover cinematic masterpieces that constitute an important part of the Arab world’s film heritage, bringing more Arabic films to the world and providing Arab talent and filmmakers with a platform to gain more fans globally.
The stories come from the UAE, Kuwait, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Algeria and Sudan.
At which point, pause for thought, because everything here applies equally to publishers. To paraphrase: bring more Arabic literature to the world and provide Arab talent and publishers with a platform to gain more fans globally.
Nuha El Tayeb, Director, content acquisitions, MENAT at Netflix, says:
We want more people around the world to have access to great stories and have the chance to see their lives represented on screen. We also believe that great stories come from anywhere and can travel everywhere connecting with audiences far beyond their place or language of origin. We’re honored to share these classic and contemporary films with our members in the Arab world and globally.
Again, substitute book for film and we have sentiments that could and should be driving Arab publishing.
True, there's no directly comparable platform to Netflix in the literary world.
But with very little effort Arab publishers, whether in North Africa or the Middle East, could be making their backlist and frontlist available on a global scale, both in the original languages and in translation.
That's the digital advantage, and why Netflix has become global phenomenon despite the ubiquity of satellite TV broadcasting.
The fact that so few MENA publishers are digitising as this new decade begins is testament to the region's overall conservative approach to change in publishing. And while it is of course is the prerogative of every publisher to cling to a bygone era when ink on paper was the only format, the pandemic has surely made clear the advantage digital can bring.
Some MENA publishers are already well ahead of this particular curve.
The referenced Abu Dhabi International Book Fair was of course cancelled this year due to the pandemic -
but that serves only to reinforce the sentiment.
Digital isn't just a global opportunity. It's a safety net.
In the pandemic and post-pandemic era the question publishers need to be asking is not "Why should we digitise?" but "Are the any good reasons why we shouldn't?"
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Thanks for reading
Publish MENA #10 will be along soon
And so another edition of Publish MENA draws to a close, and it takes us within days of being halfway through 2020.
Per the sentiments of Bodour Al Qasimi, with every crisis comes an opportunity, and the Covid-19 pandemic, for all its horrors, has also seen innovation and progress take place, not least in the global publishing arena.
Some publishers and booksellers have fallen as the pandemic swarmed across the world, but most have at least survived and many have emerged stronger, mostly because of a long-term strategic perspective, or simply a pragmatic given the circumstances, pivoting to digital.
Not just ebooks and digital audio, but online print sales, shifting to POD (print on demand), D2C (direct-to-customer selling), remote working (work from home) and a host of other digitally-centred shifts in the way the publishing industry and its stakeholders conduct their business.
2020 has seen changes in global publishing the likes of which we could only have imagined as 2019 drew to a close, and while it has not always been pleasant, its fair to say, in Bodour's words, that with this crisis came an opportunity.
An opportunity to pause, review operations, and make strategic changes, not least digital pivoting, that will leave the industry changed forever.
The pandemic is far from over, and it could well get worse before it gets better.
But for those still on the fence about whether digital should be part of their future strategy, ask yourself this:
Had this pandemic happened even ten year earlier, say in 2010, or twenty years ago, back in the year 2000, what, in all honesty, would be left of the publishing industry today? It would have been decimated.
That's a sobering thought on which to end this edition of Publish MENA.
I've been Mark Williams, writing from West Africa where, on behalf of the team at StreetLib that make TNPS and the B2B industry newsletters Publish MENA, Publish Africa and Publish Global possible, I say thanks for reading this, stay safe, and see you again in the next edition of Publish MENA.
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