New Swedish Books, Spring 2020 1
New Swedish Books 31 A PUBLISHER’S PERSPECTIVE Mo
hamed El Baaly Publishing challenges in Egypt Publisher Mohamed El Baaly from Sefsafa Publishing in Cairo participated in the 2019 Gothenburg Book Fair Fellowship programme of events. During the group roundtable discussions, he shared valuable insights into the book market in his home country, as well as in the wider Arab world. Now he is also sharing his experience with New Swedish Books. The publishing sector in Egypt faces major challenges, especially economic and political ones. In Egypt there is potentially a big market for publishing due to the massive population, which means that there could be a wide range of books and readers. But as with all the Egyptians who are suffering under the current economic circumstances, inflation is making people reprioritise their expenditure which has eventually led to books being excluded from their priorities. The publishing sector also faces pressure due to the absence of freedom of expression, which makes the topics of politics and history more difficult to publish. The authorities deal very harshly with anything that doesn’t align with the official narrative of the state. Currently there is an Egyptian publisher being held in prison for publishing a book about a former president’s son -in- law. The publishing market suffers also from a distribution problem, which makes publishers (especially small publishers) incapable of reaching readers across all of Egypt. Even in Cairo, the capital, there are difficulties with distribution. The Egyptian market still lacks any kind of book distribution company. And the other companies that work in the logistics sector, like the newspaper shipment services, don’t deal efficiently with books. There is a big gap in the availability of libraries and bookstores in Egypt. We don’t know the exact numbers as there are no public statistics for them, but we know that they are in decline everywhere in Egypt. The market is now controlled by the newspaper vendors, most of whom are in the unofficial sector, which means they are dealing in forgeries. Despite all this, the Arabic market represents a window of opportunity for Egyptian publishers. The production of books in Egypt is still relatively cheap compared with other Arabic countries. The content of Egyptian books is good, which makes Arabic readers more interested in Egyptian bwooks. There are many publishers in Egypt, with about 1000 registered with the Egyptian Publishers Association, which makes it a huge challenge to publish high quality titles, given the severe competition with the popular fiction publishers. In an attempt to address these challenges, Sefsafa Publishing is trying to expand its relations, get more involved in book fairs and listen to the readers, as this gives us the chance to measure reading trends, and find out what people think of our work. We also try to make our publications available on e-book platforms or as audio books, to overcome the difficulties in distribution especially among young people. Finally, we at Sefsafa Publishing seek to produce a unique cultural product, so we choose the books that we see as accumulating capital for the Arabic library, not just books for amusement. Currently we are publishing August Strindberg’s play To Damascus and we are also looking for contemporary Swedish writing. ! Each year, the Gothenburg Book Fair Fellowship brings together around 30 foreign publishers and translators from around the world. The deadline for applications this year is 2nd April. Photo: Sefsafa Publishing