Running March 24 through 31 the eight day event averaged over 160,000 in-person visitors per day. Not bad for an Arab book fair in North Africa on the very fringe of global publishing’s radar. Just maybe its time global publishing started taking the Arab and African markets seriously.
Algeria’s biggest cultural event has long been its annual book fair, but only in the pandemic did the fair take its first tentative steps into digital beyond social media.
This year the Algiers International Book Fair (SILA) organisers embraced the best of both worlds, with a semi-hybrid event that offered an ecommerce platform to buy books as well as an improves social media presence.
I’ve not seen the final numbers from SILA yet, but the initial word is 1.3 million visitors attended the in-person event, while 100,000 visited the ecommerce platform.
For the SILA Facebook page the final count was 8 million visitors.
Running March 24 through 31 the eight day event therefore averaged over 160,000 in-person visitors per day. Not bad for an Arab book fair in North Africa on the very fringe of global publishing’s radar. Just maybe its time global publishing started taking the Arab and African markets seriously.
Around the world as the pandemic’s wrath slowly weakens we are seeing more and more book fairs return to in-person events, but with very few exceptions with a digital element in attendance that acts both as a safety net and an audience builder.
Most book fair organisers, it seems, have finally begun to understand the digital advantage. It remains to be seen how many will continue to expand their digital operations beyond the basics.
