For comparison, Frankfurt would need to pull in 8.4 million visitors and London 6.8 million visitors to match that population percentage.
With Saudi Arabia as its guest of honour, one of 37 participating countries, the 32nd Doha International Book Fair hosted more than 500 cultural activities tis year, according to DIBF Director Jassim Ahmed al-Buainain said in a press release marking the end of the ten-day fair.
While of course primarily a public-facing fair, it is worth noting the engagement of, per the press release list, Unesco, Oman’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth; the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication of Morocco; the Algerian Ministry of Culture; the National Council for Culture, Arts and Literature of Kuwait; the Palestinian Ministry of Culture; the Abu Dhabi Centre for the Arabic Language; the Sharjah Book Authority; the Egyptian General Book Authority; the General Book Authority of Yemen; the Iranian House of Arts and Books; the Jordanian Publishers Union; and the Emirates Publishers Association.”
All of course there to develop their own publishing industry interests in ways that go beyond the western industry book fair model where selling rights is the focal feature.
While many developing market book fairs tend to focus on pushing reading as a necessary evil, Doha is among many MENA fairs that understand the way to get people reading is to explore the joy of reading, not the chore of reading.
I’ll leave the DIBF to explain:
“The DIBF organised 24 training workshops in the Thought Hall and 24 training workshops in the Knowledge Hall, in addition to a number of activities in the Children’s Oasis, with 87 theatre performances, in addition to the 116 activities of the Cultural Salon, which included lectures, seminars and book launches, and 37 seminars in the main theatre, and other cultural events such as Al-Mutanabi Street, which included six libraries and live cooking performances.”
No wonder 300,000 turned out for the event. That’s 10% of Dohan’s 2.916 million population.
For comparison, Frankfurt would need to pull in 8.4 million visitors and London 6.8 million visitors to match that population percentage.
#DIBF23 #DohaInternationalBookFair2023 #MENAbookfairs #MENAbookmarket #Qatarbookmarket
