The joint StreetLib-TNPS bi-weekly newsletter Publish MENA – the digital advantage released its fourth issue just before the weekend. Publish MENA is a bi-weekly review of the Middle East North Africa Arab publishing scene across all formats, but with an unashamed tilt towards the digital opportunity unfolding. Publish MENA #4 is the usual mix of developments within the Read More …
The joint StreetLib-TNPS bi-weekly newsletter Publish MENA – the digital advantage released its third issue today. Publish MENA is a bi-weekly review of the Middle East North Africa Arab publishing scene across all formats, but with an unashamed tilt towards the digital opportunity unfolding.
Being a former publicity manager at Penguin Canada has proven to be an asset for debut author Ashley Audrain. Described as a literary thriller, The Push is making waves globally, with Cairo’s publishing house Dar Altanweer snapping up the Arabic rights despite no sales history for the title or author. Dar Altanweer’s partner Sherif-Joseph Rizk, reported Arab Read More …
The joint StreetLib-TNPS bi-weekly newsletter Publish MENA – the digital advantage released its second issue a few days ago. Publish MENA is a bi-weekly review of the Middle East North Africa Arab publishing scene across all formats, but with an unashamed tilt towards the digital opportunity unfolding. Written by TNPS Editor-in-Chief Mark Williams in The Gambia, Read More …
Originally planned to go live to mark the occasion of the Sharjah International Book Fair later this year, we decided to bring forward the launch of our B2B newsletter for the Middle East North Africa book market after Hugo Setzer, IPA President, announced the IPA Middle East Regional Seminar, to be held in Amman, Jordan, Read More …
“Read. Empower. Transform: The role of reading for the future of the Arab world” is the title of a newly announced two-day IPA (International Publishers Association) Regional Seminar that will be taking place in the Jordanian capital Amman Sept 30-Oct 1. Organised in conjunction with the Union of Jordanian Publishers the event, described as “the Read More …
The joint StreetLib-TNPS bi-weekly newsletter Publish Africa – the digital advantage released its third issue today. Publish Africa is a bi-weekly review of the Pan-African publishing scene across all formats, but with an unashamed tilt towards the digital opportunity unfolding. Written by TNPS Editor-in-Chief Mark Williams in The Gambia, West Africa and published by Italy-based global Read More …
Back at the Cairo International Book Fair earlier this year Storytel announced its plans to launch the Harry Potter books in Arabic as audiobooks, and the first audiobook is now available to download. It’s a huge boost for Storytel Arabia and likely to bring to the platform a lot of new subscribers. A press release Read More …
At the IPA Africa Seminar in Lagos in 2018 it was reported that the African book market was worth $1 billion. Not a staggering amount, but enough to raise eyebrows among many in the global publishing industry who believed Africa was a publishing backwater not worthy of their attention. This June comes the second IPA Read More …
India’s Kolkata International Book Fair wound up earlier this week and the numbers are in: 2.3 million visitors spent 230 million rupees (US$ 3.2 million) on books in twelve days. Given the price of books in India the volume must have been huge. This just weeks after 900,000 turned out to the New Delhi World Book Read More …
If it’s February it must be the Amar Ekushey Boi Mela in Bangladesh, an annual festival of books that runs the entire month of February. Last year the boi mela sold books to the USD equivalent of just shy of $10 million. But hands up anyone who has Bangladesh on their book market bucket list? Read More …
When StreetLib launched The New Publishing Standard in September 2017 we made clear the function of the journal was to stimulate debate about the much-neglected global book markets. It was not a StreetLib promotional tool, and not a vehicle to advocate digital at the expense of traditional formats. But occasionally StreetLib becomes part of the Read More …
Last year the Washington National Book Festival clocked a record 200,000 visitors. The Cairo International Book fair has just beaten that in its first two days, averaging 108,500 visitors a day, despite cold weather and a venue that, because of renovations at the usual location, is challenging some would-be attendees. UK’s Bradford Lit Fest and Read More …
Taking place for the first time in the Fifth Settlement, the just launched 50th Cairo International Book Fair is hoping to set a new world record for visitor numbers, with extra days added to the usually 12-day event. According to Egypt Today, Haitham al-Haj, chairman of the General Egyptian Book Organization. expects the extra days to Read More …
We’re now well into our fifth year without a new Kindle store being launched – the last was the Netherlands in November 2014 – and there seems little prospect of any new Kindle store launches in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile Amazon Prime Video is available pretty much everywhere in the world, and this week comes Read More …
Given the Jeddah International Book Fair ran from December 26 through January 5, we can only attribute five days worth of the 475,000 visitors to the 2019 book fair count, but even so we’re looking at about a quarter million booklovers descending on an Arab book fair so far in 2019, and we’re still less Read More …
When it comes to judging the potential of the so-called nascent book markets, attendance at book fairs and festivals is a good barometer. First we have to divest ourselves of the idea that national and international book fairs all take the form of the celebrated western book fairs like Frankfurt, London and New York, which Read More …
At the best of times the logistics of setting up the world’s biggest book fair are problematic. Accommodating over four million eager booklovers over fourteen days is a challenge no other book fair on the planet has to face. And yes, we are talking Cairo, Egypt, in Afraica, which in defiance of the widely held Read More …
Storytel ends 2018 on a positive note, with a deal to produce 600 audiobooks from titles in the 4,000-strong catalogue of one of the most prestigious publishers in the Arab world, Dar El-Shorouk. Cairo-based Dar El-Shorouk publishes award-winning Arabic authors such as Bahaa Taher, Hisham Mattar, Youssef Ziedan, Alaa Al-Aswany, Ahdaf Soueif, Tawfiq Al-Hakim, Ahmed Read More …
It all seemed so unlikely. Twin brothers in Nigeria, one an author, one a musician, decide to distribute their and other artists contents through a micro-aggregator called Publiseer. Only launched in Lagos in August 2017, twins Chidi and Chika Nwaogu have since expanded their operation to Kenya, Ghana and most recently South Africa. Now we Read More …
