The Bookseller.com

17th May 2008

Victoria Arnstein is supplements editor of The Bookseller.

From bazaar to book fair

11.03.08

The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair (11th-16th March) got underway today (11th March) with its opening for trade visitors.
 
As a first time visitor to this or any book fair, I was unsure what to expect, but I arrived here this morning anticipating a buzzing exhibition space thriving with people.
 
It was not so. In fact the fair, which has a 25% increase in floor space since last year and 430 confirmed exhibitors, has been eerily quiet all day, with the exception of the opening ceremony which took place at 11am.
 
While there were no opening speeches or big brass bands, there was the most impressive of entourages and media turn out for the cutting of the rope by Sheikh bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Interior. He swept in surrounded by a forty-strong entourage of Arab men in their pristine white dish-dash-ah (traditional Arabic dress), swiftly cut the ribbon and then blitzed around the fair, entourage in tow, greeting people and having his picture taken on various stands before moving onto the next. I gave up the media scrum after two stands, but did see him and his posse a good half an hour later still going from stand to stand. I’m not sure whether he did all 430, but the poor fellow must have been exhausted.
 
This high-profile opening by the Sheikh confirms the rise in the importance of the Book Fair. While the Abu Dhabi Book Fair has existed in some form or another for the last 18 years, it is now under the eye of the Frankfurt Book Fair which formed a partnership with the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) last year. The joint venture is known as KITAB, meaning 'book' in Arabic.
 
With KITAB at the helm, the fair is beginning to transform itself from a 'book bazaar', where locals come to buy cheap books and publishers come to sell to Arab bookshops, into a more professional set up. Among the aims of KITAB, besides organising a more professional fair, are to cut piracy in the Arab world, which led to the banning of 120 would-be exhibitors from this year’s fair, increasing literacy and the number of translations of books into and out of Arabic. 
 
While today has been a quiet day at the fair it is clear that there is plenty going on beneath the surface and it is probable I am being a little unfair in my expectations.

Indeed some of the representatives known in the UK publishing world who are here don’t seem displeased with the way today has taken shape. After the two-hour match making session (a little like speed dating) for trade visitors to get to know one another, Nigel Newton from Bloomsbury told me he’d had some interesting conversations and that there would be things to follow up.

Meanwhile, Random House Germany has a stand here and tells me that it is on a ‘fact finding’ mission, while the non-book distributor That Company Called ‘If’ is here looking for suitable Arab world partners. Simon Crook, sales and marketing director, informs me that he has had a good day with several potential leads to follow up.

I was also interested to see that the Guinness World Records (GWR) has a stand here, too. Farah El Masri, marketing executive for GWR in Dubai, said that the book has been published in Arabic this year for the second time and that they are trying to get the Arab world interested in the idea of setting records. Who knows, maybe it will be a future bestseller here in the UAE as it is the UK.

Certainly the idea of forging more links with the Arab world seems to be a serious objective of several of the attendees and exhibitors here, and there seems to be an appetite for more western material.

I’m told that there is even a popular TV show being shown here at the moment where contestants compete in a poetry slam, reciting both their own poetry and that of published authors. Apparently it’s on TV tonight, so maybe I’ll tune in and let you know tomorrow what it’s like . . .