Professionalizing the publishing industry in the Arab World and unleashing its true potential

Topics will vary from strategic planning, marketing, book design and distribution, to e-publishing and many others.

The impulse to develop the concept for this training stems from a request from the Arab publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2004, when the Arab World was the Guest of Honour.

The programme is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Abu Dhabi Authority for
Culture and Heritage.

After the recent success of a similar programme in Cairo organised by the Goethe-Institut Cairo and the Frankfurt Book Fair; KITAB is happy to continue the trend of creating opportunities to
enhance business development and promoting an environment that enhances publishing in the Arab World. This training reinforces KITAB's other business-focused initiatives throughout the year, including the Spotlight on Rights subsidy scheme, invitations for Arab publishers to international fairs and the Professional Programme at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.

The Arab publishing industry is an emerging market full of unique opportunities. Business is on the rise, start-ups and numerous new projects that promote books and reading are launched all the time and book fairs are popular with the general public. In spite of this encouraging
atmosphere, publishers in all Arab countries are confronted with structural hindrances that slow down or prevent business development.

With more than 300m Arabic-language speakers around the world, the average print run of books in Arabic seems minute - it is rarely over 2,000 copies, and usually much less. Apart from illiteracy and the low income of some potential readers, the reasons for this lie in the lack of distribution networks, the absence of statistics on the market, censorship and piracy.

All this prevents Arab publishers from leaving the beaten track; it even makes the entrepreneurial risk sometimes too great to start business with and within the Arab world.

This is the starting point for the Publishers Training, which aims to be a stepping stone for new developments and improvements.

The first session of the CEO-level Publishers Training is in June 2009 and is being held at the
Goethe-Institut Gulf Region in Abu Dhabi.