The growing trend of e- and audiobooks in the Arab world

As technology advances, book readers are looking for more options for books than just printed words.

Although e-books in Arabic are far fewer than in English, publishers and translators are working to close the gap.

In 2018, Amazon announced Arabic language support for the e-reader, opening the door to access books for more people.

From novels to self-help books, from biographies to poetry and more, a large number of Arabs are looking for affordable sources of knowledge in the form of e-books and audiobooks.

Yet the vast majority prefer to read a printed book.

Salah Chebaru, CEO of Amazon-like internet e-commerce website, Nilo Farat and a native of Beirut. Arab News “Frankly speaking, I don’t think there is a problem with reading books in the Arab region as some people might think,” he said.

One of the largest online bookstores in the Arab world, Nile Euphrates is a word that combines the two Arabic names of the Nile River and the Euphrates River.

This bookstore sells books printed by Arab publishers in different cities around the world.

It has 15,000 e-books for sale that can be read through the iBooks application. There are also eight lakh printed books.

In an online interview from the Lebanese capital, Salah Chebaru said, ‘The number of pirated books downloaded is in the millions. People like to read, but they don’t like to pay for reading.’

However, for publishers, distributors and bookstores in the Arab world — there are issues related to shipping (books), other logistics and the geography of the Arab region.’

For example, the cost of sending printed books weighing two kilograms from New York to Los Angeles in the United States is about the same as from Cairo to Oman.

Salah Chebaru said this is due to the geographical distribution of the Arab region, which makes transportation, shipping, export and import more complicated and expensive.

One of the main factors behind the growing popularity of e-books in the Arab region is the savings in shipping costs.

Other factors include the savings in space required to store and transport printed books, as well as the speed of buying a book online which can happen in the blink of an eye.

While some readers retain their preference for printed books, reading on a gadget has many advantages.

Dubai-based creative facilitator Zaha Awad, a Briton of Yemeni origin, says she likes the dictionary function in digital English books.

‘I type the word I’m looking for, and the gadget shows all the lines that contain that word (in the digital book).

‘Other than the book I’m reading, I don’t need to carry it all the time. ‘

Her library has an almost equal number of digital and print books, and uses e-book format to further save time and space.

“If I like a particular book and want others to read it, I make sure I have it in print,” she said. But if I’m not sure, I’ll buy the digital format first.’

During a panel discussion at the Sharjah Publishers Conference on the occasion of the 2022 edition of the Sharjah International Book Fair in the United Arab Emirates, Ali Abdul Muneem Ahmed, digital publishing consultant of Liberty Education in the UK, Egypt and the UAE, said that e-books in the Arab region The market is largest in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

He said that publishers are providing online platforms with digital versions of their books.

Publishers are also collaborating with audio-ready platforms such as Storytell and Audible.

Ali Abdul Muneem Ahmad said, ‘The sales of classic e-books in the markets of the above three Arab countries have increased by 14% (in 2021). This is in addition to online publications, which grew by 50 percent.’

Despite the growing sales of e-books, there is still room for further growth. According to publishers, sales of e-books are about 10 percent of total book sales.

Salah Chebaru told Arab News: ‘This is a promising sector. And every year it is increasing. But we have not yet reached the level of Europe and America, where e-books account for about 30 percent of book sales.’

Although figures vary between different sources and websites, sales of e-books globally are high.

According to US-based research firm WordsRated, global e-book revenue reached $16.1 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $18.7 billion by 2026.

Statista, another US market and consumer data provider, expects the e-books industry to reach $13.6 billion in 2022 and $16 billion by 2027, growing at a projected annual growth rate of 3.38 percent.

The number of e-book readers is expected to reach 1.1 billion by 2027, with most of the revenue coming from the US.

The country is the largest book market in the world, with revenues estimated at billions of dollars.

About 1 million books are published annually in the United States, in addition to 4 million self-published books annually.

In comparison, the revenue of the book market in Arabia is between 10 and 15 million dollars.

According to the data shared by Salah Chebaru with Arab News, only one million books were published in the Arab region in the last five decades.

Publication statistics in the Arab world are related to many socio-economic factors. The most important of these is per capita income.

He said that today the rate of pirated books in the Gulf region is lower than other countries like Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq.

Salah Chibaro told Arab News, ‘Pirate books are a big problem and they are related to an individual’s income.

This section contains related reference points (Related Nodes field).

‘We have a long way to go … (but) overall, sales of e-books are increasing as well as sales of paper books. None of them are replacing the other. Each has a market and each has its own customers and readers.’

According to Salah Chebaru, Saudi Arabia tops the list of buyers and readers of digital and printed books in the Arab world.

It is followed by Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Algeria.

Fiction, self-esteem and mental health and autobiography are at the top of the list of topics of interest to Arab readers, said Doha Al-Rafai, publishing manager of Rafuf Digital Bookstore, from Amman, Jordan.

Providing 25,000 Arabic books for a monthly subscription fee, the store functions like an online library.

It does not sell digital or print copies of books but allows readers to read books on its website.

“We don’t distribute or sell books to readers,” Al-Rifai told Arab News. We give to the printers.’

Rafoff has ‘solved a multi-reader problem, where people don’t need to buy paper or digital books, but can read as much as they want throughout the month.’

(Editing: Bilal Mazhar | Translation: Al-Aas)