At Sharjah International Book Fair 2012

A few weeks ago, we received an invitation to join the professional program for publishers at the SIBF (Sharjah International Book Fair) this year, 2012, to give our insight on a panel about ebook distribution. They found out about BookBake through a recently launched article at Publishing Perspectives (link here), thanks to Rachel Aydt for that well-written piece.

Despite changes right before the program, our panel title was changed to Lessons learnt from the Digital Revolution and moved to the last day of the program. The panel was chaired by Richard Charkin CEO of Bloomsbury Publishing (if you like Harry Potter, you should thank Richard), and the fellow panellists: Cameron Drew, director of Kobo, and George Lossius, CEO of Publishing Technology. There was meant to be a separate session before our panel, given by David Langridge, senior director at Microsoft, but the session was co-joined with our panel instead, so we had David accompany us on the table.

The panel went quite well, discussing lessons learnt (obviously) as well as predictions for the future of ebooks in the Arab market, which was mainly my input. Just to give you an idea, my keypoints were:

• An introduction to our BookBake, what it is, how it helps authors/publisher, and its Arabic compliance
• Challenges today with Arabic language in ebook technology and platforms - mainly revolving around Arabic fonts and right-to-left navigation
• It's not enough to rely on tablets for ebook distribution in the MENA region. The average person cannot afford a tablet.
• In a piracy-driven ecosystem, protecting content via technology is not the solution. Amazon and B&N disallowing access to their stores here is irritating, but justifiable.

On our way to the Chamber of Commerce, the first day of the program

Myself, alongside Humphrey Davies, a leading translator of Arabic literature, including The Yacoubian Building

Our panel hall. Hmmm, has something missing. The panelists! Well, only David Langridge lucky enough to grab this moment. The only photo I could get my hands on

The hospitality was superb, nothing less expected from the Middle East - great food, great accommodation, and a great program, organized by Midas PR from London.