Sharjah (Union)
Participants at the start of the sessions of the second and final day of the International Distributors Conference, which was held at the headquarters of the Sharjah Book Authority, on the sidelines of the 13th Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival, confirmed that those working in the field of bookselling can explore the environment and needs of local communities. that their libraries fall within their scope, and working to create a close link with readers that goes beyond marketing and selling books, to building close relationships between libraries and individuals, especially children who make up future readers.
In the first session of the second day of the conference, Nadia Wassef, the co-founder of Diwan Library in Egypt, spoke about the story of Diwan, which was founded 20 years ago by 3 women and now owns 10 branches.
Wassef said: “Distribution of e-books on different platforms poses risks to the distribution of paper books, but this has given us flexibility and experimentation and to work with real and innovative effort, in order to remain pioneers in distributing books.”
She pointed out that libraries can contribute to the development of societies through the titles of books that adopt their distribution, and that they develop their sales by training their staff and providing them with additional experiences that help them to engage in dialogue with the reader.
The second session, “Cooperation with book publishers, cultural festivals, and schools”, focused on the successful management of the bookstore’s dependence on the volume of relationships with partners, by highlighting examples of strong partnerships with publishers, authors, festivals and schools, which constitute a key factor in enhancing the role of book stores. As an important part of society, and a destination for science, knowledge and reading.
In the session moderated by Therese Nasser, from Ingram Publishing Services, four speakers presented their experiences and offered advice on the best ways to build effective partnerships with the target audience. In this topic, Lola Shonin, Akeh Bok Festival, from Nigeria, and Gaurav Shrinagish, Pengwan spoke Random House, from India, Swati Roy, Pokaro, from India, and Tina Mamulashvili, from Georgia.
On his experience in his native Georgia, book distributor Tina Mamolashvili explained the importance of a good writer and appropriate content for the community, in order for the book to achieve an appropriate distribution that supports the author himself and not just the bookseller. Distribute books to create inspiration and interest readers of different ages.
Lola Shonen considered that the book distributor should play more than one role and be related to both the writing profession and the sales and marketing process, in addition to creating links with authors, to know inspiring stories and books that succeed in reaching the reader better, and to focus on caring for the products accompanying books such as Portfolios and links between local authors and festivals and their audiences, keeping children engaged with the library and seeing it as their own space and the place that provides them with books.
Gaurav Shrinagish pointed out that the distribution of books in India during the pandemic was negatively affected in light of the closure, so book distributors were forced to open up to using social media to reach customers, restore the momentum of distribution and try to create a new environment for selling books.
As for Swati Roy, she talked about her experience in launching a children’s reading festival, which began in the form of an open library to attract young people of different age groups, starting with the age of two, to introduce them to books and make them available for reading, to go with books to parks, gardens and schools, and work with parents to create an environment suitable for love Books and their attachment, prioritizing the display of books by emerging authors, and raising awareness of children’s literature in India.
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