Enjoying more than a quarter-century experience, Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) is a great cultural event in which publishers from all over the world along with a large number of domestic participants take part to exhibit their new titles in different subject areas.
Director of Jordan-based publishing company Morena, Mazen Al-Ali, while expressing his overall satisfaction with this year’s edition of Tehran International Book Fair, wished for more facilities and space to be provided for the international sections to distribute all the books they have.
A first time participant at Tehran International Book Fair, Al-Ali said his publication worked with a number of world-wide publishers and was presenting some 650 titles at TIBF mainly on medical topics and university textbooks.
Al-Ali referred to the good reception to his stall, noting that if government could allocate more subsidies to universities even more people would be able to afford buying books. “I believe that TIBF is one of the very good book fairs around the world and with even more attention given to it, it could easily stand among the bests,” he said, while expressing his wish to return to the next Tehran Book Fair.
Representative of The Pathfinder Books in London, Tony Hunt, maintained that Pathfinder Books has been participating in Tehran International Book Fair since 1993 and himself since 1980; “we’ve got quite a lot of experience there,” he said while expressing his satisfaction with general state of the Book Fair as a relatively positive affair.
Here the shelves were stacked with some 170 documentary works on the Communist International, Fourth International and Socialist Workers Party, writings of Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Malcolm X and other American and international leftist leaders, as well as historical and analytical works on a variety of national and international political issues.
Hunt maintained that with their special discount of 55 percent, his stall has been enjoying a warm reception from Iranian book lovers. “One of the key differences between TIBF and other international book fairs is the participation of a large influx of people in the city and around the country. Other book fairs like the London Book Fair charge a lot of money for entrance fees, but TIBF is free of charge and that attracts a lot of visitors,” he said.
Last year, the fair attracted 500,000 visitors a day, in over 10 days, with over 7,000 stalls and 3,000 publishers represented. Considered the largest book fair in the Middle East, TIBF attracts more than five million visitors every year. Now in its 28th year, Tehran Book Fair is offering visitors thousands of titles ranging from literary works to medical textbooks from some 2,500 Iranian publishers and over 2,800 foreign publishers from 65 countries.
Stopping at the Tehran-based Indian Supply publishing company, I met with Harmo Bhasin - a regular participant in the fair - who expressed his satisfaction with this year’s edition of the book fair, noting there has been some great progress in many aspects of the event.
“This year, the book fair was organized by the managing director of Iranian publishers association to which I am also a member,” he told me, while hailing the change. “Organizing the event was formerly done by the Ministry of Culture; but despite a lot of effort they put into organizing the fair to the best of thier abilities, having given most of the segments to the private sector has been a much better choice in this regard,” he said.
Bhsain, however, lamented the fact that the professors and teachers had given their place to brokers to buy the books on their behalves; “18 years back and for a couple of years, the professors and teachers used to visit Tehran Book Fair and order the books themselves; unfortunately, for some years now they have been sending brokers in their place to take the books. This is not quite healthy as the brokers go for the company that is offering more discount under the table and the good books do not land in the university libraries at the end of the day.”
Maintaining that his publishing company was presenting 4,000 titles from some major publishers in the USA on topics such as mining, material science and petroleum, Bhasin hailed Tehran International Book Fair as a highly respectable and noteworthy event as compared to other foreign book fairs in which he had so far participated.
He also stressed the need for a more active role by private sector in organizing the event, saying the private sector has proven to be more capable and efficient in this regard and the government should only serve as an observer.
The 28th Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) opened to the public on May 6 and will run through May 16.