A panel discussion hosted Mr. Salah Shabaro, founder of Nile and Euphrates company, to discuss the strategies set for digital book industry. The discussion was held by the Qatari Forum for Authors at its pavilion at the Doha International Book Fair. Author Saleh Ghraib participated in the discussion along with Mr. Shabaro.
Mr. Salah said that “Nile and Euphrates” contains the largest collection of paper books in the Arab world, and began a project to convert paper books to electronic versions more than ten years ago; stressing that this project solves many problems but at the same time faces other challenges. He explained, also, that work is going on to provide all technical solutions to turn the Arabic book to be readable with the same features as it is the case with English books. He affirmed that the strategy of digitization of Arabic books is a major project, where it is based on the process of converting books, uploading them on multiple platforms, pricing and finding the right marketing plan for them; which is an integrated process.
Mr. Salah, moreover, pointed out that among the problems facing the world of paper books is the expensive shipping process; which forms an obstacle. On the other hand, Mr. Salah added, the e-book shortens distances and reaches the largest sector since it is characterized by its processing speed and low cost where we can purchase and downloaded online. Electronic reading, similarly, is easy to embrace where font size can be controlled, Mr. Salah concluded.