It used to be said that a book published in the Middle East would be written by an Egyptian, published by a Lebanese and bought and read by an Iraqi. This is nolonger the case; although there remains a lot of local publishing, there is also a lot of licencing of titles originally published in English. In fact, around 4% of English language publishing output is sold to the MENA (Middle East and North African) market.

The MENA market designation covers one of the most demographically diverse regions. It comprises 23 separate countries, some with comparatively small populations but per capita incomes amongst the highest globally such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and others with very large populations and low per capita incomes such as Egypt, Iran or Turkey. Local, regional and international geopolitics across MENA are in a state of constant flux; this all has an influence on political stability, local currencies and investment opportunities, rendering the business environment a challenging one in which to succeed.

For the publishing industry, two of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, present the largest potential markets, followed by Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. These economies are helped considerably by having local currencies stabilised against hard currencies by oil and gas exports. Other MENA markets such as Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and Turkey have historically been very important, but in recent years, and for a variety of disparate reasons, their local currencies have softened dramatically, rendering imports considerably more expensive.

So long as a work is culturally appropriate, most genres and subjects travel well to the MENA markets. Books may have to be ‘approved for import’ by local authorities but all distribution channels are well versed in the processes which need to be complied with. Both fiction and general non-fiction are of interest to retail and other distribution channels, as are many non-academic non-fiction titles alongside academic, professional, reference and scholarly books and journals; these latter also appeal to libraries, foundations and institutions. Much like the rest of the planet during the pandemic, educational institutions at every level were forced to close and course adoptions migrated from print to digital products. As campuses reopened, the situation reverted, with print formats now seemingly favoured at the academic level, most notably in Gulf countries where the preference for print seems very robust.

The regional book fairs remain important to distribution channels and publishers alike, striking a good balance between B2C and B2B interests. All are generally well attended and post-pandemic retail sales seem to be recovering well through such events. Most notably, the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) in early November, alongside others such as Cairo and Riyadh, had encouragingly high attendance numbers even through some of the pandemic period, although retail sales were modest at the 2021 events. Through matchmaking sessions and grants for deals closed, the SIBF particularly encourages rights transaction between publishers in many languages.

Many of the retail, educational, institutional and wholesale distribution channels in the MENA region are owner-managed businesses. For publishers, the foundation to sustainable sales growth is not only ensuring a publishing output which appeals but also investing in the construction, development and maintenance of relationships with key individuals, buyers and managers. The growth of such relationships combines the benefits of product knowledge on the one side and local market intelligence on the other to deliver mutually beneficial results. It is possible that the old adage that ‘people do business with people’ is more evident in the MENA markets than in many others globally, so that delivering sales through such meaningful interactions makes this an especially enjoyable, as well as productive, way of doing business.

Bill Kennedy is the Founder & Director of Avicenna Partnership Ltd, UK, which acts in the capacity of sales agents and rights brokers working on behalf of UK, US and European publishers of academic, professional, reference and scholarly print and electronic resources exclusively in the Middle East and North Africa region.