PUBLISHING TRENDS IN PAKISTAN 2007-2008

Over the year, the country experienced its highest levels of political turmoil and security breaches. Media coverage of Pakistan has been dominated by its political crisis and the now unfortunately regular spate of suicide attacks including the assassination of the prominent opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. This political turmoil has led mounting economic problems that include devaluation of the rupee, soaring inflation, and dwindling currency reserves. There is no doubt that political turmoil and economic crisis effected the already troubled publishing industry.

Writing and Publishing books in Pakistan has always been a complex undertaking and, to a large extent, devoid of monetary gain. The depleted literacy rate (by some estimates as low as 50%) in the rural and urban populations combined with a range of social, cultural and economic reasons breeds a general lack of interest towards book reading.

Although the ninth most populous country in the world, Pakistan is one of Asia's lowest per capita producers of books. One librarian claims approximately 3,000 titles are published annually, but there is little in the way of factual data to support that or any other statistic. It uncertain what this total represents new titles or does it include reprints; commercially published titles or also those published by the provincial textbook boards, national institutions and learned societies. It is unlikely that publishing statistics will improve in the near term.

Publishing in Pakistan mirrors the country's socio-political situation. A review of the National Bibliography indicates increase in number of titles on the life and times of one of the world's most fascinating political leaders Benazir Bhutto were published with many of these in Urdu and Sindhi. Most are very monotonous with minimal research value and part of the popular trade publishing. Books on Islam remain top favorite category of Pakistani authors constituting about 28.3% of publishing. Many such religious publishing is cheap mass publishing. Literary titles (belle lettre and criticism) constitute next most popular publishing category with nearly a quarter (23.9%) of the output. Like religion much of this publishing falls into popular titles or local poets. The third major category of books was on topics related to Pakistan (19.9%). In a distant fourth is history, including biographies, and travelogues with 10.7% of the publishing output.

For all intents and purposes, serious social sciences, humanities, science and technology are neglected by the Pakistani authors and their publishers even the academic presses. Pakistan also faces a serious shortage of authorship in humanities, philosophy, psychology, logic and ethics. It is doubtful the current economic and political climate will foster serious scholarship in these areas.

The 2007 of the Pakistan National Bibliography does not reflect the publishing output of Pakistan. It reports 477 English titles, 993 Urdu titles and only 83 other languages books. These low number may reflect the National Library of Pakistan's inability acquire complimentary copies from authors do not send complimentary copies.

During frequent visits to book shops by our Acquisitions staff reviewed the display shelves whose shelves held books about Islamic rituals and popular theology, hagiographic accounts of the Prophet and the early Muslims, treatises on the ideological founders of Pakistan and the 'two-nation' theory sitting along side hundreds of texts on the best of Urdu literature. These books might be important as sources of Pakistani outlook on its history and national identity, but they say little about contemporary social issues in Pakistan.

Fortunately, NGOs, think tanks and the better universities continue to undertake scholarly and research publishing. Although there are good book-length studies, good research is appearing in briefer formats working papers, briefing papers, and research reports covering topics as diverse as economics and development, commerce, demography, women issues, child rights and labor, trafficking.

Many online websites have sprung up in the last few decades offering reports and annual publications on internet only. This also affected the publishing industry and increasingly authentic, hard core research is not available in hard format.

PUBLISHING TRENDS IN IRAN 2007-2008

Iran publishing is sophisticated and vibrant. Although the Iran economy faces problems as result of continued embargoes, there is strong academic and commercial publishing. Reprinting/publishing constitutes half of the publishing output.

The table below provides a glimpse of overall publishing output.

In contrast to Pakistan which has open, uncensored press and publishing, Iran publishers face serious problems not the least of which is obtaining license to publish certain authors and translators. Publishers face uncertainty and risk at both financial and socio-political levels when they undertake publishing. That risk is the risk of being shut down and censored - deprived of a livelihood. More subtle harassment comes in the form of being unofficially banned; this insidious unofficially banning is the form of being denied essential financial assistance and support from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

Inflation and the embargo have led to significant cost increases. Paper in addition to increased printing costs increased the price of a book or serial by nearly 40%. As a consequence, publishers have cut their printing runs with the average first print run in social sciences, literature, history, and geography at 1500 copies.

The end result is likely to be a decline in scholarly and quality literary titles as publishers seek higher profit margins from textbooks, foreign language teaching materials, educational texts, and self-help books.

This year the Library of Congress received a number of Arabic titles published in Iran. The dealer notes that nearly 900 Arabic titles are published a year in Iran with most in area of religion. Surprisingly there were sixty literary titles, seven science and technology titles, and twenty-two history-geography titles. The vendor estimates approximately 250 titles are within LC collection scope.

PUBLISHING TRENDS IN AFGHANISTAN 2007-2008

Publishing remains fairly stable since the fall of the Taliban with improvements in the quality of the printing and paper. Range of publishing remains very limited with most titles limited to Persian and Pushto in subjects of Islam, history, literature, and politics. There appears to be decline in NGO publishing although international organizations like the UN, WHO, USAID are assisting the Ministries with publishing. Depending on the audience, such publications generally include an English version. Afghan serials publishing remains highly irregular making it very difficult to provide good services. Although Islamabad has record of more than 300 active serial titles from Afghanistan, there are only thirty or forty of the important titles are regularly published titles. One of the most important of these regularly published serials is the government gazette : Gazette Rasmi Jaridah.

Due to security problems and risks, this fiscal year have difficulty conducting acquisitions trip. As a result, the Islamabad Gift and Exchange receipts declined. We are trying to arrange contacts via post mail and phone. Our goal for next fiscal year is to foster contacts via mail and phone and develop a routine for our vendor to collect and ship these exchanges and gift collections.