Abu Dhabi: The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (Adach), has launched a new private company to facilitate distribution of books in the region.

Mohammad Khalaf Al Mazroui, Director General of Adach, announced the launch of the company on Friday.

The company, Abu Dhabi Distribution (ADD) — a first for the region — will provide a series of services to the Arab book world, starting with the development of a database of Arabic books.

All titles available in print and out-of-print will be listed and the database is expected to eventually include between 150,000 and 200,000 titles.

"It is an open platform and publishers may participate in any way that they want. Many of the publishers we spoke to told us that they want to focus on their business, so we will do the work they cannot do for themselves," said Juma Al Qubaisi, Director of the National Library at Adach.

Adach will be working with newest technologies, including e-commerce and print-on-demand, to get books to customers as fast as possible. Adach will sponsor the company for five years till it breaks even or turn a profit.

Major concern

Dr Axel Goehler, consulting and interim manager of the company, said in a media gathering held on the sidelines of the 20th Abu Dhabi International Book Fair: "We did a survey of some 600 Arabic-language publishers, and we discovered that many of the books get lost, just go out of print without getting distributed. Just 2 per cent of them were happy with their distribution. Distribution has been a major concern for book publishers in the region for a long time and we aim to provide a solution."

The plan is to use ISBN's practice as the basis for record keeping, but if that proves challenging due to the large number of titles lacking ISBN, ADD may develop its own proprietary system. The company will not function as either a wholesaler or a third-party distributor, as would be customary in the United States and Europe, but will develop its own model, one that is "specific to the region", said Goehler. "The company will function as an intermediary between Arab publishers and regional distributors, covering the GCC countries, the Maghreb and the Levant, as well as servicing Arab communities outside the region."

So far, the company has had talked with 30 publishing houses representing 40,000-50,000 titles and is looking to settle on terms of business, sign contracts and then begin first deliveries of books in January 2011.