Examinations blamed for low turnout at Sharjah Book Fair

Sharjah: The conflict of dates between school exams and the Sharjah Book Fair caused a low turnout of schoolchildren, leading organisers to hold next year's event in October.

"The book fair will be held next year earlier than usual so that the dates will not conflict with the schools' examinations," said Dr Yousuf Aydabi, General Coordinator of the Sharjah World Book Fair, on Wednesday.

The World Book Fair is an annual event that was previously held in November and December, but will be held next year from October 29 to November 7, said Dr Aydabi.

"The main problem this year is the lack of pupils and the low turnout of families who are busy with exams. We were expecting this to happen, but it was impossible to change the dates because these have already been set ... five years ago," he said.

Changing reading habits

Participating publishing houses said they noticed a drop in sales.

"We had fewer customers this year and we're not selling as much as last year, which is not how it should be," confirmed Anees Khoury, educational advisor at Arab Gulf Education distributors.

"It is probably because nobody is interested in reading anymore and they are keen on reading things on the internet," he said, noting that a clash with exam dates in schools also played a major role in the low number of visitors.

"I think all the publishers and distributors are not very pleased because of the shortage of sales. We hope that next year will be better," said Ahmad Foda, General Director at The Middle East Observer.

"This year's fair is a little dull maybe due to a change in reading habits of consumers and because of the large amount of visual media available," said Gopi Nathan, Sales Executive, All Prints Distributors and Publishers, who said he mostly sold art books.

Shahadat Hossain, Sales Representative, University Book House, said medical paperback books were popular titles at his stall.