Rania Khallaf follows up on the e-publishing phenomenon Perhaps Kotobarabia.com 's most viable competitor, the Electronic Content Initiative deal was concluded last April with much fanfare. To be launched at the start of 2006, the initiative is a joint project of the Ministry of Telecommunications, the Union of Software Developers and the Egyptian Publishers Union (EPU), the latter represented by its chairman, the head of Dar Al-Shorouk Ibrahim El-Moallem. And it would seem as though it is El-Moallem who drives the project forward. It was following an International Publishers Union executive committee meeting in Argentina in 2000 that he decided to implement the new technology on a large scale. The meeting had discussed policies and recommendations for developing the publishing industry: "It was widely affirmed that, though as yet new, electronic publishing will eventually take over the industry and paper will disappear..." On his return, El-Moallem began with purchasing the electronic rights to the work of some 30-40 of Egypt's most prominent writers, including Naguib Mahfouz, Anis Mansour and Gamal El-Ghitani. "It took us nearly five months to come up with a scheme for implementing the project," says Ahmed Bedeir, Dar Al-Shorouk's e- publishing consultant. "Several obstacles stood in the way. There are different e-publishing techniques, for example, with Sony and Adobe adopting different technologies. Until mid-2001, not one software system was available for Arabic text. In 2003 many giant publishing companies -- Barnes and Noble, for example -- had closed down their electronic publishing departments, which were not deemed economically feasible, in the end. But back at home, already Ibrahim El-Moallem as chairman of the EPU was having talks with the then Telecommunications Minister Ahmed Nazif, with a view to posting the first Arabic e- content on the Internet." The deal that has now resulted provides the Electronic Content Initiative with an LE70 million budget over a three-year period. El-Moallem concedes that this is a huge budget, but explains that it is needed for the conversion of some 50,000 books into e-books. The first phase of the project will provide for 3,000 of these, plus 400 software programmes and copyright protection technologies: "A large segment of the budget will be spent on advertising -- to encourage people to use the new Internet service and thus boost book distribution figures." The initiative is distinguished from other e- book sites, Bedeir explains, by the fact that it includes not only books but movies, music and software. The selection process for the first phase of the project is underway, he adds: literary pioneers like Taha Hussein, Tawfik El-Hakim and Naguib Mahfouz are juxtaposed with encyclopaedias and children's books. El-Moallem goes on to say that special provisions will be made for children, who make up a large portion of Internet users. Providing fiction as well as educational material, it will use graphics to encourage an interactive relationship with Internet content. But with high illiteracy rates and an increasingly depressed economy, will the project make much profit? "We're counting on Internet users," Bedeir responds, "of whom there are some 4.5 million in Egypt, spending LE15 million monthly according to the Egyptian Telecommunications Authority estimates." El-Moallem remains enthusiastic even despite the failure of such projects in the West, he says, "because, though risky, it will help Egyptian writers and publishers reach out to a new market worldwide. The publishing industry started in Europe in the mid-16th century, but did not reach Egypt until the mid-19th century; that gap is still reflected in that the size of publishing in the Arab world does not exceed one per cent of the international industry. Now that a new medium is available, I didn't think we should wait for another century -- I'd rather take the risk", he says confidently. But will the e-book outsell its conventional counterpart in Egypt? "I don't believe in pitting one medium against another in this way -- electronic versus print media, modernism versus fundamentalism... No such conflict exists between the two kinds of publishing. They go together, and only time will tell which will be the more successful. My aim as a publisher is to distribute information to as large a number of people as I can -- and I'm using every available means to achieve it." Will a government grant imply any kind or degree of censorship? El-Moallem reiterates the notion that, as a new and as yet nascent medium, e-publishing deserves all the official support it can get. "Theoretically speaking, the government will not interfere with the choices made by the readers, who are the direct patrons of the site. This initiative is a kind of a national project and as such it should reestablish the criteria for publishing in Egypt, according to the views of the readers. The main guarantee of this is that the EPU should represent the full range of cultural life in Egypt. And the 300,000 titles it has published over the last 20 years reflect all the depth and interest of that variety."
