By Mursi Saad El-Din The Book Fair is over. But it seems that all is not smooth sailing for the publishing industry. Egyptian publishers have for some time now been facing problems with custom duties on paper and ink, with the import and export duty on books and, more seriously perhaps, with the limited audience for their products. We are not a reading nation. Very rarely do parents give their children books as birthday presents and the concept of book tokens, common in England and America, is unknown in Egypt. But it seems that Egyptian publishers are not the only ones suffering. Some western countries are facing problems, albeit of a different kind. One leading American publishers has just fired its highly regarded head of hard cover literary titles because her unit did not meet its profit target. This has resulted in a discussion of the effect of paperbacks on the sales of hard covers. It seems that the time of hardcovers is almost over. Gone are the times when people rushed to buy newly published hardcovers and line them up on their book shelves. Book acquisition used to be a habit, but it is a habit that is now being broken. According to publishers' spokespersons, book publishing is the most depressed corner of the media world. In an article in the Herald Tribune Verlyn Klinkenberg writes that the gloom has many sources, one of them being "the habits of Americans who for the most part would rather watch reality television shows than read a book". Another source of the trouble is that publishers are now constantly on the lookout for blockbusters, that is books that can sell in millions and for which they pay large advances. The old assumption, Klinkenberg goes on, to say "that book publishing is expected to earn steady profits built on a respected number of authors, "now seems prehistoric". "The pride of publishing has always been" bringing good books to the light of day. These days it is not the case. Now finding a blockbuster is the aim of publishers. Publishing has become a business and, like any other business, profit is its goal. The balance sheet must be in black, not red. One tendency that has become increasingly apparent in America and Britain is the amalgamation of a number of publishing firms. This is the inevitable result of corporate capitalism. And it appears to be quietly creeping into the Egyptian publishing world where a certain group of publishers is seeking to monopolise the most popular writers. Fortunately, they still have a long way to go. While the book as an institution is still alive there is no doubt that it is becoming difficult to sell books in a market crowded with DVDs, CDs and video games. In spite of the voices that reassure us that the book will always reign supreme it faces serious threats from new forms of entertainment. Then there is the other side of publishing, the authors. In spite of the fact that the novel as a literary form is flourishing, critics deplore the kind of fiction produced these days. It seems that fiction has become the genre to which young writers aspire. The novel, in the words of Robert McCrum, the literary editor of the Independent "is now the one book that everyone thinks they have in them. Students, professors, journalists, social workers, politicians, taxi drivers: sometimes it seems everyone is writing, or wanting to write, a novel". He goes on to say something which is quite serious and, at the same time frustrating. It turns out that the novel is perfect for an age "without ideology and a self-obsessed society without strong beliefs". The novel, according to him "has become a vehicle for youthful self-obsession, conveying both author and reader on a magical mystery tour of the self in a time of narcissism". This vehement attack against fiction fits well with Philip Larkin's definition of the contemporary novel as "a beginning, a muddle and an end".
