Female visitors to the Doha International Book Fair, which ends today, far outnumbered men, and the exhibitors said there were not many Qatari bibliophiles, and the few in the community who did buy books mostly preferred volumes on cookery and astrology, besides children’s books.
The fair has so far reported poor sales of Islamic books, with staff at several stalls saying that since Qatar’s Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs distributes such books free of cost, there were hardly any buyers.
Two Qatari litterateurs, Dr Abdul Malki and Saleh Ghareeb, told this newspaper that there were many books on the Arab Spring at the fair.
Many exhibitors seem to be unaware that Qatar has a large English-speaking population and many in the expatriate community have been living here for years. “We didn’t focus on books in English, first, because English-speaking people don’t visit us in large numbers; and secondly, we focus mainly on citizens because in our view only they would stock up books and make libraries since it is their home country,” said an exhibitor.
The event has flopped, with exhibitors complaining of a low turnout of visitors and thin sales. “The timing of the exhibition was not right. There were rains, and then there were National Day celebrations,” said Dr Malik, a book lover and litterateur.
He told this newspaper on Thursday: “Fellow Qataris mostly prefer cookery and astrology books.” Youngsters in the community mostly like novels. The men largely read social novels while the women prefer crime stories, he suggested.
However, according to Ghareeb, another Qatari book enthusiast, young Qatari men hardly have any liking for books as they are “always busy playing with modern gadgets like iphones and computers”.
It is Qatari women who are more interested in books. Ghareeb said: “Reading books isn’t a habit with locals in the entire GCC region because the role of the mother in upbringing children is missing. Maids have taken up that role and, naturally, you can’t expect them (the maids) to inculcate the habit of reading in a child.”
He also suggested that there were enough books on the Arab Spring at the exhibition, adding that most visitors to the book fair were schoolchildren who went there in the morning hours.
THE PENINSULA
