It’s the classic digital books chicken and egg conundrum. Publishers do not produce digital books because so few read digital books. Book-lovers don’t buy many digital books because there are so few to choose from.
Book imports are among the casualties of exceptionally hard economic times in this glorious country of 228 million people.
“For the past several weeks, no books are being imported into the country and whatever little stock we had left is slowly running out,” according to Aziz Khalid, Chairman of the Pakistan Publishers and Booksellers Association, as reported by the Pakistan Tribune.
And of course prices for the books that are available are spiralling out of control.
Some consumers are turning to digital, but the big problem here is that so little content is digitised, so choices are limited.
Pakistan is only at 50.9% internet penetration, so perhaps publisher reticence is understandable. But they need to think again. In a country this size, that 50.9% equates to 116 million people online – almost as many as the UK and Italy combined.
But reaching those potential readers is made all the harder by the lack of any meaningful digital books retail structure. The big western digital books players like Amazon’s Kindle, Apple Books and Google Play Books have no presence, and as yet no domestic players have made any serious impact.
It’s the classic digital books chicken and egg conundrum. Publishers do not produce digital books because so few read digital books. Book-lovers don’t buy many digital books because there are so few to choose from.
There are no just-add-water instant solutions to this problem, but as we are seeing around the globe, solutions can and do emerge. As more and more publishers in more and more so-called emerging markets discover the advantages of digital so the global books economy is transformed.
Pakistan needs and deserves to take its place at the world publishing table, and its population and internet access shows it can be a powerhouse player.
But only with a hybrid strategy that encompasses the best of what both print and digital can offer.
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