The 30th edition of the Rabat International Book Fair, which opened on 18 April and ran until the 27th of the same month, set off a wide wave of anger within Egyptian cultural circles. Egyptian publishers were taken by surprise when the book shipments belonging to the publishing houses they represent failed to arrive, even though those houses had been approved to take part in the fair.
While the Egyptian Minister of Culture, Ahmed Fouad Hanno, was visiting the Egyptian pavilion accompanied by the Egyptian ambassador to Morocco, Ahmed Nehad Abdel Latif, and the Moroccan Minister of Culture, Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid, most of the Egyptian pavilion appeared empty of books. Only 10% of the book shipments had arrived, by air freight, and only to a limited number of houses, most prominently Kayan Publishing House.
In a scene that drew the disapproval of Egyptian intellectuals, publishers and writers, photographs were taken of the minister and the official delegation inside the “Kayan” stand, which looked as though it represented the Egyptian presence, amid the near-total absence of the other houses. Many considered what happened a “cultural scandal” that exposed a serious flaw in the organisation or in the transparency of procedures on the part of the Egyptian Publishers Association.
The president of the Publishers Association, Farid Zahran, had previously informed, in an official statement on 15 February, the members of the Egyptian Publishers Association taking part in the Rabat International Book Fair that Al-Buraq Import and Export Company had been commissioned to ship the publications of the Egyptian publishers participating in the fair, at a price of EGP 150 per outgoing parcel, covering all expenses up to the delivery of the books to the pavilion, and at a price of 55 Moroccan dirhams per returned parcel, covering all expenses up to the delivery of the books to the shipping company’s warehouses. He stressed that packing lists and invoices must match the contents of the parcels and must not contain any banned books or books violating the fair’s conditions, or any antique books, manuscripts or old heritage books; otherwise the publisher would bear all the fines imposed on the entire shipment and all compensation resulting from its delay.
On 8 April, a statement issued by the secretary-general of the Publishers Association, Mohamed Abdel Moneim, revealed the possibility that the main shipment of books participating in the Rabat International Book Fair 2025 in Morocco would arrive late, explaining that an air shipment would be put together for the publishers participating in the fair, amounting to approximately 10% of the main shipment, at the shipping company’s expense, and handed over to Al-Buraq company by 10 April at the latest. However, the participating Egyptian publishers were surprised that the crisis of the books’ late arrival continued throughout the first week of the fair, which inflicted heavy losses on them and damaged their credibility with readers and with the writers contracted to them, prompting many intellectuals to call on the Minister of Culture to intervene to resolve the crisis.
The importance of the Egyptian cultural presence
Book fairs represent an opportunity to sell publishers’ titles, to market the publishing house’s name in the host country, and to meet readers and get to know their reading preferences. They also allow the house’s writers to meet their audience through signing events and discussions, in addition to meeting new writers and attracting the talented among them to publish their works, as well as being an opportunity to display the house’s titles and to bring the creative work of non-national writers to readers from different cultures or in new countries, as Dr Emad El-Din El-Akhal, general manager of Ebeddi companies and of the Ebeddi Publications publishing house, explains to Zawia3, pointing out that the Egyptian cultural presence and its promotion preserve Egypt’s leading position on the Arab cultural scene.
El-Akhal stresses that the losses caused by the absence of participation or the late arrival of books are not only material; despite the financial losses, estimated at about EGP 10 million, they are considered far smaller than the moral losses, as Moroccan writers did not find their books, published by Egyptian publishing houses, at the most important cultural event held in their country, which weakens, if it does not end, trust in cooperation with Egyptian publishing houses.
He tells Zawia3: “I cannot describe the feeling of our Moroccan writer Youssef El-Khasoumi on learning that his latest and most important work had not arrived at the fair, a work that is expected to be turned into a major historical drama. El-Khasoumi had previously announced that the work would be available at the fair and that a signing event would be held, but we were forced to cancel those arrangements and apologise to readers amid a deep feeling of regret. Nor can I describe the disappointment of the Moroccan readers who had waited for the new titles, since this opportunity comes only once a year, given the well-known difficulties of book distribution in the Arab countries in general, and in the Maghreb countries in particular.”
He adds that all indicators confirm Egypt’s cultural leadership, whether in terms of the number of publishing houses, the number of titles, the writers, the number of prize-winners among them, the number of fairs, and so on; therefore, the delay in shipping the books to the fair is a harsh blow, for such mistakes are not made by the great leader, especially since “it is not the first time, as if we do not learn from the mistakes of the past and insist on repeating them”. He considers that, before blame is placed on any party, this problem calls for a comprehensive reading of the causes, and for work to amend or introduce all the procedures capable of ensuring that what happened is not repeated, not only at the Rabat fair but at all the events in which Egypt and Egyptians take part.
For its part, the Ministry of Culture stressed, in a statement on 19 April, that the logistical procedures relating to the participation of Egyptian publishing houses in international fairs, foremost among them the shipping of books, fall within the core competences of the Egyptian Publishers Association, which is responsible for contracting with shipping companies and coordinating with fair administrations. It emphasised its belief in the freedom and independence of professional unions in managing their affairs, provided that this is done in a way that safeguards Egypt’s cultural image and reflects its leading position, and renewed its commitment to supporting Egyptian publishers and strengthening the presence of the Egyptian book on the Arab and international cultural scene.
The statement added that Ahmed Fouad Hanno, the Minister of Culture, had made intensive contacts to follow developments in the crisis and work to resolve it, and intended to hold an urgent meeting with officials of the Egyptian Publishers Association as soon as he returned from Morocco, to discuss the causes of the delay and its repercussions and to put in place mechanisms to prevent it from recurring in future. It said that he had coordinated with the relevant Moroccan authorities to facilitate the release of the Egyptian book shipment as soon as it arrived in Rabat during the current week, so as to ensure its participation in the fair’s events without further delay, as part of the keenness to ensure an honourable representation of Egyptian publishing at this important Arab cultural event.
Commenting on the crisis, a statement issued by the president of the Publishers Association, Farid Zahran, on 20 April said that the board of directors of the Egyptian Publishers Association regretted the confusion that the late arrival of the Egyptian publishers’ shipments at the International Book and Publishing Fair in Rabat had caused to the plans of the members participating in the fair, and the disruption to the display of their titles on time, which harmed their interests and also, without doubt, affected the form of the Egyptian participation in the fair, which did not rise to the required level that the Egyptian publisher deserves. It stressed the importance of adhering to logistical arrangements so that participation befits the Egyptian publishing industry and preserves Egypt’s image in Arab and international cultural forums.
The statement explained that the board of directors had decided to open a comprehensive investigation as soon as the crisis ended, aimed at uncovering all the facts concerning the causes of the shipments’ delay and holding to account the officials responsible for this crisis, whoever they may be, reviewing all the procedures followed in shipping operations for all fairs to ensure that this problem is prevented from recurring in future, and obliging the exhibitions committee to submit a detailed report to the members on the follow-up of every shipment the association supervises, to ensure accurate implementation and raise the level of coordination with shipping companies and the administrations of international fairs.
The crisis is not the first of its kind
The publisher Ragaei Moussa, founder of “Dar Hunna” for Publishing and Distribution, reveals to Zawia3 that the crisis witnessed at the Rabat International Book Fair in this year’s edition is not the first of its kind; a similar delay in the arrival of the book shipments of Egyptian publishing houses occurred last year, lasting until the fifth day of the fair, but the scale of the disaster this year is far greater. He holds the Publishers Association fully responsible for this because of its management of the crisis; the publishers were informed about 10 days before the fair opened that there would be a delay in the arrival of the sea shipments of books, and that accordingly 10% of the publishers’ book shipments would be sent by air, even though the contract stipulated that 30% be shipped by air, which did not happen. The publishers also received the air shipments only three days before the fair ended, after a flight that lasted 13 days, and he asks whether the books had passed through the various airports of the world during that period.
He tells Zawia3: “The book shipment that came by sea reached me in Rabat after midnight on Friday, 25 April, and so I was unable to display it at the Dar Hunna stand until Saturday, 26 April, a day before the fair ended, and I took it down 24 hours later because the fair had ended. During that period we received several feeble statements from the association that were full of lies and fallacies, and when the matter went beyond the limit, the association stopped issuing statements for several days.”
He adds: “The scale of the losses the publishers suffered is enormous. For us as a publishing house, we suffered losses of about EGP 250,000, in addition to the moral losses resulting from being deprived of meeting our readers and the circles of relationships we have built in Morocco. I do not expect the association to honour its pledges regarding compensating us for the losses we suffered, and I expect that we will be subjected to procrastination and evasion. We are waiting for a neutral investigation committee to be formed that will reveal whether or not financial corruption exists and decide whether the association is implicated and should be dismissed or not.”
Publisher Mohamed El-Baaly, director of Sefsafa Publishing House, meanwhile, believes that the Rabat fair crisis had a negative effect on the Egyptian participation in Morocco, but that it is not the first time this has happened, as a result of mistakes by shipping companies and because the financial penalties imposed on them are not a deterrent; there was a slight delay two years ago in the arrival of the Egyptian publishers’ books at the Rabat fair, and a similar delay happened at the Erbil Book Fair in 2019.
He tells Zawia3: “The commercial losses are large and regrettable, and taking part in book fairs carries the risk of commercial loss and the possibility of goods arriving late. We hope that the Publishers Association has a plan to help publishers get through the crisis and that it plays its role as a union. We do not know whether it has an emergency fund that handles compensation, but the contract between the association and the publishing company stipulates a financial penalty borne by the company. In any case, the association must study the crisis well and work to prevent it from happening again.”
Financial corruption?
On 21 April, the association revealed the formation of a committee to investigate the crisis, chaired by Ahmed Badeir, the association’s deputy head, with the membership of publishers Ahmed Rashad, Mohamed Abdel Moneim, Islam Abdel Moaty, Hisham Abdel Rahim, Mahmoud Abdel Nabi, Mahmoud Khalaf and Walid Mostafa. After that, publisher Islam Abdel Moaty, director of Rawafed Publishing House and a member of the Egyptian Publishers Association, announced his withdrawal from the committee, whose first meeting had been scheduled for 22 April, blaming the association’s board of directors and the shipping company. Most of the committee’s members, the majority of whom were affected publishers, soon excused themselves from attending the meeting, which was limited to Ahmed Badeir, the association’s deputy head and the committee’s chair, publisher Ahmed Rashad, and the association’s president, Farid Zahran.
Publisher Islam Abdel Moaty affirms to Zawia3 that the Morocco fair crisis has recurred twice during the last three years, and that it is due to wrong decisions taken by the shipper out of recklessness and a desire to make greater profits, accompanied by negligence in follow-up by the party contracting with it, namely the Egyptian Publishers Association, which results in great harm to the participating publishers, both at the direct material level and at the level of future plans in the market where the fair is held.
The publisher explains that the direct cost of any book fair is no less than $3,000, and that this cost has nothing to do with sales, whether they take place or not; it is a cost related to renting the stand, flights, shipping and accommodation, and the publishing house’s sales are supposed to amount to at least about double this cost. He points out that damage to a publisher’s image in a book market weakens its position with the authors and distributors within it, and this differs from one publisher to another and from one market to another. He considers that the solution to avoid this comes down to two things: the association’s acknowledgement that there was a mistake and its apology for it, then clarifying the picture through a serious investigation into whether this mistake resulted from negligence or went beyond that to a suspicion of corruption; and applying the contract with the shipper in all its details, so that all shippers know in future that there is no room for leniency with anyone who harms the interests of publishers.
For its part, the committee held the shipping company responsible for the Rabat fair crisis because of its clear violation of all its obligations regarding this shipment, its failure to ship at a suitable time that would guarantee the shipment’s arrival sufficiently before the fair’s opening date, and its failure to address the problem, in breach of its contractual obligation to carry out urgent air shipments transporting about a third of the original shipment before the opening date. It called on the shipping company to promptly pay the compensation stipulated in the contract, amounting to EGP 35,000, in addition to the cost of the second and third air shipments, which the company did not carry out.
The committee instructed the association’s general manager to submit a report compiling all the shipping documents in addition to all the correspondence relating to this matter, and also instructed him to address the shipper officially to demand immediately a report on the route of all the shipments, whether by air or by sea. It recommended confiscating the insurance deposit that the shipping company had paid to the association, with its legal representative to be summoned urgently for investigation and to submit all the documents he has relating to the shipment, including disclosing the criteria or instructions on the basis of which the shipping company selected the publishers who benefited from the limited air shipment that actually reached the fair, and which a number of members objected to being deprived of.
The committee also said that it had discussed compensation for those affected and pledged to discuss securing the necessary resources for this with the board of directors in accordance with the law and the regulations governing it. It presented the available alternatives for returning the books and decided to discuss the matter at its next meeting in its full composition, adding that it had reviewed the governing elements of contracts with shipping companies and recommended discussing the matter at its next meeting, with the need to put in place some financial and administrative controls that would give the association the ability to monitor shipments closely according to the appropriate timetable for each fair, which would prevent this regrettable crisis from recurring, in addition to drawing up a blacklist of non-compliant shipping companies and committing not to deal with them.
Writer Ahmed El-Khamisi, meanwhile, considers what happened at the Rabat fair to be something shameful at every level, since Egypt is a large country whose relationship with culture extends back 7,000 years, and neither publishing nor book fairs are new to it. Therefore, the late arrival of the books for the owners of Egyptian publishing houses at the Rabat fair was a shocking matter, and he expresses surprise that the Publishers Association contracted with the shipping company that had previously breached its agreements with the association, and that the association nevertheless renewed its agreement with the company.
He tells Zawia3: “It is regrettable that such a farce should happen, one that reeks of financial corruption between the two parties to the matter, namely the Publishers Association and the shipping company. I do not know how the publishers can be compensated for what happened, because the loss in reality is not only material; rather, it is a moral loss, which stems essentially from financial corruption.
Promises to compensate publishers
On 23 April, the committee for investigation and compensation in the crisis of the delayed shipment of Egyptian publishers to the International Book and Publishing Fair in Rabat announced in Cairo that legal adviser Dr Hossam Lotfy had agreed to join the committee at the invitation of its chair, and that the committee had formed a working group, consisting of publishers Hisham Abdel Rahim and Reda Awad, whose purpose is to estimate the financial losses suffered by the affected Egyptian publishers. The group will contact every affected publisher to collect all the information necessary to estimate the losses, in preparation for claiming an amount of compensation that makes good those losses. In a statement, the committee asked the members affected by the incident to provide the working group, during the remainder of the fair, with the basic cost elements, which include: “air tickets, accommodation, living expenses, stand rental and its area, shipping”.
Ahmed Gamal, distribution manager of “Diwan El-Sharq Publishing”, does not expect the Egyptian Publishers Association to keep its promises to compensate the houses affected by the Rabat fair crisis, despite the repeated statements by the association’s president and the members of the investigation committee that was formed. Gamal attributes his pessimism to the ambiguity of the situation so far, and to the fact that the association “is not a supreme executive body”.
Gamal estimates the material losses suffered by each Egyptian publishing house that took part in the fair and was affected by the crisis at between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on the size of the stand and the costs of travel and accommodation, in addition to the moral losses. He says: “The Moroccan reader is passionate about Egyptian literature, and being absent in this way was embarrassing.”
In a statement to “Zawia3”, he explains: “So far we have not been informed of the real reason. What we know is that the shipping company that won the tender held by the association was the one automatically commissioned, and the publishers agreed because the price was very low compared with shipping individually. But the responsibility in the end is shared. It is true that we have seen minor delays at previous fairs, but what happened in Rabat was unprecedented.”
In response, publisher Walid Mostafa, a member of the board of directors of the Egyptian and Arab Publishers Associations and director of the “National Centre for Legal Publications” house, replies to these accusations. He affirms that the association did not force any of the publishers to contract with a particular company; rather, it held an official tender in which three or four companies took part, and “Al-Buraq Import and Export” company won it because it offered the lowest price. He explains that the company has a record of previous dealings with the association, like the other companies that took part in the tender.
Mostafa adds, speaking to “Zawia3”, that the association formed an investigation committee of members of the board of directors and the general assembly to establish the facts, even though the fair had ended, stressing that the association is not shirking its responsibility and is working on a comprehensive assessment of what happened.
Despite this, a number of publishers do not hide their fear that the crisis will turn into a precedent that repeats itself, amid the absence of a clear crisis management plan and growing doubts about the transparency of shipping procedures. Intellectuals and publishers are asking why the shipping task was assigned to a company that had previously been late on earlier occasions, calling for the association’s board of directors to be held to account, and some of them have even gone as far as demanding its dismissal, holding it responsible for the “organisational failure” that damaged the image of the Egyptian participation in the fair.
