Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/CARIO: Egyptians can now pay in installments to buy books due to the skyrocketing inflation. Earlier, they used installments to pay for costly items such as cars or washing machines this way.
“Here in Egypt, reading a book has become a luxury. People are saving money for luxury because it is not an essential good like food, “according to Mohammed El-Baaly of Sefsafa Publishing House.
He spoke when the Cairo International Book Fair, which attracted two million visitors the previous year, opened to the general public. Some Egyptian authors claim they have reduced the number of characters and details in their writing to be more cost-effective given the more than twofold increase in book pricing.
El-Baaly said, “The cost of ink and paper has increased tremendously. The price of a paper’s tone is now four times higher than the one at the start of the year!”
Decrease in demand for books
He said that he has turned to print books overseas and is producing fewer copies, as he expects a decrease in demand. The notion of paying in installments came about due to concerns over a potential decline in visitors to this year’s book fair, which is the largest and oldest of this kind in the Arab world and a significant event for the publishing business.
According to the Egyptian Publishers Association, clients can now pay 1.5% interest and wait up to nine months to purchase a book. A famous fiction writer for teens, Author Dina Afifi hopes that this scheme will boost sales. She said that she changed her latest book’s appearance to lower the production cost. She shared with BBC, “My book’s been downsized to just 60 pages from around 100 because of the rising printing costs.”
Many Egyptian novelists have described how they have stripped back their writing to produce shorter books introducing fewer minor characters, limiting the amount of description, and simplifying storylines.
More readers are purchasing counterfeit books
They said that more readers in Egypt are now purchasing low-quality counterfeit copies of books. These are sold at street stalls for prices ranging between 50 and 100 Egyptian pounds.
The spending power of people in Egypt, who had already undergone years of austerity and frequent economic shocks, has been massively reduced in recent months due to increasing inflation.
Egypt, a country that imports many goods, has had a currency problem. After several devaluations, money is now only worth half of what it did a year ago. The government claims it is doing everything in its power to lower prices and blames the pressure on outside forces related to the conflict in Ukraine.
According to a poet from Egypt, it is not unexpected that this year, regular people were more concerned about putting food on the table than purchasing books that would feed their minds.
