Crete’s Saint Nicholas Church with its minaret at sunset in the old town of Chania. Image – Getty: Elifranssens
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Beaches, Waterfronts, Masterpieces
As our professional readers here at Publishing Perspectives know, some guest-of-honor programs at major international trade fairs tend to arrive with the apparent assumption that their beaches, waterfronts, or ancient masterpieces dismiss all need of introduction.Certainly, Greece can claim all three of those cultural and visual stunners. But the Greek book industry smartly does not expect everyone in the world to know some of the Aegean market’s key industry statistics without that information being communicated.
So when you arrive later this week at Expo Sharjah for the 44th Sharjah International Book Fair, be sure to see if you can spot and pick up one of the dark-navy booklets producec by the HFBC (the Hellenic Foundation for books and culture, The Landscape of Book Publishing and Book Policy in Greece.
The HFBC, which is part of the Hellenic Republic ministry of culture, has created a handy booklet to help those introducing themselves to the Greek literature scene and business—thanks to the Sharjah Book Authority led by the Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi (chair) and by Ahmed Al Ameri (CEO).
Many attendees of this year’s 15th ongoing iteration of Sharjah Professional Program will immediately have recognized one of our favorites, Nopi Chatzigeorgiou, and Phaedon Gregorios Kidoniaia, who represents much of the publishers’ associations’ activities to the Federation of European Publishers.
Many other key players from Greece’s publishing community are here, do be sure to meet them.
Nopi Chatzigeorgiou
And because your questions for the Greek industry leaders arriving inQ
There’s also a set of well explained “pillars of strategy” maintained by the HFBC, and thos include:
- Outreach (promotion and dissemination of Greek literature, of course)
- Network (based on books, reading, cutlure, and the written word)
- Research and docucmentation into the Greek body of books, statistics, and more.
The Greek ‘Landscape’s’ Numbers Revealed
In almost each category of information that The Landscape of Book Publishing and Book Policy offers, there may be up to six years of data presented.
For brevity, and because your inquiries will be the most pertinent, we’ll show you just some bits of data, so that you get the idea about how valuable this very trim volume may be to your work in evaluating now useful the Greek book market’s contemporary offerings may be.
General Overview Book Production
First edition and reprint, all book formats
2024: 12,588 books
Print Books
Printed books cover 97 percent of the total proction (2009-2022)
Per thematic category
Literature, 2024: 4,133 books
As you can tell from these quick exqamples, these inputs will be hugely helpful in sorting out what might be available and of interest in Sharjah’s Guest of Honor Greece program.
Wherever our international readers are in the world, they use our free daily email to be sure they don’t miss any news. Sign up now.