DURING a recent television interview, I said the Riyadh International Book Fair is no longer sufficient to create a Saudi culture that can reach every city, village and home in the Kingdom. The book fair, now in its 10th year, has been besieged by traditional matters because its organizers do not have anything new to add to it in order to make it attractive and effective in encouraging the culture of reading in the Kingdom. This is especially true since Saudi publishers have not been provided with the right tools to encourage and develop their performance and their production of both paper and digital books. Now, the Makkah governorate has announced that a committee comprising Jeddah governor, officials of the Ministry of Culture and Information and other authorities has started preparations for holding an international book fair in Jeddah. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, emir of Makkah region and adviser to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, made the announcement after royal approval was obtained. Prince Khaled knows the value of books and the importance of making them accessible to all. This is a welcome development and a result of our previous appeals that the international book fair should not be restricted to Riyadh; books should be available everywhere in the Kingdom. The reason is not only to make them easily available, but so people do not have to travel long distances to get them as many are unable to leave their jobs to go to Riyadh to visit the book fair. There are people who wish to own books but they cannot afford the air fare, expenses for staying in the capital and transport within the city. For this reason, I wish that the approval to hold an international book fair in Jeddah is accompanied by another approval to hold a book fair in the Eastern Province, which is just as important as any other region in the Kingdom as far as reading books and engaging in culture is concerned. The purchasing power in the Eastern Province is high enough as its population exceeds four million. It is also the biggest region in the Kingdom, one that extends from Al-Ahsa to Hafr Al-Batin and even beyond. Aside from its significant oil reserves, the Eastern Province has produced generations of prominent intellectuals. Their presence will enrich its book fair as far as accompanying activities are concerned. As I said about the Riyadh book fair, there is a need to be innovative and attract those concerned with culture. If a book fair is approved for the Eastern Province, we will have three major book fairs in the country. We deserve them and Arab and foreign publishing houses will compete with one another to gain a foothold in them. This will also create healthy competition as the book fairs will compete to achieve excellence, provided the committee for making preparations for each of these book fairs is independent. In other words, we should not hand over the approved Jeddah book fair and the one we hope will be approved in the Eastern Province to the Riyadh book fair's organizing committee. The reason is that the new book fairs should not be copies of the Riyadh book fair. The new book fairs should not be inundated in traditional matters and lack of innovation the way our centrally administrated literary clubs have been. Now that Jeddah has a book fair, residents of the Eastern Province are eagerly awaiting news of an annual book fair in the province.
