Dubai: As technology develops, bookworms have more ways than just reading books to consume literature. Although there are significantly fewer Arabic e-books available than there are English ones, publishers and translators are working to close the gap.

Arabic-language support for the Kindle e-reader was announced by Amazon in 2018, allowing for a much wider audience to access literature.

A growing number of Arabs are discovering accessible ways to learn through e-books and audiobooks, which include everything from novels to self-help books, biographies to poetry and more. But for the vast majority, reading a book that has been printed on paper is still the preferred choice.

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According to Salah Chebaro, CEO of Neelwafurat in Beirut, "I don't think there is a problem with reading books in the Arab region as some might think, as much as there is a problem with selling books."

The Arabic names for the Nile and Euphrates rivers have been combined to form Neelwafurat, one of the largest online book stores in the Arab world.

The bookshop distributes printed books from Arab publishers to various cities worldwide. It offers 800,000 printed books in addition to 15,000 e-books that can be purchased and read using the iKitab app.

Millions of books have been downloaded illegally, according to Chebaro, who spoke in an online interview from the Lebanese capital. People enjoy reading, but they dislike having to pay for it.

However, due to the geography of the Arab world, "the problem for publishers, distributors, and bookshops in the Arab world... is in shipping (books) and other logistics."

For instance, sending a shipment of printed books from New York to Los Angeles in the US would cost about the same as sending it, say, from Cairo to Amman. The books would weigh a combined total of 2 kilogrammes.

According to Chebaro, this is a result of the geographic distribution of the Arab region, which makes shipping, exporting, and importing more difficult and expensive.

One of the primary reasons why e-books are becoming more and more popular in the Arab world is the ability to reduce shipping costs. Other benefits include reducing the amount of space needed to store and transport print books as well as the quickness with which an online book purchase can be completed.

While some people still favour reading from books, reading from electronic devices has many benefits. Dhuha Awad, a Yemeni-British creativity mentor based in Dubai, says she appreciates the dictionary feature in electronic English books.

"I can search for a word by typing it, and the device will show all the lines that contain that word (in the digital book). Additionally, I don't have to always carry the book I'm reading with me, Awad.

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She uses the e-book format to further save time and physical space, and her library is made up of roughly equal amounts of printed and digital books. "I make sure I have a book in paper if I like it and want others to read it. However, if I'm unsure, I'll buy the digital version first," she added.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt are driving the expansion of the e-book market in the Arab world. During a panel discussion at the Sharjah Publishers Conference, which was held in conjunction with the annual Sharjah International Book Fair in the UAE, which takes place in November, Ali Abdel Moneim Ahmed, a digital publishing consultant with Liberty Education in the UK, Egypt, and the UAE, said

According to Ahmed, more and more publishers are providing online platforms with digital versions of their books. Additionally, publishers are working with audio-ready platforms like Storytel and Audible.

Classic book e-book sales in the three Arab nations mentioned above "increased by 14% (in 2021)," according to Ahmed. This is in addition to the online publications, which have grown by 50%.

E-book sales are rising, but there is still room for further expansion. Publishers estimate that sales of e-books make up about 10% of all book sales.

It is an exciting field. and it keeps rising yearly. However, we haven't yet surpassed the rates of Europe and the US, where e-books make up nearly 30% of all book sales, Chebaro told Arab News.

Despite sales figures varying between sources and websites, e-books are widely sold around the world.

Global e-book revenues exceeded $16.1 billion in 2021, and WordsRated, a non-profit research organisation based in the US, predicts that they will surpass $18.7 billion by 2026.

Another US-based provider of market and consumer data, Statista, projects that the e-books market will hit $13.6 billion in 2022 and grow at a 3.38 percent annual rate to surpass $16 billion by 2027.

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By 2027, there will be over 1.1 billion e-book readers, with the US expected to generate the majority of the revenues. With estimated revenues in the billions of dollars, the nation has the largest book market in the entire world.

In addition to the four million books that are self-published each year, nearly one million books are published in the US each year.

The Arab book market generates between $100 and $150 million in revenue, in contrast. According to information provided by Chebaro, only one million books have been published in the Arab world over the past 50 years.