In the first two days of this December, the activities of the fifth annual conference of the “Arab Publishers Union” were launched, with the aim of finding solutions for the Arab book industry sector in such circumstances in which the publishing sector was affected by the Corona pandemic, globally. The conference was held using virtual technology tools under the title “Content Creation and Challenges.” He presented “the obstacles facing the publishing industry, and the constructive content that all publishers are keen on. The conferences addressed many topics related to the publishing sector in general, including the repercussions of the Corona pandemic on the printing, publishing and distribution process, and the difficulty of reaching the reader directly due to the cessation of book fairs in most Arab countries.” The conference concluded that 2020 can be considered one of the most depressed years, especially if we look at things from the perspective of organizing book fairs that have stopped, with the exception of some major fairs such as Frankfurt and Montreal, which “succeeded” in maintaining this year’s edition when they found a way out in the virtual space, which is a space that is not active in the Arab world, especially at the marketing level. As for the rest of the exhibitions that were organized in traditional ways (including Sharjah recently), they suffered from failures mainly related to the lack of public attendance due to fears of a second wave of the virus.
