Amazon, the American electronic commerce company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994, has just launched over 12,000 Arabic language books for Kindle devices.
According to Arab News, the move has been greeted with enthusiasm by publishers, book-worms, and aspiring writers from the Arabic-speaking world.
Readers will now be able to access a huge selection of Arabic publications. These will include works by authors such as Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz, Ibrahim Nasrallah’s “The Second Year of the Dog”, and of course, popular contemporary English books such as, J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series.
Best-selling Algerian author Ahlam Mosteghanemi said “I am thrilled that Amazon has opened this service, breaking the distances between the Arabic book and its readers” as it means his work will “reach Arabic readers across the world”.
According to Bassam Chebaro, CEO of Arab Scientific Publishers there has already been “great interest from our finest authors, writers, and scholars, to publish their Arabic titles for Kindle”.
Iman Ben Chaibah, CEO of Sail Publishing, an Emirati publishing house that produces digital books and magazines, alongside an English – Emeriti online magazine, added that the launch would see more Arabic-speaking people choosing to read more books.
She stated that when she first started reading on her Kindle (in English) she went from reading around 10 books a year to almost 50. She added that, for Arabic-speaking booklovers, this increase in reading will only be possible if more publishers sign up to Kindle.
“It is a matter of on-boarding all the publishers and encouraging them to do a simultaneous publishing. So at the moment you publish in print — you should as well be appearing in Kindle at the same time,” she said.
In 2016 the Gulf state launched a project called a “Year of Reading” in a bid to increase reading throughout the region. The government backed scheme supported new libraries, and ran reading competitions for children and young people.
Ben Chaibah suggests that this reading project has encouraged an openness about reading that wasn’t visible before 2016. Reading in public has become more prevalent and the launch of Arabic titles on Amazon’s Kindle should encourage this further.
“People are no longer hiding it if they are reading. They are no longer worrying that I read in public because what are people going to say. People are more comfortable with it, which for me is a good difference.
“Previously you would find that the expat community in general is very ok with reading in public, but now you find local people in coffee shops with a book and reading which is a transition I don’t think I noticed before 2016,” she said.
Amazon Kindle are also offering authors the ability to self-publish their writing in Arabic through the Kindle Direct Publishing Service.
Ben Chaibah said she believes that writers of young adult fiction, typically rejected by traditional publishers, might use the opportunity to self-publish on the Kindle.
The Kindle Arabic language launch comes after Amazon have ramped up its presence in the Middle East. Last year it purchased online UAE based retailer, souq.com, and also launched Amazon Prime, its video streaming service, in the UAE in 2016.
David Naggar, Vice President of Kindle said “We are excited to make Arabic language Kindle books available to the hundreds of millions of Arabic speakers around the world. This is another step in our ongoing work to provide more choice and selection to readers.”
The Arabic Kindle service will operate in the same way as other languages; readers will be able to read a sample of each book before purchasing, look up words using the dictionary function, adjust font sizes, settings and colours.
