Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad Hosseini, INLA Director Ali-Akbar Ash’ari, Majlis Cultural Committee Chairman Qolam-Ali Haddad-Adel, and conference secretary Ali Zarei Najafdari were among the participants.
Najafdari stated that the Islamic world’s publishers are far from the standards of the West. “We can shorten this distance, but we need various organizations to collaborate.”
“Publishers and authors play a major role in promoting the culture of Islam in the world, but they have yet not been able to prove their status to the West,” he said.
Tehran hosted the first International Conference of Islamic World Publishers from June 20 to 21.
The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution member Mansur Kabkanian, who attended the conference, lamented the fact that Chinese publishers are currently publishing some Iranian periodicals, since the expenses are much less in China as compared to Iran.
“We must take this seriously and pursue the matter, as this is dangerous. If they continue to permeate our publishing industry, it will be hard to maintain control,” he added.
“We also need to learn to link the publishing industry and production of science to develop the level of science in the country,” he added.
Director of Tehran Guild of Booksellers and Publishers Nader Qadyani, also present at the conference, expressed his regret about the current situation of booksellers in Tehran.
“More space is dedicated to fast food and sandwich shops than to bookshops in Tehran,” he said.
He said that there are currently over 700 book shops across the capital, “half of the bookshops are in central Tehran and the rest are scattered across the city. This shows there is no official center for bookselling.”
We have not so far been able to gain permission for large-scale bookshops. “At the present time, investing in a supermarket or a restaurant in an area of 200m is much more profitable than establishing a bookshop.
“Publishers are among the oppressed in the country and a solution must be found for this,” he stated.
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