Panel discussion urges treating Iran’s publication sector as business

1391/02/16-08:30

A panel discussion, called business of publication, was staged Thursday night in Tehran International Book Fair with two panelists urging for a change of approach towards the Iranian publication sector by which to treat the sector as a cultural-business sector rather than a purely cultural one.

The panel discussion was held in a special hall in the 25th TIBF fairground dedicated to review the status of publication nationwide and heard from three panelists, namely Mohsen Rezaee, an expert in cultural affairs, Dariush Motallebi, caretaker of IT department in the IRI Book House Institute and Mahmoud Amouzegar, director of Tehran’s Publishers and Booksellers Union.

Motallebi, moderator of the panel discussion, started the talk by defining publication as the process of making information available to the public in print, digital or multimedia formats.

He said in Iran, experts and practitioners in the field had usually been reluctant to treat book as an object of business and instead considered it as a purely cultural commodity thus causing the Iranian publication industry to remain traditional and dependent on state assistance.

He then asked the two other panelists to say whether publication was a business and whether the society must consider book as an object of business rather than a pure cultural commodity.

In response, Mr. Amouzegar believed that a poor handling of intellectual property in the Iranian laws was to blame for the realities on the ground. ‘Overseas, a the value of a book arises in large part from the content rather than type of paper or book cover while in Iran, paper is sometimes more precious than content, causing us to fail to consider books as a value added source,’ he reckoned.

The director of Tehran’s Publishers and Booksellers Union touched on the negative impacts of the lacking trend of developments, saying the Iranian publishers usually incur large losses concerning the rights of translation and patent of book while it is considered a major source of revenues in the world publication industry.

As a final panelist to speak, Mr. Rezaee was of a somewhat different opinion than the other two, saying that the Iranian society’s treatment of books as pure cultural commodities has been inspired by its rich cultural background.

The expert in cultural affairs said many Iranian experts in the field of publication or Islamic theory of economy consider books as a mixed cultural-business material that helps engineer the society. ‘Publications prove useful in reducing the levels of misdemeanors or crimes in the society, granting them a cultural face,’ he said.

The expert noted however that the cultural effect of publications might be lost if business requirements are not fulfilled.

To sum up, Motallebi said the cultural and business dimensions of publications interact with one another and that given the business side of the Iranian publication industry is not paid due attention, it may fail to burgeon in the long run and would remain dependent on state subsidies in order to survive.

The caretaker of IT department in the IRI Book House Institute urged for treating the business based on the economic notion of supply and demand.