The issue is an old one, and we come face to face with the same every year at the Cairo International Book Fair on its old dates of the last week of January and the first of February.
Once the fair ends, our interest in the issue ceases, despite its danger to publishing, which is one of the indicators of civilization and intellectual life, not in our modern age with all the visions it presents to us, but since mankind has known the publication of the book. Some countries boast about the number of books they print and consider them a measure of civilization and life in the 21st century.
Eventually, Muhammad Rashad, Head of the Arab Publishers Association, sent me an article on the concerns that haunt every intellectual, whatever his orientation, because a world without books is unbearable. Temptations may be here and there, but books are essential to modern man. Since the invention of the printing press in 1440 by John Gutenberg, the cultural product that was handwritten and held by a limited number of elites has been transformed into a printed book that allows readers to acquire and benefit from it, and even to appreciate the values, ideas and meanings it carries. So much so that some philosophers say that after one person has finished reading a book, another person is about to start reading. I wish the matter would stop at the limits of book falsification, despite its danger and negative effects on the publishing movement in Egypt and the Arab world. Indeed, the Corona epidemic arrived last year, negatively affecting the publishing movement. Because of the epidemic, 70% of publishing houses stopped production, as libraries are not visited by anyone and exhibitions are not organized.
I come back to book falsification, and before I go inside the issue and try to perceive its dimensions, I say that reading is weak in our Arab world, and Egypt is one of them for many reasons, which I will not enumerate for my certainty that I will reach illiteracy, the major problem in all areas of life, not only reading books. And I dream that my life will extend until we celebrate the literacy of the last Egyptian. It will be a celebration that has before and after impacts. But with the existence of falsification, its scale and impact on publishing, one only has to walk the square streets of downtown Cairo to realize the size of the issue and the choices of the falsifiers as to the type of books they falsify. It is known that they do not falsify all modern books, but they concentrate on popular books with very high sales. Once the book reaches a level where the author and the publisher can be happy, the falsifiers will immediately activate their disruptive roles in the publishing process from start to finish.
The types of falsification are paper and electronic, and today I will just write about the paper falsification, because its results seem to be faster than the others, and even if someone told me that the electronic falsification is more serious than the paper one, and that its effects are frightening for the future of the publishing process in our country, and falsification if it is a piracy process, for the publisher, which causes him unlimited losses and is difficult to control, it is a huge loss for the author, who has the right to live a decent life with an acceptable standard of living, and perhaps he can only have a stable income from his books.
Furthermore, falsification causes huge losses to many publishing houses, which has led to the closure of some of them because of the losses they incur, and as a result they are unable to meet their obligations to the government such as taxes, insurance for their employees, etc.
To understand the extent of the devastation caused by falsification, you only need to consider that the difference between the prices of falsified and original books is 60% of the price. This has created a feeling among the reader that the original publisher was exaggerating the price of the book. He loses the reader's trust and treats him as a greedy trader and not as a bearer of a message, although publishing without taking into account profit and loss is a real message. The reader, far from any narrative, must have realized that the falsifier is a thief who steals from the author and the publisher and destroys the publishing industry, which may bring us to a point where the modern book is no longer to be found, not even the old one. Once reprinted, the falsifier does not bear the book cost of authorship or the printing process, and he also forfeits the right of the state and society to obtain financial obligations in terms of taxes, insurance and many other things. We are dealing with a full-fledged crime, and when you understand that Egypt is a country that has a role, and the cultural role comes at the forefront of its many and varied roles, and although all roles are important because this is the destiny of Egypt, the cultural role comes first. Therefore, there must be an objective and precise consideration before the fall. For the sake of Egypt and its cultural role, which may recede, disappear or weaken at times - God forbid - but it cannot die, and we must defend its survival, no matter what our brothers and friends expect and seek, no matter what it costs us.