JEDDAH, 20 December 2004 — Book lovers are aplenty and Saudi Arabia’s reading habit continues with greater interest. This was the message of the International Book Fair that ended here on Saturday night.

All through the 10 days of the fair, one noticeable feature was that each day it attracted more visitors than the previous day. The fair had over 200,000 registered visitors, a record in the fourth year of the history of the expo.

Most of the 400 exhibitors said they were pleasantly surprised by the huge turnout of visitors and bulk orders for books received by them.

“I had kept my fingers crossed wondering what would be the turnout for the fair when the reading habit was supposed to have taken the backseat in the face of the Internet revolution, but what I saw was amazing,” said Obaid Ullah, an official at exhibiting company Zedni. “I was overwhelmed by the inquiries and have bagged orders for books in volumes,” he said.

A German publisher had displayed a wide variety of Arabic books. “Most of them are translations from original German and English classics, and books on engineering and medicine,” he said.

Turkey, Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE were among the countries in the region whose exhibitors said their participation was “successful and rewarding.”

Most of the national and overseas exhibitors focused on the books and education material that students require at various levels, from primary to secondary and university. Children’s books and charts were particularly in focus at some of the stands of local exhibitors. Some of the overseas participants had a range of books, cassettes and CDs on multimedia.

Mohammed Jamal Abdul Hadi, speaking on behalf of the fair exhibitors, said both national and international exhibitors had reported booking of orders running into several million riyals. “Going by the turnout of visitors and the display of books on a variety of subjects, this show can easily be described as among the best in the Middle East. All exhibitors acknowledge this as the second biggest annual show after the annual Cairo fair,” he said.

“There was tremendous response to children’s books and those on medicine, especially nursing and paramedics, as well as engineering, humanities, basic sciences and library references,” said an official at Kowkab Publishers.

Groups of students from various schools and education institutions visited the fair in large numbers.

There were also many books and publications on religion, literature and academics.