Egypt's 2012 Book Fair at the fair grounds

The Egyptian Union of Publishers and the General Egyptian Book Organisation agreed in their meeting on Sunday to move the Book Fair back to the fair grounds instead of holding it at the conference hall as was originally planned. This implies a decrease in the cost of rentals, referring back to 2010 prices, and therefore reducing the cost to publishers. For publishers who have already paid, the money will be refunded or they will be given additional space not available at the conference halls. Requests for additional space will be approved until the end of this week. The GEBO is attempting to have the fair grounds for free during the book fair, and letters have been sent to the Minister of Culture, Shaker Abdel-Hamid, and the Prime Minister, Kamal El-Ganzouri to this end, to introduce the “Buy Egyptian” campaign to the fair, since most of the displayed books will be Egyptian products by default. This is an attempt to compensate losses incurred by Egyptian publishers due to the cancellation of 2011 fair and the following cancellations of other fairs due to disturbances throughout the Arab world.