The 43rd Kuwait International Book Fair was held on Friday, 16th November and will continue till November 24. There are 505 publishing houses and 26 countries as its participants.
Its participants reviewed methods for drawing on Kuwait’s experiment in online marketing. This is the internet era, so the effectiveness of the traditional methods of marketing books and pre-paid orders have reduced. In a lecture that was held on the KIF sidelines in association with the Arab Publishers Association, it was agreed that the choice of the readers are guided by the virtual communities and social networking website.
Importance of E-Marketing of Books in Kuwait
Kuwaiti author and online publishing house named Platinum Book‘s co-founder, Ahmad Al-Haider stated that the massive development of information and communications technology has led to the increase in electronic marketing or e-marketing of the books. This is the reason why many of the renowned publishing houses opt for social networking websites instead of the overt or covert pre-paid ads.
The Kuwaiti publishing house reached out to a large number of customers and revived the book market through the adoption of online marketing. This method helped it in targeting the famous intellectuals, bloggers as well as the web activists by providing them with free books.
Intelligentsia Vs. Ordinary Readers
Razan Al-Marshad is Huroof Cultural Center’s founder. This center is an online service in Kuwait. She said that with the spread of web activism and ease with which social media can be accessed, online marketing has become successful. But the gap between the intelligentsia and ordinary readers has created an issue in online marketing because, when someone can find a book suitable for them, others may necessarily not. So, the Kuwaiti publishers work on two parallel lines, one of which targets the intelligentsia and the other targets the ordinary readers.
The experiment got appreciation at the end of the lecture and the participants wished to be benefited from it.