E-PUBLISHING POTENTIALS IN IRAN

In the past two decades the signification of Electronic publishing has been changed; same as many other words which are newly added to the vocabulary. At first sight, the purpose of Electronic publication was text preparation formaƫng before printing process. Later on producing books and magazines as a multimedia which could be seen on the Computer and internet changed the meaning of Electronic publication, Now a days, there are a lot of new inventions such as tablets, apple iBook, Amazon Kindle Store, and many other services, thus Electronic Publication has goten the new meaning. Publication of books in Iran has a long history around 400 years, during these years Iran publishing industry has experienced so many up & down positions to keep survived. Currently the number of published books has been counted 90 millions in Persian and other languages. The trend of e-publishing business in Iran shows a normal increasing growth before arriving new technologies such as iBook and Amazon kindle. In addition it has been many years that traditional and Electronic publishers made their books to multimedia software, online services or on CDs and DVDs. Since then 5000 e-books have been published and Iranians are more likely to use e-books instead of hard copies. Because of lack of proper information, network problems, exclusive contracts on some international services, money transfer to Iran issues and such problems, Persian books have been really inconspicuous presence in international market by now. The target group of Persian publishing includes over 140 million end users in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Almost 20 million people from these countries are immigrants to Europe and United states who are fluent and obsessed with Farsi language. The people who speak Farsi are interested in new technology and always are first in queue to obtain new electronic devices. Online transmission in our area has a huge jump because of fast and continuous progress in telecommunication lines in recent years. There is a suitable potential market for launching new title books, electronic republishing and also for old published ones whether we could draw a comprehensive schema ignoring unprofessional aƫtudes. This may raise a notable financial turnover among group of publishers and, it could be help the Farsi language to be known as a cultural language and literature. The reputation of Persian poets such as Hafez, Khayam, Ferdosi and Sadi would be more widely presented in universe and also introduce our rich culture to global village members. Based on existing potential, investment on Farsi e-publishing projects to equip efficient plaƞorms for presenting Persian books in global epublishing services is justifiable, and it could be a new innovative market in this area. In conclusion Frankfort Book Fair and negotiation of Iran’s delegates with epublishing service centers could be the way of renewing Farsi e-publishing globally