Annually, in late April, the Tehran International Book Fair (TIBF) led to the prosperity of the Iranian publishing market and consequently increased the revenues of the book industry. However, this year, due to the epidemic of COVID-19, both bookstore sales reached the lowest level in its history and publishers could not offer their products due to the cancellation of the Tehran Book Fair.
The head of the Tehran Publishers and Booksellers Union also called Corona’s damage impacting to the book industry devastating and pointed out that 90 percent of Iran’s book market had been damaged due to the Corona epidemic and only electronic publication could be successful. Regarding the compensation of the book industry, he said that they had had meetings with the Ministry of Culture to find a solution to the problems arisen during this period in the field of books and publishing.
The Iranian Ministry of Culture also announced that booksellers, publishers, distributors (books, art books, posters) and postcard sellers were included in the list of corona affected businesses, and they, after completing online administrative forms, would receive the governmental support packages considered in this regard.
