Book Expo… Iraq

Macmillan UK chief executive Richard Charkin has been keeping a mostly Macmillan-related blog since late last year. On it, he discusses copyright issues and Google, outlines Macmilan’s expansion into Asia, and, um, posts pictures from his holidays.

Last week, however, Charkin posted a dispatch from Charles Jenkins, international sales manager at Palgrave Macmillan, who attended the International Book Fair held in Erbil, in Northern Iraq, the first to be held in that country in 30 years.

“The Iraqi government had budgeted about £700,000 for the purchase of books relating to Higher Education in the English Language,” Jenkins writes. “Cash sales were brisk, and in the purchasing frenzy one could witness the unusual sight of boxes of books being hauled away in supermarket trolleys by librarians, academics, students and private individuals, under the watchful eye of the ubiquitous, gun-toting Peshmerga soldiers…. theft was not a problem at this Fair!”

Clearly, the book market in Iraq is not quite in its last throes.

Related links:
Read Richard Charkin’s blog post

Reporting from the War’s End

The Village Voice interviews Joe Sacco, a comic journalist who has reported from Bosnia, Chechnya, Palestine, and Iraq, and whose most recent publication is War’s End: Profiles from Bosnia 1995-1996. Sacco comments on comic journalism and the graphic novel, and provides a sneak peak into upcoming projects like The Gentleman’s Guide to the Rolling Stones and a book on the Palestinian refugee camp, Rafah.

Related links:
Click here for the full story from The Village Voice