The 16th Book Fair held at Ankara ATO Congress and Exhibition Center ends tomorrow, Sunday.

This year, 174 publishing houses and 350 authors participated in the book fair, which has been held since 2005. Compared to previous years, the number of Kurdish books in the fair is considerably less. Among 174 publishing houses, only 1 Kurdish publishing house rent a stand. Aziz Tekin from the only Kurdish publishing house participating in the fair, spoke about it.

Our goal is to reach readers'

Tekin said that their mission as a publishing house is not just to sell books but above all to reach more readers. "In a place like Ankara, Kurdish readers visit us, although not as much as we expect. We find the opportunity to reach our readers who have problems in accessing Kurdish books, and this makes our readers happy."

Reminding that paper costs are increasing, Tekin said: "We are trying to reach places where books cannot arrived or there are no Kurdish publications. We did not have many problems with our readers during the pandemic. Somehow, we were able to reach our readers through online orders. But the economic crisis affects our sales as well as the increase in paper and printing prices. Therefore, this situation also had an impact on the sales circulation of the books."

Tekin said that they want more Kurdish publishing houses to participate in the fairs and added: "It would be better in terms of the visibility of Kurdish. We can somehow bring Kurdish books to more readers at the fairs."