Hebrew Book Fair: Once Again Crowded & Alive

Heading from the book organization sponsoring the events (June 2015)

A few years back I wrote about the Hebrew Book Fair. At first all the foreign language books translated into Hebrew seemed like a drawback. English speakers usually don't seem to think of books from other cultures. If it's not translated, it's probably not worth a read (I was told this by a humanities student back in college - Philadelphia PA 1970s). But this is not the case in Israel. One sign of vitality is both translation and innovation. In the translation area I am happy to see tremendous growth. In genres like mystery, science fiction and health (especially food & diet) there are many new translations. The delay between a publication in English (or French, Spanish or Japanese) and Hebrew is between one to two years. This phenomena is refereed to the "two year gap" between what is popular in Israel and the rest of the world.

What changed for me is the perspective on Hebrew language publications. While there is buzz about less original Hebrew writing, there is almost no mention of translated books. This year's Tel Aviv book fair (running this week at Rabin square) again presents 70% to 80% of the newly published books. The majority of the books again are translations.  

Hebrew is coming to the Kindle

This may be a small step to the electronic book publishers, but the lack of languages on the Amazon Kindle is an issue. Electronic Hebrew book publication has not taken hold. Hebrew is a small language in sales numbers. There is also a sense of hacking and one man buying and lots of "friends" reading. With a few security features these issues should be eliminated. Another issue is the security of application. Apparently these issues are being resolved and we will have Hebrew books on the Kindle in a few weeks. Update when it's here.