“Stories shape the world—and that’s why we’re here today,” said master of ceremonies Jeremy Cammy as he welcomed delegates to the fourth annual Sharjah International Booksellers Conference, held on April 7–8.

Cammy, chief storytelling officer at Canada's Rock the Bus Productions, continued: “Booksellers, publishers, writers and champions of the written word: you are the communicators and connectors and gatekeepers. This conference is about the soul of story telling and why books matter in an increasingly noisy world—and about you, who make sure stories find their ways into the hands of the people who need them most.”

Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi, chairperson of the Sharjah Book Authority under whose auspices the conference is held, gave the first keynote. As well as founding the Emirates Publishers Association, publishing company Kalimat Group, and PublisHer, she is also an author, recently taking home the BolognaRagazzi Award at last week’s Bologna Book Fair for her book The House of Wisdom.

Welcoming the more than 750 participants from 92 countries, Bodour spoke of the “fast-changing and often unpredictable landscape” that the book industry is having to navigate, and the pride that Sharjah takes in being able to provide a much-needed space for people to come together and help shape the future.

“We are all aware of the challenges,” she continued, “but around the world booksellers are finding new ways to strengthen their position—carving out niche markets, curating thoughtful, distinctive offerings, successfully blending physical and digital and using omnichannel strategies to meet readers where they are.”

Bookselling and publishing today requires more than a love of books and culture, she warned, but "strategic thinking, financial literacy, digital fluency, customer insight, community leadership, and yes, a deep and enduring passion for the written word.”

Improving the Italian supply chain

In a later keynote, Renato Salvetti, CEO of Messaggerie Libri, the main distributor of print books in Italy, founded in Bologna in 1914, was in conversation of Porter Anderson of Publishing Perspectives. Salvetti is also the CEO of Edigita, the main distributor of digital books in Italy, and Lampi di Stampa, the major print-on-demand supplier.

Messaggerie distributes over a quarter of a million titles each year, of which 30,000 are new titles, handling in volume terms a total of around 60 million books annually. Every day, on average around a quarter of a million units are distributed to between 1,250–1,500 customers.

The current supply chain, said Salvetti, is “very wasteful,” with the growth of online book sales only adding to the complexity. Physical bookstores have increased their stockholding to compete, while the addition of books in English to the inventory has made things even more complex.

Salvetti predicted that the supply chain will develop in two main ways over the next few years. Direct delivery from the distributor to the customer on behalf of online retailers will increase, he said, though once these systems are established there is no reason why physical bookstores and even publishers couldn’t benefit too. He also felt there will be greater integration with the printing industry, with perhaps a fifth of all books being produced by some sort of joint venture between printer and distributor. A local production cycle offers a faster supply chain and benefits booksellers by enabling them to stock fewer copies, something that is already happening in the Netherlands.

Establishing a successful book chain

Nicoleta Iordan and Serban Radu, cofounders of Carturesti, the largest bookshop chain in Romania, gave an overview of how they became the “largest cultural employer in Romania” over the last 25 years. In conversation with Nadia Wassef, the founder the Egyptian bookstore chain Diwan Group, Iordan said her decision to start a bookstore came from a “pure passion for books.”

Carturesti now has 58 bookstores, with 55 in Romania and three in Moldova. “That wasn’t the plan 25 years ago!” Iordan said. “We didn’t think we were going to grow so much. But each store has a different concept, each one is completely different, from small to large, with a distinctive design in every shop. We adapt to what the market needs.”

The chain stocks books in Hungarian in some of their stores (7% of the population are Hungarian speakers), as well as books in Spanish, French and Italian for the tourist market and, increasingly, books in English: "The younger generation read more and more in English,” said Iordan. “I’s a huge challenge for publishers publishing in Romanian—they have really small print runs, sometimes less than 1,000 copies. English is on the rise.”

She added that manga has also played a significant role in their success. "That was a huge milestone,” she said of the manga boom, “something that surprised a lot of people in the book industry. Luckily we had a passionate manga person who saw it coming so we could arrange for a large selection in our stores, plus the merchandise around it, and this helped a lot keeping the younger generation in the bookstores.”

Launching Carturesti in the 1990s, in a country that had only recently emerged from the Soviet Union's control, had not been easy. It was, recalled Radu, “a bit of a wild west, going from a very state-organized—and bankrupt—society to a liberal order. The transition was a lot about making money and public discourse about values was out. We had a feeling that those appreciating art, music, books were in a minority, we were the losers.”

Iordan stressed the importance of honoring their vision and values. "Our organizational culture is really important for us, having an open and democratic structure, not hierarchal or corporate,” she said. “It’s not easy when you get to this size, but we consciously work on this, on keeping this indie spirit. We have a diversity of opinions.”

Among the challenges they face, in common with many booksellers, is staff recruitment. “This is something that we struggle with,” admitted Iordan, “you are faced with market forces that say you are working against your own financial advantage by becoming a bookseller!”

As for their advice to other booksellers around the world? "It’s never easy—don’t think if you’re a chain it’s any easier—we have 800 people on our payroll,” offered Iordan. “We still have bank loans of millions of euros but it’s the mission that keeps us going, the satisfaction and the twinkle in the eyes of our readers.”

“This may be survivor’s bias,” added Radu, “but bookshops are a magic portal, and each book is a gateway into another world. Carturesti is a magic portal and we let the magic flow. What we sell is the result of human imagination and values; this is timeless and we are lucky.”

A version of this story first appeared in the U.K. newsletter BookBrunch.