Book City to launch Iranian model of Goodreads named “Behkhan”
TEHRAN.(Iranart)-The managing director of the Book City Institute announced on Tuesday the center’s plan to launch a website named “Behkhan”, which will work like Goodreads, an American social cataloging website that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews.
The website will come on stream in late December, Mehdi Firuzan told the Persian service of Honaronline.
“In the beginning, information on about 200,000 titles will be uploaded on Behkhan, and each writer, publisher, and the book will have its own special box, and as social networks, readers will be able to comment and leave their reviews about each book on the website,” he added.
In the second stage, the website will connect the reader to the online bookstores’ networks, he noted.
The Book City has earlier launched shahreketabonline.com, which is an online shop offering a large number of books in various fields and an extensive collection of other cultural products for Iranian readers.
Firuzan said that Book City tries to give all Iranian publishers the opportunity to create their own showcase on the institute’s platforms to sell their publications.
He added that the platforms like other examples in the world have their own limitations and flaws, and will never work as perfectly as the physical exhibitions.
The shutdown of bookstores following the spread of COVID-19 across Iran in February has pushed many people into using online stores.
As a result, Iran’s online bookstores have experienced a significant boom in their sales over the past nine months.
FIDIBO, a major online Iranian store for audio and electronic books, said in April that e-book readers have significantly increased in number due to the home quarantine enforced following the pandemic.
FIDIBO Managing Director Neda Baradaran said the number of e-book readers has increased to four times higher than the number registered before the COVID-19 epidemic in the country in February.
The 28th edition of Iran Book Week, which opened on Saturday, is currently being celebrated with a vast array of cultural programs for promoting reading.
Source: Tehran Times