Sharjah Conference Brings 1,888 Publishers Together for 7,980 Rights Meetings

Some 1,888 publishers from 126 countries gathered in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, for the 16th Sharjah Publishers Conference, which ran 1-3 November. Between them they held some 7,980 rights meetings, according to Publishing Perspectives.

Those meetings are the quiet engine of the book world. A rights meeting is a sit-down where one publisher offers the right to publish a book, or a translation of it, to a publisher elsewhere. Those rights are the legal permission to put a book into a new language or market, and the trade calls the buying and selling of them rights trading.

The Emirates News Agency, WAM, describes the Sharjah International Book Fair as the world's largest book fair for copyright trading. Copyright is the legal ownership of a work, so the phrase points to the fair's role as a place where that ownership changes hands for translation and publication abroad. WAM also reported that the conference included matchmaking meetings, which put publishers in touch with potential partners.

The conference had more to offer than deal-making. The Bookseller reported a programme of 30 workshops, sessions where industry people learn new skills and swap practical knowledge. Workshops of that kind help smaller houses as much as large ones, because they cover the everyday work of getting a book made and sold.

The conference is the opening act for the book fair itself. The fair is scheduled to run 4-15 November 2026, and this year marks its 45th year. Public visitors come for the bookshelves, author events and children's areas, while the trade meetings happen in the background.

For readers, the trade side is easy to miss. A novel that reaches a library shelf in another language often began as a conversation like these, between two people who had never met. The cost of that journey is paid up front, by publishers, long before the first copy is sold.