Proposals for Book Standards

Mohammadali Mirbagheri, author and translator, on the occasion of Standards Day, explained the need for a mechanism to produce standard books.

Iran's Ambassador of Arjan's Culture and Publishing Service, Mohammad Ali Mirbagheri, author and translator: "Mohammed Esfandiari, a researcher whose one concern is the investigation of issues related to authorship and writing, years ago in an article titled "Standard Book" investigated the problem of low-quality books in the country's publishing market.

In this article, he suggests that a standard be developed for books so that book readers - many of whom are unable to distinguish between good and bad books - can buy good books with more confidence, and as a result, consumer rights in the field of books - like other goods - will be protected.

In this note, first, a summary of the "Standard Book" article is presented, then suggestions for the same article are presented.

Esfandiari believes that in the situation where the quality standard is defined for the simplest commercial products, even disposable paper towels, it is necessary to define a standard for books as well. The purpose of defining the standard for goods is to protect consumer rights and to improve the quality of goods. So there is no reason for the book and its readers to be deprived of such a thing.

Esfandiari suggests three levels for implementing the book standard:

1- Minimum proposal: at this level, criteria are determined for the content of the book and its appearance and technical characteristics, and these criteria are provided to authors and publishers, without being legally required; Because simply knowing the features of the desired book can help improve the book's status.

2- Suggestion of the middle level: in the middle level, in addition to determining these criteria, a standard mark is considered for the books that have met the set criteria, and this mark is placed on the cover of the book so that the reader can distinguish the standard book from the others.

3- Maximum offer: At this level, compliance with the standard becomes a requirement and books that do not meet the standard criteria are prohibited from publication.

At first glance, Esfandiari's proposal may seem like a kind of censorship and audit. But he believes that there is a difference between audit and standard. He writes:

"The audit in our country is based on ideological and political aspects. In the audit, it is said that a certain book is inconsistent with this opinion and is in conflict with that policy. But in the standard of the book, it is not about correctness and incorrectness, but about the scientific level and quality of the book. If someone writes a book on cow breeding, write it; But his book must be scientific and have proper printing.

Finally, Esfandiari raises the question, who should be in charge of determining the standard of the book? He answers that for this purpose two options are conceivable:

Esfandiari's opinion is that "the executive plan should be with the authors and publishers and the implementation of the plan with the government; But under the supervision of book experts."

The generality of Esfandiari's proposal is the same as what has been stated so far, and he explains and describes his proposal in other parts of the article.

Also, Esfandiari responds to this criticism that someone may say that everywhere in the world good and bad books are published side by side, and no one prevents the publication of vulgar books, and like in many economic fields, the competition of books with each other causes the weak book to be automatically removed from the market.

Esfandiari gives several answers to this criticism: firstly, we have seen that such an event has not happened; Weak books are not only not automatically removed from the market, but sometimes they have narrowed the field on high-quality books. The reason for this problem is that although people have a good ability to recognize the quality of general goods, they are weak in recognizing the quality of books.

Second, usually the difference between good and bad goods is determined by the price; But in the case of books, this is not the case, and good and bad books do not have a price difference.

Third, the book is a sacred phenomenon in people's eyes, and they are less likely to cheat on it. This makes them less critical when choosing a book.

Another point that Esfandiari states is that the goal of the book standard is not to produce works of excellent quality, but to prevent the publication of vulgar books.

"There should be no strictness in standardizing the book and the minimum should be enough. The goal is not to create the "best book", but to prevent the "worst book". We do not want to tie the hands and feet of authors, and even new authors, but we want to protect books and book readers from the manipulations of unknown authors and businessmen. The purpose of standardizing books is to identify rejected works or not publish them. be in the market."

After presenting his proposal, at the end of the article, Esfandiari gives the opinion of some writers about his proposal. Among these writers, there are well-known names such as Ahmad Sami, Bahauddin Khorramshahi and Kamran Fani.

It is interesting that these prominent figures agreed with the generality of Esfandiari's proposal, but only raised some practical considerations about it (for example: "Measures should be devised that do not lead to abuse and the field of freedom is not narrowed", or "These matters should be handled by the people of science and publishing. I agree with the non-interference of the government", or "You should start from the minimum and move forward").

In the second part of this note, while welcoming Mohammad Esfandiari's valuable plan and for it, I will present some suggestions that mostly focus on the practical aspect of the book's standard plan.

The first and perhaps the most important issue that should be paid attention to in relation to the book standard is which organization or institution should be in charge of compiling this standard and awarding the relevant mark.

As Esfandiari also points out, there are two main options: the government, or authors and publishers. But before we start this discussion, it is necessary to pay attention to another point, and that is the economic aspect of awarding the standard mark.

The awarding of any type of standard mark requires the evaluation of the product that is supposed to receive that mark. This assessment is costly and therefore the awarding of a standard badge requires expenditure. The standard book mark is no exception to this rule.

To make things clearer, let's consider the case of a 200-page book. Let's assume that today the total financial turnover of such a book (including paper, printing and distribution, plus the profit of the publisher and the author) with a circulation of 300 copies is 150 million tomans (each copy is 500 thousand tomans).

Then suppose that in order to give a standard mark to such a book, it is necessary for three experts to evaluate the book and each of them will receive 5 million Tomans for their services. In such a scenario (ignoring marginal costs), the cost of the standard mark for each book title will be equal to 10% of its total turnover, and instead of paying 500,000 tomans for a copy of such a book, the reader will have to pay 550,000 tomans. This cost is quite significant and if it can be eliminated somehow, it would be a good thing.

With this in mind, we can now return to the discussion of who should be in charge of awarding the book standard badge. The fact that the government is in charge of the matter brings some concerns, some of which we saw in the comments of the authors below the article by Mohammad Esfandiari.

The main concern is that the book standard will become a tool in the hands of the government for double audit and the work of awarding the standard badge will be contaminated by political purposes. However, the government's responsibility for the book standard has the advantage that the government can not or less charge the costs of awarding the standard mark from the publishers in the form of a cultural subsidy.

Of course, at this point, the government's financial support for the book standard can become a tool to encourage publishers to produce better quality books; In such a way that instead of defining zero and one standard - that either a book gets the standard sign or not - the standard of the book is defined in three ranks A, B and C. Then the books that get the A standard mark do not pay any fee to get the standard mark. Grade B books pay 30% of the cost, grade C books pay 70% of the cost, and books that do not get the standard mark pay the entire evaluation cost.

But if we want to exclude the government from taking charge of this matter, in this case it does not seem so impossible. The ten percent increase in the price of the book is significant, but it is not so much that it has a significant impact on the final consumer.

Two mechanisms can be considered here: either a centralized non-governmental organization will be formed to award the standard mark in all scientific disciplines; Or smaller and more specialized organizations take over the work. If the work is outsourced to a centralized organization, the advantage is that the book buyer will be confident that the standard mark on the book is valid and will buy the book with confidence.

But such an organization may reject some works without having quality problems. Take, for example, the postmodern novel (or avant-garde poetry). The evaluators of the centralized organization may find such works lacking the necessary quality to obtain a standard mark, even though these works are significant in their own way.

But if the task of awarding the standard mark is in the hands of smaller and more specialized organizations, such novels can receive their standard mark from, for example, the "Postmodern Literature Association". Of course, the simultaneous existence of a centralized organization and smaller and more specialized organizations is not an "obstacle" and both can exist together, and a work can receive the standard mark of the main guardian of the book standard, as well as the standard mark of smaller organizations. But in general, I think that the existence of a centralized organization is preferable because the problem of the standard of the book is proposed from the beginning so that the general readers, and not the special and professional readers, can recognize the quality of the book; However, in cases such as postmodern literature, the audience of such books is usually so limited and professional that they may not need to see the standard mark on the book cover.

Another suggestion is to set up a website to rate books. The establishment of such a website can be the responsibility of any body that grants the standard of the book, or it can be set up individually.

The mechanism of such a website will be very simple. Experts in various fields register on the site by presenting their educational qualifications and scientific records so that they can voluntarily rate the books they read in their specialized field.

This scoring can be weighted; That is, for example, the vote of an experienced university professor will have a greater impact on the rating of books than the vote of a recent graduate. Also, for some fields, such as fiction, it is possible to record the votes of the general readers separately from the experts' votes; Because in such fields, the goal of many readers is entertainment, and perhaps for this reason, the opinion of ordinary readers is a better criterion for experts.

After registering each book on this website, a QR code can be placed on the cover of the book so that the buyer can be directed to the page related to the book on the website by scanning it, and after seeing the score of the book, he can decide to buy it.

Of course, this option has some problems and therefore it cannot replace the standard book mark. The problem is that due to the low circulation of books in Iran, in order to register a sufficient number of comments for a book (if at all), a significant part of the circulation of the book has been sold. As a result, since books in Iran are not often reprinted, such a website will have limited functionality. However, since setting up such a website costs little and experts' opinions are also registered for free, setting up this website can be the first step in the way of evaluating the quality of books and protecting the rights of book readers. Also, another function of this proposed website can be that in addition to books, publishers also receive points (based on the average score of their books). In the absence of a score for a book, the publisher's score can provide a good criterion for buying a book for the general public who do not have enough information about the publishers' credibility.

Proposals such as the above may not be the source of serious work for the development of the book standard, and especially in the current social conditions of the country, their plan may seem somewhat fantasy. But maybe the expansion of the discussion about the book standard will eventually lead to the formulation of an effective and less complicated mechanism for awarding the book standard mark, and in this way, some of the problems of the country's publishing industry will be solved.