Tiny books make a big splash at Sharjah International Book Fair

A Peruvian publishing house has shown that size doesn't matter through the tiny, intricate and hand-made books it has on display at the Sharjah International Book Fair.

The company - called 'Los Libros Mas Pequeños del Mundo', which is Spanish for 'The Smallest Books in the World' - was founded in 1970 and specializes in hand-crafting books, some of them no bigger than a thumbnail.

"We have books that are three centimeters by two centimeters, and other smaller ones that are two centimeter by one centimeter," explained company representative Luis Pereyra Espinoza. "The most common size is six centimeters by five centimeters."

The books, Pereyra explained, cover a wide variety of topics, ranging from self-help books, Peruvian cookbooks and dictionaries to timeless classics such as Alice in Wonderland and the Adventures of Pinocchio and even small anthologies of Quranic messages.

"In English we still only have 35 titles, but we are working hard to translate more into English," he said. "We have books with serious messages, but also things for the children, such as fables. We also have books in French, Italian and Spanish. In Spanish, our native language, we have over 500 titles."

Pereyra noted that the idea for the miniature books came from the company's book-loving founder, an engineer by the name of Alberto Briceno Polo.

"We had a very curious start. The owner of the business loved reading, and one day he started making little books, that he would write by hand and bind. At the time though, he was making them as gifts for his friends. But his friends thought it was a really original and nice idea, and they asked him why he wasn't commercializing them. That's where the idea was born, and now we have this company."

Since then, the tiny books have become wildly successful, and the company has partnerships with distributors across Latin America, Europe, the United States, Canada and India. The company is also currently searching for a distributor in the UAE.

Pereyra noted that the books - which are on display at the SIBF for the second time this year - seem to be particularly successful with Emiratis.

"We've been very pleased that people seem to especially like the books in this part of the world. I guess it's because of the size. People here surely haven't seen anything so small," he said. "But it's also because the books are made by hand. Emiratis really understand the value of things that are intricately crafted."

"The books may seem a bit expensive, but they understand that it is because the books are made one by one by hand," he added. "That's very different than books that are mass-produced by a machine."

Despite the challenges that publishing houses face from e-readers and digitized books, Pereyra said he believes that there will always be a place for paper books in the world.

"Books with pages, that you can touch, open and read, will never go out of fashion," he noted. "Especially hand-made books like these. It's not some digital thing. People will always appreciate this kind of product."

bernd@khaleejtimes.com