1. Countries that make up the region: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.
2. Population: 300,892,543 (2009)
   Urban population: 58% (2009)
3. Macroeconomics:
   GDP: US$ 1,062,418,867,027 (2009)
   GDP per capita: US$ 3,597 (2009)
   Unemployment: 10.3% (2010)
4. Politics: Political instability, ethnic and racial struggles and social inequality are some of the main characteristics of this region whose unifying element is the Arabic language.
5. Mobile phone penetration: 79.4% (2010)
   Internet penetration: 24.9% (2010)
6. Literacy: 74% (2008)
7. Publishing industry: The Arab publishing industry faces infrastructure problems, particularly with regard to distribution. The average print run rarely exceeds 2,000 copies. Other difficulties are censorship and piracy, in addition to the lack of purchasing power and illiteracy. According to UNESCO, around 30,000 titles are published every year, although other figures give a total of 60,000 new works. There is no policy of price-fixing and no standardization of registers (ISBN, cataloguing) – probably the reason why there are few reliable statistics available on the Arab publishing industry. In terms of production, the leading countries are Lebanon and Egypt, which in 2008 published 3,300 and 2,310 new titles, respectively.

Sources: World Bank; Laborsta; International Telecommunication Union; Abu Dhabi International Book Fair.