The 13th Ghana International Book Fair (GIBF) has been launched in Accra by the Second Lady, Mrs Matilda Amissah-Arthur.

Themed “Professional Book Publishing and E-Services: A resources for national development” it is scheduled to take place from November 3rd to 7th, 2015.

Speaking at the launch, Mrs Amissah-Arthur re-echoed the need for the publishing industry to take advantage of the trending electronic books to enable them compete with their counterparts internationally.

She said with the advent of computers and technologies, the scope of publishing have extended to include electronic resources, such as electronic versions of books and journals as well as micro-publishing.

“Professional publishing has metamorphosed from consisting of only technicians to a highly learned professionals that requires a lot of guts and ingenuity in selections, scouting for author production and marketing materials,” she said.

Mrs Amissah-Arthur said as the nation continued to experience high levels of illiteracy, books could assist to overcome such problems likely to cause a person to suffer from ignorance and be economically disadvantaged.

“Reading is still a luxury in many parts of our country, not so much due to the fact that children cannot read but also because there are not enough reading books in the libraries which call for creativity as well as political commitment of the government to arrest the problem of accessibility.

There can be no easier way solving this problem than to have publishers convert storybooks, textbooks, maps and other books into electronic forms for both adults and children in particular,” she said.

The President of GIBF, Dr Samuel Osafo Acquaah, called on stakeholders to come on board to make the fair successful.