Keith Thong News Today

JOHOR BARU: The print medium such as books remains in high demand, but more efforts should be made to promote reading, espe­­cially English materials among students, says Malaysian Book Industry Chamber (MBIC) chairman Keith Thong (pic).Due to distractions from social media and gaming, he said that children in public schools were reading less nowadays.

The Sharjah Booksellers’ Conference is the first of its kind on this scale at a global level. What did it do for the booksellers who participated?

This is to address a nationwide shortage of school textbooks in the open market. The issue, which was frontpaged by The Star on Feb 2, has become worse due to the movement control order preventing books being distributed quickly to retailers. The Malaysian Book Publishers Association (Mapoba), Malaysian Booksellers Association (MBA) and Shopee have consolidated all the textbooks and workbooks being offered under a single “Kedai Buku Shopee” for parents to obtain the books for their children...