In 1961, news shot around the world that a Yugoslav writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ivo Andrić, had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his novel The Bridge over the Drina. Fifty years later, statistics were published which said that 5.4 percent of the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina were illiterate. However, owing to a number of initiatives, there have been efforts and a reasonable amount of success in developing the reading and writing culture in the country.

Nedžad Ibrišimović, one of the greatest living authors from Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of the country's Academy of Arts and Sciences, has decided to set up a Legological Society, i.e. an association that would concern itself with the culture of reading.

“The main reason behind the setting up of the Legological Centre and Society is that I believe that reading is a process that is almost as complex as writing,” said Ibrišimović in an interview for Southeast Europe: People and Culture.
Ibrišimović believes that there is a need for someone to be concerned with the reader and not pay all the attention to the writer. He sees the transfer of great works of literature to the silver screen “which could harm literary integrity” as one of the possible reasons for the unsatisfactory level of book reading.

“I would never permit the great works of classical literature, those which have already become a part of world heritage, to be made into films. I cannot say whether my books Vječnik and El-Hidrova Knjiga are so good that they should not be devoured by film, but I would not permit it anyway,” said Ibrišimović.
Literary critics generally consider Ibrišimović’s novel El Hidrova Knjiga a masterpiece.

The book is a sequel to his earlier novel Vječnik, which he had been writing for over two decades. It is a story about a man who has lived for almost five thousand years. The man travels through history – starting with the Egypt of pharaohs all the way to Sarajevo, where in 1933 he begins his great story. In fact, the hero of Vječnik and El-Hidrova Knjiga spends five thousand years running away from sin.

Through the Legological Society, Ibrišimović plans to put forward a suggestion to remove the act contained in the Universal Copyright Convention (Geneva Act) which states that copyright ceases to be valid fifty years after the author’s death.

“These assets could be deposited in a selected international bank toward helping young authors around the world,” said Ibrišimović describing his thesis on how to stimulate young people to read and to write.

Every year, publishers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially Šahipnašić Book Trading Company, organise two great book fairs – the Winter Book Fair and the Sarajevo Book Fair, with the latter due to open this year in April.
Ajdin Šahinpašić, deputy manager of Šahinpašić Book Trading Company, told Southeast Europe: People and Culture that book sales have gone down over the last two years but that this could be a direct consequence of the global economic crisis and not of the fact that people have become less interested in books.

Šahinpašić says that people are mainly interested in fiction but that sales of books for schools, such as dictionaries and readers, have also been satisfactory. “Non-fiction sells well only if the author is world famous,” he said.
Šahinpašić also pointed out that publishing is one of the weakest branches in the economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which receives no significant backing from the state. According to him, the VAT on books, introduced in 2006 and standing at 17 percent, has become one of the greatest obstacles for publishing.