IBNA: Shojai Saeen termed Book of the Year as the most important book festival in the area in terms of diversity and comprehensiveness.

Elaborating on the terms and conditions of the festival, Saeen stressed that having launched the Book of the Season Award the committee can now make better choices among previous selects. In the future, each category will have more than one winner so that a larger number of authors could be supported by Book of the Year awards.

Managing director of Book of the Year added: "From now on we will try to pay more attention to publishers of exquisite works."

He went on to say that the World Book of the Year only requires that the book should be published in a language other than Persian overseas. It is possible for an Iranian residing in another country to take part in and even win the contest, but our statistics show that most winners of the previous editions have been foreigners.

24 works have been nominated for the present round of Book of the Year in two fields of Iranian Studies and Islamic Studies – 12 winners in each field. Some of them are invited for the festival and are going to be awarded during the closing ceremony; the awards of some other winners will be delivered to them outside Iran.