The impact of digital technologies continues to be felt by booksellers. It is no longer a fear of digital taking over as it is a necessity for traditional bricks and mortar operations to adapt to the changes brought on by digital in terms of customer expectations. Customers expect experiences that reflect the use of these new technologies for their benefit in terms of convenience, efficiency and individualism.
World Wide Worx reports that e-commerce in South Africa as a percentage of total retail sales is still under 3%. E-Commerce world-wide is growing at between 21-25%. Online retail of books in SA by the well-known SA Bookseller members seems to be tracking the global trend.
The e-commerce channels of booksellers is trending towards more mobile access. Some new developments that have led to up to 50% of browsing being done via mobile devices are:

• The ubiquity of mobile smartphones, faster (data-speed) network coverage and even cheaper data consumption devices (Smart Tablets with a useable browser dropped in price to under R1000 this year) by mobile network operators have bolstered the trend.
• Government initiatives to roll out free WiFi hotspots in metropolitan areas (and on commuter busses) that are subsidised by municipal service-fee collection efforts (eg Project IsiZwe, Free Tshwane WiFi)
• Harmonisation of book metadata feeds through Onix and new (more specific) categorical descriptions of titles (with locally derived variants) beyond ISBN/BISAC style towards Thema standards. This is, in part due to the whole-sale commodification of large computing capacity and storage by cloud vendors such as Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Google that provide Amazon Web Services, Azure, Bluemix and Google Cloud respectively as SaaS, IaaS some Machine learning and artificial intelligence technology stacks.
• At e-Commerce Africa 2015 held in Capetown, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was able to create an online bookshop stocking more than 150 000 titles for sale (with cover images) in under 3 minutes using the computing power (EC2) and Elastic Load Balancing algorithms over global WANs. That demo runs 3 times faster today.
• At the same time, IBM partnered with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Council of Industrial and Scientific Research (CSIR) and Universities like Wits to leverage their big data capabilities over 10 years in creating new opportunities for start-up and tech entrepreneurs. Included in the R700m investment were bursaries for 56 students to study computing at Bachelor level and funds for research at post-graduate.

General Books Online
General online bookshops faced stiff competition from giant conglomerates led by Amazon, Apple and Google. For such big online retailers, books are often seen as the low-hanging fruit in attracting customers to use their online services for other goods and services. A popular general trade title can be sold at a significant discount in order to capture a user. The life-time value of a user to an online retailer is seen as more profitable than any initial loss on a title. Online marketplaces where users can sell 2nd hand books have also seen increasing usage as a means to monetize under-utilised domestic goods during a depressed economic cycle. SA Booksellers members have risen to the challenge by

• Differentiating their offers more clearly as well as
• Providing a curated experience for repeat customers
• Rewarding loyalty
• Social media engagement

Educational e-Book and e-Learning Platform Variety
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in education has been more aggressively pushed in the Free State and Gauteng than most other provinces as a solution to up-skill learners with technology concepts as well as an alternative distribution method for CAPS and supplementary materials. The MECs concerned, Tate Mekgoe and Panyaza Lesufi respectively have employed different funding models to develop the appropriate education eco-systems. Whereas Gauteng likely has a bigger budget from the State Treasury, Free State has relied on some Local and International Aid which employs some overseas components.

Snapplify, a SA Booksellers member won the business to provide the eBook deployment platform and several bon mots for a period of 3 years from August 2016 to 2019. Snapplify is the implementation partner for Bongani Rainmaker Logistics who were the successful bidders for the +R600m contract with the Gauteng Department of Education. Bongani Rainmaker is contracted to provide project management services and the development of an online resource management system (an application) for LTSM and e-LTSM logistics ie. Project managing the procurement, packaging, and distribution. Develop and implement a system for requisitioning, management, monitoring and tracking of orders, deliveries and utilization of all materials provided to schools in Gauteng Province.

The Western Cape Education Department endorses private initiatives like Siyavula and open access materials including Exam past papers via free (zero-rated by Mobile Network Operators) and classic works in the public domain on platforms like WorldReader which work on cheaper feature phones.

Various players in the market have developed a plethora of ICT solutions for schools and booksellers are advised to evaluate the requirements and needs of their communities and potential clients thoroughly before embarking on a change to their business model or investing in technology partnerships that may initially have years of low yield. Based on feedback from SABA members trading in the private sector, e-book deployment at schools was enforced in the bigger education group divisions as part of a long term strategy for the education groups to capture more value from their own ICT infrastructure. This lead to frustrations from parents having to buy devices, conflicting license terms for content between publisher and end-user, security costs for transporting and storing equipment, ill-equipped or untrained teachers left on their own to provide support. Good teachers (technology champions) jumping ship for greener pastures as they become more employable.

Curro holdings plans to add 38 more campuses before 2020 from 42 currently. This will be +/-200 private primary schools (90 000 children) and at least 2 private tertiary institutions in the group.
The PSG group that owns Curro has a significant stake in ITsi which implies that these schools may be inclined to the ITsi e-Learning eco-system.
AdvTech has 78 schools on a similar number of campuses however their tertiary education business is focussed on the rest of Africa where the returns seem better.

Inspired Group has 11 super-premium schools in SA and are planning more in addition to tertiary. They use high-end apps from Apple and Google for e-Learning.

In Higher Education, more than 8 tenders have circulated so far into 2017 for ICTs hardware including Limpopo (Lephalale), Eastern Cape (Ingwe), North-West (Vuselela, Orbit), Western Cape (False Bay) and so on.

All of this makes for a compelling case for booksellers to prime themselves for continuous public interest in e-learning materials including supplementary content like revision aids in electronic format. Electronic format has the advantage of facilitating student’s remote learning or self-directed study more efficiently due to audio-visual explanatory material beyond a classroom teacher’s capabilities as well as self-marking assessments in real time.

Recent moves in digital
As with printed books, 2017 has shown an increasing propensity for Publishers to enter into agreements with Government Departments directly to supply e-LTSM. Publishers have side-stepped local booksellers to pitch their own e-Learning solutions or have been summoned by e-LTSM Directorates as a body (Publishers Association of South Africa ,PASA) which side-lines the local book-seller from participating.

The SA Booksellers Association should make itself heard to be in vehement protest with such an exclusionary and anti-competitive approach by public departments. Since booksellers are likely to have local knowledge and experience in their own communities.

Amazon continues to grow it’s cloud services business and is preparing for a 2nd office in SA. Their strategy was always to use books as the worm on the hook to introduce customers to other services via their Amazon Prime offer. They have invested in more physical infrastructure and acquired some bricks-and-mortar physical retail outlets in order to have access to the daily grocery market. Independent book-sellers in the US have benefitted from this.

Van Schaik Bookstore, Southern Africa’s largest academic bookshop chain has introduced it’s very own Mobile Virtual Network Operation (MVNO) that has a specific bundle of services directed at students. The Van Schaik Bookstores Mobile network is deeply integrated into a rewards program that provides benefits including 3rd party offers at clothing retailers, fast-food restaurants, additional airtime and WiFi access to students that buy textbooks from the retail chain.

Publishing Houses have seen long-serving staffers of good repute with viable contacts leave to join technology vendors particularly in Education. Notably, Mark Seabrook (formerly at Penguin Random House) has joined Snapplify, Renaye Keus (formerly Pearson) and Suzann Prinsloo (formerly Via Afrika and Lapa Uitguwers) have joined ITsi while Bernita Naudé (formerly of MacMillan Education) has joined Cylo. Naazir Abrahams from Oxford University Press was appointed to head the local Vitalsource team by Ingram Content Solutions EMEA office in the UK. Julia Lhuillery-Moulder left Oxford for Reveleo.net

It is quite clear that the e-Book space is entering a formidable period of competition. Some of the platforms to watch are ITSi, Snapplify, SmartSWOT, myeBook, Vitalsource and EraOnline. Booksellers should therefore strive to be well-acquainted so as to serve their customers with quality offers from such a veritable smorgasbord of edtech options.

SABOOKSELLERS DIGITAL REPORT
Melvin Kaabwe
Digital sector chairperson

At the nineteenth Annual General Meetings of the SA Booksellers Association the discussions and deliberations were very fruitful for booksellers. We discussed issues aimed at improving structural economic distortions that restrain the sustainable growth of bookselling in our country. Whilst this remains an important component of commerce and industry, naturally, it is our responsibility to continue to try and deliver real benefit to our membership.

Text book budgets have increased greatly but sadly, Education Departments have opted in most of the provinces to procure via managing agents and thereby ruling out the bookshops. Some regions are even forcing section 21 schools to purchase from the appointed managing agent.

National Treasury
The sustainability of bookshop survival depends on government support and to this end our lengthy meetings with treasury representatives last year looked positive. This process has now reached a stalemate with Department of Education (DOE) not supporting treasury recommendations and I believe we will have to bide our time and await future developments.

Cape Town Book Sale
The Cape Town Book Sale, a brain child of the Cape members and supported by the SA Booksellers Association , has been well supported by the trade as well as the public. It was a well advertised event and indications are that it was a success.

Booksellers On-Line Course
We are pleased to report that rapid progress is being made with the development of the On Line Training Course. Four modules have been written and are in the process of being converted into the on-line format and six more should be complete by the end of December. More details about the training programme will be available from Olinka Nel and the team.

Code of Ethics and Constitution
Mahomed Kharwa was tasked with proposals for the amendment to the Constitution. I know, at present he is busy urging members to comment on some of the proposed amendments. On the Code of ethics, Melvin Kaabwe, Kharwa and Riaz Hassim have agreed to present changes going forward. One of the key points is that members must not bring the Association into disrepute.

The Copyright Bill
The erosion of copyright is perhaps the greatest threat facing the educational and academic booksellers at present. Peter Adams and Hassim did a submission to Department of trade and Industry (DTI) regarding copyright and how it will affect the book industry. Kaabwe has attended the Copyright Bill public hearings in parliament and perhaps will brief us of the latest developments.

South African Book Development Council
We are a founding member of the organisation. Kaabwe, Samantha Faure and I attend SABDC meetings. The SABDC did a follow up of the Book Reading Survey of 2006 and sadly the findings do not show a huge increase in the number of adult South Africans that read on a regular basis. That number in fact has dropped from 58% to 47% in 2016. Newspapers still make up the largest portion of reading material and only one third, 34% claim to be reading books in a printed form.

My sincere thanks and appreciation to the following who served on the SABA executive the last year, so admirably:

• Vice Presidents – Mohamed Kharwa(Chair: Academic) and Melvin Kaabwe(Chair: Digital )
• Honorary Secretary- Peter Adams
• Treasurer – Hentie Gericke(Chair: Education and Southern Region)
• General Trade – (Chair: Olinka Nell)
• Library – (Chair: Richard Hargraves)
• Eastern Region – (Chair: Sydwell Molosi)
• Northern Region – (Chair: Riaz Hassim)
• National Office Manager – Samantha Faure
• And myself as President and Chair of the Central Region

The Association notes its appreciation and gratitude to all individuals who have given so much of their time to assist in the interests of the book industry. I want to place on record our thanks to Samantha and Maureen Hargraves for arranging the annual conference again, this year. On a sad note, Samantha will be leaving SA Booksellers Association in August to pursue another career. All of us will miss her and I want to thank her for her time with SA Booksellers Association and wish her well and success in her future endeavours.
Hentie Gerricke, our faithful Treasurer for many years has decided not to make himself available for the coming year as the financial man. I am pleased to announce that Jonathan Ferreira from Caxton Books has agreed to serve as Treasurer and I am sure there will be no downgrades to junk status. I am certain he will serve SA Booksellers for years to come and wish him well and also welcome him to the exco.
I wish to thank you for your support and guidance and reiterate that my job as president is made a lot easier working with an excellent executive committee team.

Guru Redhi
President : SA Booksellers Association
Coastlands Hotel – Durban : August 2017

I had lunch this past week with a publisher and her author. As circumstances would have it, this was the week in which I took a decision to return, to another publisher, the recently released book From A to B by Bonang Matheba. While there was much praise for our decision, owing to sloppy editing and a large number of grammatical and other errors, there were also, as usual, a number of vociferous critics. The critics saw our decision in racial terms.

It is a sad indictment on where we are in South Africa right now that even a decision like this, intrinsically tied-in to a poor product badly produced in which the central purpose of our decision (to not knowlingly sell to our customers a book that is below par in terms of its representation of text) should nevertheless attract critics who are racially motivated. We need to get beyond this.

Our decision, as the leading bookseller in the nation is to always do our best for our customers; and it hardly behoves any bookseller to launch, present, promote and advocate a book in which the English language is so poorly treated. Our approach to this particular work had nothing to do with race. Indeed, it should be apparent to anyone interested in good writing that our recent release of a catalogue covering Black writing across the Continent and the Diaspora, is testimony enough to our adherence, first, to quality writing and, second, to our recognition that Black writing, at its pre-eminent level, is as enthralling, as interesting and as powerful as anything else by any other person regardless of colour.

What I find most interesting is that an event like this is put under the racial spotlight when, really, the focus should be literary. The question arises, of course, as to what we would have done if the book had been written by a White person and the publisher had been, as is mainly the case, a majority White organisation. The unpleasant truth, for everyone, is that we would have taken the same decision. We would have taken the same decision because, ultimately, delivery of good product and respect for our customers is the most critical aspect of our business. We respect our customers and, I hope, that they, too, acknowledge us in the same light. In some profound sense, our job is to curate the nation’s taste. There is no more profound commentary on this than to point out to the reader that no more than 15% of our revenues come from the top 100 Best Sellers. Our income is generated by range and we adhere to this precept even before we recognise the almightly dollar which, no doubt, is the impulse for our existence.

None of this means that we do not see books with the occasional typo. Sometimes a passage may have a non-sequitur or even refer to an event not previously narrated. These things happen. However, if a text is so badly edited that the errors jump out at you from page after page, then we have to do something about it.

And why do we only do something about it when our customers point out the errors to us? The reason is simple enough but not easily understood by the buying public. It is because we sell, in the course of a year, around 125,000 different titles. We rely on the publisher to sell to us a product that has been properly and methodically reviewed and edited. It is impossible for any bookseller to read and review every title that one sells. We would need an army to read every text.

In the end, we rely on our customers and I am grateful that they are so quick to point out mistakes. We know that the price of a book can always be put to other uses by the consumer and it is for this reason that we have the respect we do for all readers.

BENJAMIN TRISK

Seven years in

Now in its seventh year, the Open Book Festival has established itself as one of South Africa’s most innovative and leading book festivals. It is committed to creating a platform to celebrate South African writers, as well as hosting top international authors. The festival strives to instill an interest in and love of reading among young attendees, while the programme of more than 100 events over five days is designed to resonate with the festival-goers long after the event. Elements of the festival programme include talks by international authors and South African writers, poetry, a comics marketplace, panel discussions, book launches, outreach reading initiatives, youth programmes and writer sports. The festival has been recognised internationally and was shortlisted twice for the London Book Fair Excellence Awards in the category of Literary Festivals. In 2016, Open Book hosted nearly 10 000 visitors at the 125 events with 251 local and international authors.

Hosted by the Book Lounge and the Fugard Theatre, with events also taking place at the A4 Arts Foundation, District Six Homecoming Centre and Central Library Cape Town, the Open Book Festival took place from 6-10 September 2017.

“We have once again worked hard to bring you a phenomenal line up of South African and international authors across a range of genres talking about topics that are engaging, relevant and thought-provoking,” says Festival Director Mervyn Sloman.

“The nature of the open discussions and debates between authors and audiences and the conversations that continue beyond the event, are what make the Festival unique,”

Following the enormous success of the collaboration between Poetica and #cocreateSA last year, #cocreatePOETICA was once again part of the Open Book Festival. #cocreatePOETICA provides a platform for readings, performances and poetical discussions and features a diverse range of poets from established names through to those at the beginnings of their careers. The aim of the partnership with #cocreateSA and Poetica is to use the art form of RAP and the spoken word to co-create solutions to mutual challenges by providing a platform that voices the concerns of the youth, by the youth.

The popular Comics Fest took place under the Open Book umbrella on 9 and 10 September. With an array of activities, workshops, discussions and demonstrations. Seasoned illustrator Andy Mason hosted a Monster Battle Draw Off throughout the weekend.

The Nielsen Booksellers Choice Award is bestowed upon a local author for a South African published book that booksellers most enjoyed selling or that sold so well that it made a difference to the bottom line of booksellers across the country.

The prize this year went to Trevor Noah for his book Born a Crime and other stories published by Pan Macmillan in South Africa. Noah was not present to receive the prize at the convivial awards evening on the 22 August, however his publishers were there, bursting with pride. Andrea Nattrass, Noah’s publisher at Pan Macmillan had arranged for Noah to record a short acceptance speech, which was shared with the audience at the awards. Noah thanked booksellers, publishers and the sponsors Nielsen Book for the award, along with his English teacher who inspired him to read.

Once a year the booksellers and publishers of South Africa gather at co-joined Annual General Meetings to discuss the industry at large.

“By bringing booksellers from around the country together annually to discuss matters pertinent to the business of bookselling, we are able to identify many concerns in the industry and work together towards solutions,” explains Guru Redhi, President of the SA Booksellers Association, which organizes the AGM with the Publishers’ Association of South Africa (PASA).

The AGM’s are designed so that while booksellers meet to discuss getting high quality South African books into the hands of book buyers, the Publishers are meeting to discuss the creation of these books just next door.

“The SA Booksellers Association strives toward working with PASA to encourage healthy trade relations recognising the respective roles within the book value chain, of the publishers as creators and wholesale distributors, and booksellers as the retailers of books,” says Redhi.

“The AGMS are co-located to encourage PASA and SABA members to have closer networking opportunities and share ideas. This process happens in formal and informal settings to foster deeper discussions on issues that affect the business operations of these two important stakeholders in the book value chain,” says Mpuka Radinku of PASA.

On the evening of the 22nd members of both associations congregate for the Sefika and Nielsen Booksellers Choice awards evening to celebrate the roles they all play in promoting literacy and a culture of reading by producing and selling quality books in South Africa.

The following booksellers were awarded:

• Academic bookseller of the year: Van Schaik Bookstore
• Education bookseller of the year: Adams Bookshop
• Library supplier of the year: Hadeda Library Suppliers
• Trade bookseller of the year (chain stores): Bargain Books
• Trade bookseller of the year (independent) The Book Lounge

Publisher’s awards went to:

• Trade Publisher: Penguin Random House
• Education Publisher (Large): Pearson Education SA
• Education Publisher (Small): The Answer Series
• Academic Publisher: Juta & Company

Shortlisted titles for the Nielsen Booksellers Choice Award 2017 were:

• Born a crime and other stories by Trevor Noah Published by Pan Macmillan
• Emily Hobhouse Geliefde verraaier by Elsabe Brits Published by Tafelberg
• JAN A breath of French Air by Jan Hendrik van der Westhuizen Published by Struik
• Kook saam Kaaps by Koelsoem Kamalie and Flori Schrikker Published by Lapa Uitgewers
• Koors by Deon Meyer Published by Human & Rousseau
• My own liberator by Dikgang Moseneke Published by Picador Africa.