English Booksellers have appealed directly to politicians to reform business rates or risk 275 towns losing bookshops at a parliamentary reception in the House of Commons on Wednesday (12th July).

Booksellers Association chief executive Tim Godfray told an audience of MPs at the reception hosted by Labour’s Margaret Hodge that a quarter of high street bookshops are facing a hike in business rates of 10% or more. He urged action to be taken before as many as 275 towns are deprived of a valued bookshop.

“The Business Rates issue is something we cannot ignore,” he told guests in the Members Dining Room in the Houses of Parliament.

 

Read the full article on the Bookseller here

 

With the NLSA
The NLSA through the Mzansi Libraries On-Line Project have partnered with Business Connexion (BCX) to recruit and develop skills among school leaving and unemployed youth in the career field of ICT Librarian. The objective is to put them through a graduate internship programme to train and deploy them for ICT technical support capacity at community libraries.
This partnership will assist the libraries in maximizing the potential of new access to information services and technologies offered through the Mzansi Libraries On-Line Project.
Professor Rocky Ralebipi-Simela, the National Librarian and CEO of the NLSA said, “This programme, which we are proud to host, will see valuable contribution to skills development among youth. Increasing ICT support in community libraries will go a long way in ensuring that communities have access to information.”
A total of 65 unemployed youth across the country have been recruited to be trained as Information Communications Technology (ICT) Librarians and will undergo an eight week training programme. The training programme commenced on 13 March 2017 at the Telkom Learning Centre in Olifantsfontein and is facilitated by Microsoft SA/ Netcampus in collaboration with the Mzansi Libraries On-Line Project.
As part of this internship programme, the trainees have been exposed and oriented with the job enhancement programme facilitated through yet another partnership with Lulaway Holdings. This initiative will facilitate the establishment of job enhancement centers at the respective libraries.
“ICT skills play a crucial role in helping the youth create more opportunities for themselves in terms of employment and entrepreneurship,” says Charlene Verzmoter, S2B Programme Manager at Microsoft. “By empowering unemployed youth with ICT skills and certifications through the Student To Business Internship programme, Microsoft and other partners are able to provide these youths with employment. Moreover, by placing them within community libraries, where they will frequently act as custodians of knowledge who can educate the communities on much needed digital skills, we are putting them in a position to immediately pay it forward.”
This collaboration between NLSA, BCX and Lulaway Holdings will go a long way in contributing to the skills development initiatives of the National Development Agenda (NDP 2030) and increasing capacity at libraries which are confronted with the challenge of aligning and addressing the developmental needs of communities.
The objective of the training is to:

• Provide skills development for young people with a specific focus on the development agenda of the country.
• Communicate the new role of libraries in empowering communities.
• Enhance technological services at public libraries to address community issues.

“This collaboration between NLSA, BCX and Lulaway Holdings is a contribution towards a shared vision regarding the role of public libraries in community development, especially among the youth,” concluded Prof Ralebipi-Simela.

Progress with the Internship Programme:

• Owing to the prospects of success with this initiative, negotiations are currently underway to extend the duration of the internship programme from 18 to 24 months. The extension of the programme is intended to add value by creating meaningful employment for the successful interns.
• The NLSA BCX Internship Programme has been partnered with the Job Enhancement Programme by Lulaway Holdings. Through this partnership, participating libraries will offer improved services to allow unemployed users from the local community to register and seek for jobs on-line using technology at the library.

On 18 and 25 March 2017, two training session were conducted for the interns.
Training provided to date:
To date the 65 trainees have received training in Business Etiquette, Customer Services, Building Self-esteem and Assertiveness Skills, Time Management, Communications Strategies, MS Office 2013 and Train-the-Trainer skills.
When asked to reflect on the value of the training on their internship at the MLO pilot libraries countrywide, the students responded positively:
“…one that stood out most for me is Communications Strategies. Communication is one of those things that most of us take for granted but it is probably the most important. I have learned how to build positive relationships; how to be a skilled communicator and how to get people to open up and willingly share more information; how to overcome my (communication) fears; how to handle communication barriers; the right and wrong questions to ask; active listening skills, which was very interesting; how to read body language and so much more…” – Thenjiwe Mukwevho.
“Reflecting on the [training], I believe that such knowledge has to be shared. Therefore I will practically share it by:

Ensuring that I give a good impression of myself and the company/entity I represent to the people I meet;

• Being more time-efficient and productive with the tasks I have for the day;
• Using the knowledge I have learned to improve my self-esteem and self-confidence;
• Being more efficient when providing customer service internally or externally;
• Being more assertive when engaging in discussions with people; and
• Being able share this knowledge with others who might be in need of enlightenment and empowerment.

Thanking you for providing me this opportunity to be empowered in order to empower.”

Ntando Mabizela

ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SOUTH AFRICA

An Update on the Reading and Book-reading Behaviour of Adult South Africans.

A first National Reading Survey, carried out in 2006, commissioned and managed by the South African Book Development Council (SABDC) has now been followed up by another survey in 2016, which provides not only up-to-date information on South Africans’ reading habits, but also a means of assessing whether changes have occurred in various areas of enquiry over the past decade. The full report can be found at www.sabookcouncil.co.za and we provide a few points of interest from the official summary released by the SABDC earlier this year.

FINDINGS ON BOOK READING
Just fewer than half of adult South Africans read print media/books, dropping from 58% in 2006 to 47% in 2016. Newspapers make up the largest proportion of the reading material repertoire, and only one third – 34% – claim to be reading books in a printed form. Book readers are disproportionally (a) younger, (b) from higher LSM groups, (c) well educated and (d) white and female.

The Reading Index generated by this study shows that South Africans are very “light” readers overall. Half of South African adults read for leisure at least once a week, with a further one in five claiming to read less often, making for an “ever read” incidence of 70%. Leisure readers spend an average of four hours a week reading.

Positively, 14% of leisure readers say they would consider reading books in the future, taking the total reading potential from the current 34% (for actually read) to 48% (for potentially read). The reading of books constitutes 21.3% of total reading time.

The lack of easy access to, and the non-affordability of, books are the two biggest barriers to people reading books as opposed to reading newspapers.

Books’ market strengths lie in their ability to be recommended by other readers; and in their availability in a chosen language. Survey respondents felt that reading material must be (a) enjoyable, (b) in touch with the times, (c) easy to understand and (d) easy to read.

Book readers claimed to have read an average of 3.1 books in the past six months, and of 0.4 digital books on average. Most people who bought books did so on a monthly basis, spending an average of R171 on their purchase.

Almost six in ten people are living in households without a single book. Poorer households with lower levels of education are less likely to have books in their home.

The library tops the list of places where adult South Africans prefer to obtain their books. One in four adult South Africans visits the library.

Thirty-five per cent of adults with children in their home read to their children.

Where to from here?

Messages that equate reading and books with strong literacy skills and improved life opportunities need to be explicit and at the core of every communication, campaign or intervention. The activities that people engage in in their leisure time should be the very avenues through which reading needs to be celebrated and encouraged. For example, newspaper readers need to be persuaded to add books to their reading repertoire.
Opportunities to increase the number of books in households, especially in more disadvantaged areas and poorer provinces, need to be actively sought.

At the same time, access to books does not necessarily translate into actual reading. Attitudinal shifts in how reading and books are perceived are crucial for tangible changes in reading behaviour to occur. Importantly, education on the causal link between reading from a young age and literacy development for educational attainment needs to be appropriately channelled if they are to actively boost adults’ interest and motivation in reading to children.
Reading needs to be promoted as a fun and enjoyable activity. Reading for pleasure has positive implications for academic performance. Adults have to lead by example and model this behaviour to children. As well as read to their children, they have to read themselves.
Community media – newspapers and radio – should be the portals through which to communicate messages.

The promotion of a book-reading culture requires us to think beyond the world of printed books, to that of digital platforms. Given the widespread ownership and use of mobile technologies in South Africa, digital media are currently underutilised in their capacity as reading channels. New formats and content capable of being appropriated by such widespread technology need to be introduced. Mobile phones can become libraries accessible to anyone, anywhere and at any time, through the simple click of a few buttons.
For a variety of reasons, libraries still hold a substantial appeal for many people. More library access points must continue to be created.

Conclusion
A reading culture is one in which reading (a) takes centre stage in people’s lives; (b) is an habitual activity; and (c) is appreciated and understood as a key need among the general population. For this culture to pervade, we need to cultivate a love for reading from a very young age. The approaches outlined above drive the attitudinal and behavioural shifts that build the foundation for a reading culture to grow, with positive developmental outcomes for all.

Angela Briggs of Cover 2 Cover Books Interviews Bontle Senne, Author of the Shadow Chaser series.

In a previous interview you’ve said that wearing glasses and reading got you bullied at school, which is why standing up to bullying is one of the themes in your books – but what has reading done for you?

An easier question to answer would be what reading hasn’t done for me. I consider my love of reading to be the thing that changed the trajectory of my life. I was born in Soweto, the daughter of two nurses and the granddaughter of two domestic workers. My mother is an inspiration for working her way to being a powerhouse in corporate South Africa but I would not have been able to make the most of the opportunities she worked to get me if I hadn’t loved stories. Stories were a gateway drug to novels, novels to poetry and philosophy textbooks, textbooks led to newspapers and opinion pieces. I could go on but I think the point I’m making is clear: I have built my life on a stack of books.

What are you reading at the moment?

On audiobook, I’m “reading” Margret Atwood’s ‘The Heart Goes Last’. On Kindle, I just finished ‘All the Bright Places’ by Jennifer Niven. In print, I am mostly reading speculative fiction for some of the local literary festivals where I am chairing panels. I just started ‘South’ by Frank Owen (aka Diane Awerbuck and Alex Latimer).

Fantasy adventure (the genre that you write) is sometimes seen as popular with children, but not so much with their parents – What would you say to parents who worry that there is something bad or scary about the genre?

There are too many real life, actual dangers for you to be worried about. Nothing a child can experience in my books can really hurt them but it could keep them away from real harm. Numerous studies are also clear that fiction in general has a strong positive effect on a child’s educational outcomes and ability to empathize with others. So given these clear, proven benefits of reading and reading fiction – what’s really scary about it?

What does writing a series give you, and your readers, that a stand-alone book doesn’t?

Friends that you can keep coming back to and having adventures with and keep learning from. I hardly ever re-read books. Once I’ve had the experience, I’ve had it. A series keeps learning and changing with you. New experiences with the same characters can be a lot of fun.

If you could give your younger writer self some encouragement, what would it be?

Yes, everything you write is terrible. No, it’s not the end of the world. Keep writing anyway. You’ll get better.

If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?

I would care less about my English mark. I cared a lot about what teachers thought of my writing in school. I thought it would impact how good a writer I would become in the future and maybe it did but, in my mind, their opinions were the only ones that mattered to me, I considered them my editors. I didn’t realise that actual editors invest much more of themselves in their feedback and input. That they aren’t grading you – it’s not a pass or a fail. It’s more like they are helping you keep a promise to your readers – to tell the most authentic story you can and re-write it as many times as you need to, to make it great. Teachers never made me re-write anything.

You draw on mythology from all over Africa in your books. What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?

Research for book 2 involved re-watching every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and reading a lot of academic texts on monsters and rituals across the continent. I also try to ask adults about the supernatural stories that their grandmothers told them as children. When I was media fellow of Golden Baobab in 2014, I wrote about the sense of loss I felt at the stories about my culture and (supernatural) heritage that my grandmother never shared with me because they seemed to have no place in my formal or informal education in her mind. I’m still pretty bleak about it.

I spent 6 months in Sierra Leone last year so there was also a fair bit of trying to understand what local myths I could dig up and rework into Lake of Memories. I wasn’t very successful. As it turns out, many in Sierra Leone are incredibly superstitious and viewed chatting to me about terrible, dark, and maybe magical things as highly inappropriate.

For Book 3, I was in Nigeria for 2 months so that influenced the kind of monsters I wanted to write. I love the way Nigerians speak, they have such a colourful use of language and a change of tone or inflection here or there can totally change the meaning of a word, even in the same context. I really wanted a character like that who was that colourful and unpredictable so my research focused on trying to get the right kind of mythical creature with the right kind of temperament for the story I wanted to tell.

Apart from being fabulous to read, your work is about making an African heritage come alive for children. What are your thoughts around getting local books to readers?

I’ve never been one to buy into the “Africans don’t want to read” hype. I’m not saying that there isn’t a huge challenge for trade publishers and booksellers in South Africa. There is, of course. But the absence of relevant, engaging, local and accessible literature is something that is improving pretty slowly. My former life at Puku Children’s Literature Foundation taught me that parents are especially hungry for those kind of books for their children. What surprised me when Shadow Chasers came out was how hungry kids are for that change. I spoke to 5 year olds at Kingsmead Book Fair, shooting apologetic looks at their parents for the nightmares I was afraid I was causing. I spoke to matrics in their last year of school and trying to do everything they could to get me to keep reading to them and postpone going back to class as part of Franschhoek Literary Festival. I spoke at St Dominics School for the Deaf aided by an incredible sigh language interpreter for the fill school and their teachers. Every time I was amazed by how children of different ages got caught up in the story, how they begged me to keep reading, how they stampeded their librarian to find out when they would have the book. Part of it must have been the novelty – a story set in a township, an adventure between a taxi owner’s boss and the orphan who lives on her dad’s property, a girl who doesn’t care that she’s not pretty and a mystery that spans back generations. And let’s not forget about the supernatural elements …Things that go bump in the night are as much a part of our heritage as art, music, language and I was glad to discover that kids think so too.

How do you feel about your relationship with your characters now that you are busy with Book 3? What’s the title, and what can your readers expect?

I feel like I know my characters much better now. I actually find myself laughing at loud about some of the things Nom says and does. It sounds weird because, logically, I wrote it so how am I laughing at what is essentially my own joke? She is my creation so how can she surprise me? I am still not sure of the answer to that but somehow I keep finding out new things about these people that supposedly live in my head. Nom, Zee, Rosy, and the new characters introduced in book 3 feel closer to friends you love but don’t see that often than figments of my imagination.

Book 3 is called Flame of Truth and as the penultimate book in the series, it is the start of the epic final battle between the Shadow Chasers and the Army of Shadows. Nom, Zee, and Rosy are building their own army, in a sense, in this book.

Last year, after publishing Lake of Memories, you said that you felt successful already, having got your two book babies out in the world. Apparently there was a lot in interest in your books at the 2017 Bologna Book Fair – how does entering a world market sound to you?

All I ever wanted was to have my book-babies out in the world for children to read and enjoy. I wanted to write about and be able to travel the world and talk about other people’s books and I’ve done a fair bit of that too in the last 5 years. But the more practical part of me also recognizes that being able to financially support myself entirely as a writer is the ultimate literary success – and one that not many African writers get to experience unfortunately. If entering the world market helps me reach more children and entrench African children’s literature in the global kidlit ecosystem, I am all for it.

Does writing energize or exhaust you?

With a full time day job and an actual life, I think sitting down to write when you would rather be sleeping or eating ice-cream for breakfast in front of the TV is always going to be a bit of a drag. That being said: I find that after I have written anything, I feel great. It’s the sitting down, opening my laptop, ignoring Twitter and staying awake part that I find exhausting. The having to write part is exhausting. The having written part is fun.

What are common traps for aspiring writers?

I have heard many writers say that they have a great idea of a book or a great story to tell. That may be true. But if it’s not on the page, it doesn’t exist. The key is to write everything down. The trap is imaging that thinking about it or dreaming about it or talking about it alone will make your book real.