SA Bookseller Association’s submission on the Draft LTSM policy
At the SA Booksellers AGM in September, Mr Allan Subban, Director: Enhancement of Programmes and Evaluation of School Performance, DBE addressed Booksellers on the Governments future plans for Learner Teacher Support Materials (LTSM). The conference room was hushed and a nervous level of attention was tangible as a few key educational publishers stood at the back of the room, or sat where they could find a space. Read more

How involved will you be in your website?

Making the decision to enter the world of online marketing and retail is a big decision that requires budget, time, human resources and most importantly; follow through. Continued maintenance and updates to your online platform will be necessary in order for it to be recognised by your customers and by Google as a worthwhile place to be. This leads us to the question of what system you will use to do this. Will you outsource the work to your web development team or will you train staff to include the daily task of website maintenance to their workload, be it posting new books to your e-commerce site, or updating your blog with your recommended reads for the season. Read more

Start planning for FLF 2015…

A number of international authors, and South African writers based overseas, have confirmed their attendance at the festival from 15-17 May 2015. The list is already impressive. We are excited … Read more

“It’s a jolt to read, in a press release from Read and Readathon, that “…over 53% of our educational institutions have fewer than 10 books, that only 23% have access to newspapers and magazines, that only 27% of our schools have libraries, and that over half of all our school-goers’ families do not have a single book in their homes”. writes Mandi Smallhorn on Fin24.com

The total number of books in print hit 28 million worldwide in 2013 , as calculated by all the titles that acquired ISBNs. In the United States, some 390,000 ISBNs were taken by the self-published authors, while approximately 300,000 were solicited by the traditional trade publishers. At Frankfurt this led to a discussion around the long tail, which is getting fatter, and how to market it. Read the full debate on Publishingperspecitves.com