The Draft Learner and Teacher Support Material Policy that is causing such an uproar in the South African education scene purportedly had noble intentions – to ensure that all the injustices and inequalities of the past are addressed. It states that “Redress and equity are fundamental principles enshrined in the constitution. Within the learning and teaching support material provisioning context these principles are crucial, as the injustices of the past have to be corrected”. 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