Self-publishing South Africa

New Blog Address!

selfpublishsouthafrica — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 07:01:02 +0000

Self-publish South Africa has moved!

Visit http://mousehand.book.co.za – same concept, lots more to it!

Back … again!

selfpublishsouthafrica — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:22:25 +0000

Arg. Just 24 hours after our landline and internet were fixed, down again. So we have LOTS of cyber catching up to do, but don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about the blog!

Happy days,

Ingrid

We’re back!

selfpublishsouthafrica — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:13:43 +0000

Hi all,

Sorry for a lull in the posts – we lost our landline, and internet, for some time!

We’ve been planning in our little unconnected office in the meantime though, and will soon have a nice interview with Colleen Higgs up on fiction writing and publishing, and an interesting interview with Hamilton Wende.

Also check out the PEG editors directory on the About writing page!

Happy days,

Ingrid

To edit, or not too editt.?

selfpublishsouthafrica — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:04:09 +0000

The answer: yes, edit. Yes, yes, yes.

Why are we so enthused?

Check out our About writing page for a nice, simple summary from the Professional Editor’s Group website.
In a few days, Mousehand promises to release its June newsletter, and there’ll be some interesting points and factoids on editing in there too.
You can make money doing it. Industry knows the importance of clear and correct communication to being taken seriously, and editors are always in demand.

If you think you’re anal enough to make money out of your passion for language correctness, check out the excellent training courses offered by McGillivrayLinnegar Associates. There isn’t an editor worth his apostrophe in SA who isn’t familiar with John Linnegar and his brilliance.

Their training schedules:

Gauteng:

Basic Copy Editing and Proofreading (G05)
28, 31 May & 1 June (Friday, Monday & Tuesday)

Project Management in Publishing (G03)
3 & 4 June (Thursday & Friday)

Basic Copy Editing and Proofreading (G06)
11, 12 & 16 August (Wednesday, Thursday & Monday)

Advanced Copy Editing and Proofreading (G07)
13 & 17 August (Friday & Tuesday)

Editing Law Texts (G08)
19 & 20 August (Thursday & Friday)

Basic Copy Editing and Proofreading (G09)
2, 4 & 5 November (Tuesday, Thursday & Friday)

Subediting and Proofreading for Magazines (G10)
8 & 9 November (Monday & Tuesday)

To reserve a place or for further information on specific courses:
Email: mcdcsa@iafrica.com or info@editandtrain.com
Telephone Ken on +27 (0)21 552 5240

Cpt:

Basic Copy Editing and Proofreading (C08)
10, 17 & 24 July (Saturdays)

Advanced Copy Editing and Proofreading (C09)
13 & 14 July (Tuesday & Wednesday)

Editing and Proofreading Maths and Science (C10)
15 July (Thursday)

Grammar for Editors (C11)
19 & 20 July (Monday & Tuesday)

Subediting and Proofreading for Magazines (C12)
21 & 23 July (Wednesday & Friday)

Project Management in Publishing (C13)
26 & 27 July (Monday & Tuesday)

Basic Copy Editing and Proofreading (C14)
24, 25 & 27 August (Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday)

Basic Copy Editing and Proofreading (C15)
20 & 27 November, 4 December (Saturdays)

Project Management in Publishing (C16)
23 & 24 November (Tuesday & Wednesday)

To reserve a place or for further information on specific courses:
Email: mcdcsa@iafrica.com or info@editandtrain.com
Telephone Ken on +27 (0)21 552 5240

More self-published authors talk about their experience …

selfpublishsouthafrica — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:25:30 +0000

Michael Gastrow, Erik Norgaard and Floris Brown … a novel, a biography and poetry

Click here …

Price and profit. Profit? Is it possible?

selfpublishsouthafrica — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:29:19 +0000

We respond to a question on profit from a self-published author. Check out our About selling a book page …

Does the answer make sense?

What’s your experience like?

South Africa: A closer look at the book sector’s future in South Africa

selfpublishsouthafrica — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 06:58:24 +0000

If you’re going to self-publish and expect any kind of commercial success, you best learn about the goings on in the book sector. Posted below are extracts from Jessica Hadley Grave’s article (October 2009).

Jessica Hadley Grave is the editor of Bookmark, the news magazine of the South African Booksellers’ Association. As such she is in the very fortunate position of being kept up to date with information on all developments in the book trade. Jessica also works for Magna Carta PR, voted the best public relations agency three years in a row in South Africa and keeps abreast of other industries and news in South Africa via this channel.

(To read the article in full, click here to download PDF file.)

A number of factors affect the book industry in South Africa at various levels. Like the rest of the world, economic fluctuations, along with a drop in consumer confidence and a general increase in costs across the board due to rising petrol prices are affecting the industry in a myriad of different ways. Paper prices have gone up between 40 and 45% and shipping costs have gone up 25% in the last year.

In another worldwide phenomenon, changes in technology and a move towards online content are making waves in a sector that has thus far relied upon the printing and selling of a hard copy book.

“South Africa has millions of illiterate adult South Africans and government has implemented a major literacy campaign …”

At a more basic level, dynamics that are unique to South Africa that have far reaching effects on the industry, are numerous. South Africa has millions of illiterate adult South Africans and government has implemented a major literacy campaign in a bold move to eradicate this problem by 2012.

There is also extensive competition for the attention of literate individuals in South Africa and the reading behaviour of adult South Africans has been researched. Access to books is a key contributor to reading behaviour and the cost of books in South Africa is higher than in many other countries.

Language is another consideration. South Africa has 11 official languages and until recently, what seemed to be almost a complete dearth of literature in 9 of them. There are a number of initiatives on the go to begin rectifying this.

South Africa has long been a country that has looked away from its shores for literature and though this is still largely the case, South African authors are gaining more respect and South African publishers and booksellers are largely responsible for generating interest and developing authors through competitions, awards and events, the largest of which is the hugely successful Cape Town Book Fair.

In addition, consumers are now tending to turn to cheaper products such as paperbacks or second-hand books, particularly for children’s books.

Digital technology – nervous optimism

The move towards a digital world has also had a profound effect on the book industry: Google set up offices in Johannesburg in 2007 and more and more local books can now be found on Google’s Book Search. Online retail sales have grown enormously and many smaller independent South African booksellers are still nervous about the effect that a growth in online sales and direct publisher to consumer sales will have on their ability to do business. South African publishers and booksellers are well aware of the need to adapt to this new world and the debates are heated.

…it is very likely that most South Africans will bypass computers as we know them and go straight to accessing information digitally via their mobile phones.”

The South African publishing industry is moving necessarily fast to embrace digital technology and ramp up their online marketing presence, although many are still waiting and watching on the sidelines to see where the South African market will go. Like India, it is very likely that most South Africans will bypass computers as we know them and go straight to accessing information digitally via their mobile phones. In a country with over 10 million people owning mobile phones that’s a significant target market. This kind of technology is one that can overcome many of the distribution problems currently facing the trade industry.

New findings from research into reading habits

The first study ever to take an in-depth look at the reading habits of adult South Africans was published in 2007. This revealed the importance of libraries and mobile libraries for readers who favour these outlets when obtaining books. “It is therefore imperative that this access channel receives urgent attention”, as the South African Book Development Council (SABDC) recommends.

Expensive books, a poor population

Access to books is another major factor affecting literacy and book reading behaviour in South Africa.

… a reading culture in a developing country where a vast majority of the population live in extreme poverty.”

The cost of books in South Africa is often seen as unnecessarily high and a major barrier in creating a reading culture in a developing country where a vast majority of the population live in extreme poverty. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that print-runs are only ever small, adversely affecting conditions. Set up in 2007, the South African Book Development Council does give grounds for hope, however, that future developments could be as positive as they have been in India: India has implemented book development strategies since 1957 and is today the third largest producer of English books, while at the same time publishing in 22 local languages.

Enhancing quality of life with libraries

The government has identified libraries as a key sector capable of improving the quality of lives of South Africans. The expansion of South Africa’s library services and the facilitation of public access to them remain critical elements in making South Africa a successful and well-performing country. As a consequence, the Department of Arts and Culture, through the support of National Treasury, will be investing more than R1 billion in community libraries over the next three financial years.
In addition, the library sector, led by the National Library and the recently established National Council for Library and Information Services (NCLIS), is currently drafting a Transformation Charter. The Charter will set the vision for a transformed library sector, supporting education and the development of a reading culture.

Literature in eleven languages

Publishing literature in the indigenous languages is self-evidently an area with great growth potential for publishers in South Africa. The Publishers Assocation of South Africa (PASA) has taken the initiative here, with a catalogue listing 4.000 works in nine languages, ranging from novels to traditional literature and short stories, to essays, prose and poetry.

“Books in the indigenous languages will be a critical vehicle for developing and preserving these languages and the development of localized literature will enhance social cohesion.”

Local authors in the limelight

Author development is vital to the South African Book industry and there are a number of initiatives and events in place to support this. Literary awards are important to publishers because of the second life they may give to books, which obviously boosts sales. Publishers also use awards to generate new books via the submission of manuscripts and also to incentivise would-be authors to write. In the developing landscape of South Africa’s literary movement, this is imperative, and more awards are being given for indigenous works than ever before.

The Cape Town Book Fair boosts book sales

In terms of business development and growing the existing book trade, the Cape Town Book Fair, founded in 2006 by the Frankfurt Book Fair and PASA, has had great effect. During the week of the fair in 2008, trade grew by 25%, with a total of 224,000 units sold versus 222,000 units the year before.

In Conclusion

The future of the book sector in South Africa is of vital importance not only to all the players involved in the industry, but to the success of the South African nation in its entirety. There are many different factors influencing its development and acting as agents for change; however, what remains consistent is a sector-wide dedication to keeping this industry alive and well and ensuring the continual drive for education and literacy in what remains an exciting developing country.

By Jessica Hadley Grave, Bookmark

The possibilities of iPad

selfpublishsouthafrica — Mon, 31 May 2010 06:43:22 +0000

Thanks PEG for emailing us this link.

Arthur Attwell speaks to PEG: What e-books mean for professional editors

selfpublishsouthafrica — Mon, 31 May 2010 06:38:50 +0000

Arthur Atwell is responsible for co-founding Mousehand, Electric Book Works (which he still runs), and impressing a lot of people when he won Young Publishing Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009.

Today I spoke at a meeting of the Professional Editor’s Group at The Book Lounge in Cape Town. The good turnout, about forty editors and affiliated publishing professionals, was evidence of their enthusiasm to understand how digitisation affects their work. I hope I satisfied some of that curiosity in this talk. This was my prepared speech, from which I did wander a little from time to time.

Thanks to Kristina for asking me to speak today. Before I get started, can I ask:

Has anyone here bought an ebook?

Does anyone own a dedicated ereader?

Does anyone have an iPhone?

Has anyone every downloaded a PDF to read on screen?

Anyone who’s said yes to any of these questions is already a consumer in the ebook industry. To get one myth out of the way: ebooks are not a big part of our future, they are a big part of our present and even our recent past. And they are not a bad thing or a good thing, they are just a fact, a product that most people do and will find useful and valuable some of the time. In a developing country, ebooks solve all kinds of cost and distribution problems, like mobile phones solved communication problems, so they’re going to have a greater and greater impact on the nature of the work that editors do in South Africa.

I find that many of my talks about ebooks end up being fear-alleviation sessions, as if I’m a kind of roving therapist for the local publishing industry, or worse, an insurance salesman. I don’t know whether any one talk is going to go that way till I’m well into it, so we’ll see how this goes.

Now there are therapists who’ll tell you what you want to hear, and there are therapists that tell the truth, and sometimes I play one and sometimes the other.

But when I give people the choice, as I’m doing by explaining this dilemma to you, most audiences ask for the truth. The truth is this: as ebook technology makes it easier to make and sell books, the publishing industry will get much, much bigger. But it’s also going to be a very different industry.

If you had a horse-and-cart business a hundred years ago, and thought you were in the horse-and-cart industry, you’d have gone out of business. Your industry would have collapsed. But if you thought you were in the transport industry, you’d have had a chance to re-engineer your business to make the most of the booming demand for moving things and people around. Today, if you think you’re in the print-layout industry, you can worry, but if you’re in the publishing, or content, industry, you’ll be fine. There is going to be a lot of paying work.

If you think ebooks are shrinking the print book market, let’s think about March sales stats from the US, where ebook sales are higher than anywhere else. Stats from the Association of American Publishers show that while ebook sales grew 184% just in March this year, print book sales also grew – grew! – by over 16%. So I don’t buy the fear mongering for a moment. Publishing is growing; the trick to keeping your job is adapting to how it’s growing.

Before I go into any more detail, though, I do need to know who I’m talking to so I don’t completely miss the point. Can I get a quick show of hands:

Who is a professional book editor, freelance or in-house? By editor I mean the person who works most closely with an author’s every word, not a commissioning editor.

Who is a book designer?

Who is a typesetter?

Who is something else? And that is?

And who is a bookseller?

Talking about ebooks in the Book Lounge is like talking about the Internet in the New York Public Library. Who needs the NYPL when the Internet has all you need? Just like the NYPL, most information on the Internet is free to anyone who visits it. And the Book Lounge – most of these books are available online to anyone who wants them. And yet both institutions continue to thrive.

At first, a physical space, like the NYPL or the Book Lounge, and the Internet may seem at odds, but once you use them it’s actually easy to see how they have a symbiotic relationship. The fact that online an almost infinite amount of information is available instantly, just a search engine away, does not change anything about the particular physical environment and the personal interaction that’s so valuable in a physical space like this, or the NYPL.

So what’s the real difference between them? What’s changing the industry like the combustion engine changed transport?

Automation. What can you digitise and automate is best done online, and what can’t be digitised and automated will find a home in places like this bookshop and the NYPL. The creation, sale and delivery of ebooks is all about automating more of the publishing process.

As more and more of our world is digitised – sales, maps, encyclopaedias, books, music, phone calls, radio, TV, you name it, it travels digitally – companies constantly have to choose what to automate and what has to be done by human beings. In other words, what can be templated, and what requires project-specific creative input.

Technological progress always creates a flow towards automation, as creative ideas are captured in templates and automated.

If you have a role that can’t be automated, you’re fine. But we have to be very honest with ourselves about what can and can’t be automated. Automated typesetting can be much better than most human typesetting, especially when most human typesetting is only 70% as good as it could be! I have here Fodor’s New York City guide, it’s typeset automatically within a minute or so, drawing all its text and images from a database. The text and images in the database have been carefully created and edited, and the basic template for the book was carefully created by a designer, but no typesetter worked through the pages of this book.

This isn’t the first time automation has changed the industry, of course. For instance, for most of last century type was set on typesetting machines. These machines had already automated most of a Victorian typesetter’s work, but the machine operator still had to put a lot of human creativity into producing a good-looking printed page.

Today typesetting software does most of this work; fewer and fewer designers understand kerning or know why line-height is called leading, since this is largely automated. Recently, designers working for Faber and Faber developed a way to automate cover design (very beautifully) for a series of old classics.

This flow, from human creativity towards automation, is like a stream that you must keep swimming against to stay valuable – to keep your job, that is.

Only by continually moving your skills (and value-adding activities) up the flow towards its creative end can you keep your job in publishing. Any jobs at the automation end of the flow are quickly taken over by robots of one sort or another.

In the same way, in order to add enough value to the publishing process to be able to charge money for their products, publishing companies have to offer creative, human input to the content they gather from authors. That’s where editors are invaluable. Publishing companies that skimp on this will operate closer and closer to the automation end of the flow, employ fewer and fewer highly skilled staff, and eventually become no more than data-scrubbing clearing houses.

So, what do you do as an editor to stay at the creative end of the flow?

Well, many editors are already pretty safely up-stream, as you may have guessed by now. It’s very difficult to automate the imagination required to really improve the quality of an author’s writing. But here are five tips to keep editors there.

First, the most important thing is to make sure that you’re focusing on the part of your work that can’t be automated: using your imagination to improve the quality of the text. Otherwise you’re spending lots of your editing time working like a robot. If your editing is robotic, the publisher has little need to hire you, because they can automate your work. If you think editing is about correcting spelling and grammar, you’re not doing enough and you’ll be out of a job before long. In this way, ebooks actually create an incentive for greater quality in editing, by making good editors more valuable, and mediocre ones unnecessary.

As competition among publishers for readers intensifies, editorial quality is one of the few value-adds that will distinguish them, because really good, really involved editing cannot be automated.

Secondly, you must automate every part of your editing process that you can. Make time to learn about the tools that offer you automation of any sort. Most editors hardly use the automation features that MS Word offers. If you understand them and control them, they are powerful tools, and if you don’t, they are just dangerous. You must, must use styling (or tagging) in programs like MS Word, and know how it enables functionality like its brilliant Outline view. It gives you automated overview and control over the structure of your document, and allows typesetting to be more automated. Without this, you’re also more expensive to a publisher who has to style or tag your documents separately.

Third, think of your book content as flowing strings of plain text, not as laid-out lines on pages. Learn how to represent anything in plain text – in an editor like Notepad, for instance – including degree signs and non-breaking spaces. (If you were editing in the 1990s, when typesetters needed plain text to import into Quark, you know most of this already.) This forces you to separate the function of content from its appearance. What does this have to do with ebooks? Ebooks don’t have pages or fixed line breaks. Their fonts and colours and screen size change at the user’s whim. Your text must be able to flow into any form and still read well. The structure and function of the text must be firm, no matter how a reader’s software makes it look.

Moreover, once typesetting is as automated as an ebook’s screen layout – as it is in this Fodor’s travel guide – from a production point of view every page of a printed book becomes a screen created dynamically from a computer, and print and ebooks become the same thing, produced and delivered in the same way, but ultimately to different physical materials.

Fourth, try reading ebooks. If you can afford it, get an e-ink ereader. If not, get your next dictionary or reference book as an ebook on your computer, so you’ve got a reason to use an ebook, and to learn how ebooks work. If you don’t, you’re working like an editor who’s never opened a printed book.

And finally, enjoy yourself. We’re in a country with good infrastructure on a continent that’s going to be buying more and more content as it only gets richer. There are more opportunities here for us right now that we could ever hope for or ever take up. The publishing industry is already desperate for people with technological skills, or even technological curiosity. If you can be one of those people, you can have a fun, and often lucrative time.

Thank you, let’s chat more about your specific questions.

Last Updated ( Saturday, 29 May 2010 21:44 )

How can SA self-publishing services help you navigate the jungle of Amazon and others?

selfpublishsouthafrica — Wed, 26 May 2010 08:43:46 +0000

One way, and arguably the best, is to go to the source – Lightning Source. On Aaron Shepard’s Publishing blog, he states: “Lightning Source is still the most profitable way to aim at Amazon. And there has been no sign whatever of that fact changing for independent self publishers.” Read more here.

How does LS work?

1. A publisher submits a title to the LS digital library via their website.

2. LS makes the title available to book buyers through its global book distribution channels, including independent booksellers, Internet retailers, chains, library suppliers and book clubs (incl. leading distributors such as Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and others).

3. The channels market and sell to customers worldwide. LS can also ship directly to the buyer.

4. When an order comes in, it is channelled to LS to process, print, and deliver. Lightning Source titles are listed in a Print-to-Order program – an exclusive service that allows Ingram to display 100 copies on hand at all times. As part of this arrangement, and to avoid book buyers from having to backorder, Lightning Source guarantees books ordered by Ingram will be printed and returned to their shipping dock within 8 – 12 hours, generally in time to be included in the book buyer’s regular order.

** There is no stock supplied by the publisher or kept by LS. This is a print-on-demand (print-to-order) system. We’ll discuss this type of printing on this blog soon!

Aaron keeps his finger on the pulse of LS and Amazon, so check out his blog!