By Ashley Sepanski
Each year, the Frankfurt Invitations program enables small and medium publishers from developing book markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America to debut as fair exhibitors. Publishing Perspectives spoke to four publishers to find out about their businesses and markets.
Bryony van der Merwe
“Wordweaver is the only fiction publisher in Namibia. It has a population of about 2 million people, so it’s a small market. One of our big challenges is the low reading culture and lack of literacy. We’re trying to get more involved in doing local language publishing, but it’s hard with 11 different languages. We believe if you start young, you can instill a love of reading in children. The kids go to school, but they have nothing fun to read. So, one of our long term visions is to improve literacy and the reading culture among children. That’s the gap we are trying to bridge.”
Flora Majdalawi
“Our market targets Arabic-reading children and foreigners who want to learn to read Arabic. We focus on literacy through literature, so we’re doing it in a non-traditional way instead of the other way around. One of our biggest challenges is distribution and reaching out to new markets outside the Arab world. A few years back, I think there was an assumption that Arab books were not of a high quality in content or design, but that assumption doesn’t exist anymore. At Frankfurt, there are many Arab displays with incredibly beautiful books with rights sold all over the world.”
Sulaiman Abedowale
“That we need investment! Our market has always been looking at alternative ways to sell and market books, to find authors and distribution methods. In North America, e-books and online stores are a critical base for sales and distribution. That is not so in our market. Forums, seminars, fairs, and other similar platforms are a big part of how we sell books. A lot of people say ‘Oh, you’re based in Senegal, why do you only publish in English and French?’ We publish for Africa. We publish all over the continent. The base of a company does not have to be linked to language. Publishing is a global business. We hope to publish in indigenous languages some day, but English and French are major intellectual markets.”
Ronny Agustinus, Chief Editor, Marjin Kiri, Indonesia
“This is our first time coming to the Frankfurt Book Fair and we are going to be the Guest of Honor in 2015. We don’t expect to sell too many rights, but hope to increase our international visibility. We mostly publish nonfiction, humanities, and [books about] social or political issues. We hope to offer the international market political or social topics with a unique perspective.”