The Ghana International Book Fair is underway in Accra, and to mark the event, TNPS and parent company StreetLib have produced an updated version of our March presentation on the African digital opportunity, geared to the Ghana publishing industry.
TNPS is not a promotional vehicle for StreetLib services, but occasionally StreetLib news and joint StreetLib-TNPS presentations like this fall clearly within the remit of the TNPS journal. In such instances we present the press-release in full below without further comment.
Watch out for more about the Ghana International Book Fair after the weekend.
[Press Release] Supporting the Ghana International Book Fair, StreetLib delivers an online presentation showing the digital potential for Ghana’s publishing industry
Loreto, Italy, August 31st 2019.
With the theme “Reaching the World Market through Effective Book Distribution Networks,” the 17th Ghana International Book Fair is underway in Accra.
Mrs Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, the Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Art, said,
“We have a publishing industry in Ghana that has about 85 percent concentration on the textbook market.
It is sometimes very frustrating and worrying to move round bookshops for books on our heritage and culture and would not find much. (Yet) there is a huge demand for our rich folklore, traditions, culture and heritage globally.”
Mrs Oteng-Gyasi advised industry stakeholders to invest more into publishing content with no territorial boundaries, saying the internet provided effective tools for limitless distribution of books.
Meanwhile Professor Stephen Adei, the Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission delivered a keynote address saying Ghana was creating a generation of functional illiterates.
Just before the fair, Abubakar Saddique Ahmed the CEO of the Ejura-based NGO Rural Smile Foundation called the government to prioritise building more libraries across Ghana.
Welcoming the initiatives being put forward at the Ghana International Book Fair, Giacomo D’Angelo, CEO of the Italy-based digital books aggregator and publishing facilitator StreetLib, said:
“Ghana’s publishing industry has opportunities today to develop its domestic sector and build a thriving export sector that were inconceivable ten years ago when digital reading first became mainstream in the western book markets.
Today Ghana has 11.7 million people online yet is only at 39% internet penetration. That’s 2 million more than Sweden, the home of the digital books streaming service Storytel, which has 400,000 subscribers at home and globally over one million subscribers paying the company each month for access to its rich catalogue of ebooks and digital audio.
It’s a similar story around the world, where millions of booklovers use their smartphones to access books from the comfort of their homes, any time of day or night.
It’s a publishers dream — a 24/7 bookstore with unlimited shelf-space where any book can be available anywhere in Ghana, anywhere in Africa, and anywhere in the world, and that has no printing and warehousing costs.
As we end this decade Ghana is behind the curve with digital books, although some publishers and digital startups are making good progress.
At StreetLib we specialise in helping publishers big and small make the leap from a paper & ink only business model to a hybrid model that gets the benefits of both print and digital.
With no up-front costs we can help Ghanaian publishers distribute their digital books globally, help with formatting, and offer a raft of other services aimed at connecting publishers with readers around the world.
That includes digitally publishing in languages indigenous to Ghana like Akuapem Twi, Asante Twi, Ewe, etc.
Digital books can be made available to libraries across Ghana, and at StreetLib we are in the process of setting up a Pan-African Digital Library Hub to facilitate the exchange of books across the continent.
Digital presents untold possibilities and opportunities for publishers in Ghana and beyond.
For the occasion of the 17th Ghana International Book Fair StreetLib has added a slide-deck presentation to our StreetLib Ghana publishing portal showing what digital publishing is achieving around the world and what is possible in Ghana.”
Let’s make the 2020s the decade Ghanaian publishing takes its rightful place as a global publishing powerhouse.”
About StreetLib
StreetLib (www.streetlib.com) is a publishing facilitator and a global gateway to the $143 billion international book market, 70% of which is happening outside the USA, for publishers big and small. Whether you are an independent author or a multinational publisher, StreetLib offers unrivalled global reach through our worldwide network of retail, digital library and subscription service outlets. StreetLib distributes ebooks, audiobooks, comics, magazines and print-on-demand paperbacks. StreetLib’s standard model is no up-front fees and it takes just a 10% commission per sale made.
Contact us at info@streetlib.com
At the risk of stating the very obvious, distribution within the book industry is pivotal to the overall success of the wholesome endeavour of getting books and allied products to the intended readership.
That said, there’s no denying the fact that this vital link in the production chain often finds itself in some sort of lurch due, in part, to a myriad of factors that nonetheless affect other aspects of the book industry.
It is commendable therefore of any efforts or measures geared towards addressing the issue as a way of improving on the status quo.
StreetLib’s advancing the cause of the digital output and effective distribution addresses this and it is a welcome development serving to highlight the potentials in our of Africa’s countries showing great potentials. Thank you.