Vietnam’s Unexploded Bombs have killed 40,000. Now 3,000 comic books will help educate kids about the dangers. But could Vietnam do more by digitising?

Posted onDecember 15, 2018Leave a comment

A common theme in modern-day western children’s publishing is reflecting social issues and challenges. Climate change is hot right now, for example. Elsewhere in the world climate change is certainly an important issue for children’s publishing, but there are often more pressing dangers to confront. UXO, for instance. That’s Unexploded Ordnance, or what we in Read More …

Strengthening Aotearoa’s literary landscape – Mātātuhi Foundation to offer writing, reading, literacy grants

Posted onOctober 7, 2018Leave a comment

New Zealand’s Auckland Writers Festival (AWF), intent on “strengthening Aotearoa’s literary landscape,” has launched a charitable foundation, to be run separate from the AWF Trust, that will, allow New Zealand writers to develop and promote their works (and) cover activities for readers that increase their engagement with New Zealand literature, and projects that contribute to Read More …

World’s largest collection of Tibetan Buddhist literature is now online

Posted onOctober 5, 2018Leave a comment

Hat tip to @PaulkBiba for this – the most complete record of the words of the Buddha, plus many millions of pages of related commentaries, teachings and works such as medicine, history, and philosophy are now online thanks to the Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) and Internet Archive (IA). The Internet Archive Blog explains, BDRC’s founder, E. Gene Smith, Read More …

7 million users in the Philippines as Wattpad’s Tencent-backed Asia plans step up a gear

Posted onMay 6, 2018Leave a comment

The Philippines has long been one of Wattpad’s strongholds, but this month comes news from Manila Bulletin that fully 7 million of Wattpad’s 65+ million users around the world are from that one country. After the latest $51 million round of Wattpad funding in January, with a substantial portion coming from China’s Tencent – Tencent Read More …

OverDrive supplies the UAE’s first digital library

Posted onNovember 9, 20171 Comment

Back in May Book Expo New York hosted an event titled Reaching the Arab World – the New Gateway Hub – The Sharjah Publishing City Initiative. Given the panel comprised Ahmed Al Ameri, Former Director of the Sharjah International Book Fair and Head of the Sharjah Book Authority, alongside the CEOs of Ingram and OverDrive, Read More …

Storymoja – a book in every hand

Posted onNovember 6, 2017November 6, 2017Leave a comment

Kenya’s Daily Nation weekend lifestyle section carries an interview with Abukakar Adam Ibrahim, the Nigerian author of Season of Crimson Blossoms, which won the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2016, Africa’s richest literary prize. Abukakar Adam Ibrahim was in the Kenyan capital Nairobi in September for the Goethe Institut Literary Crossroads event, which featured two writers from two Read More …

Tencent moves on Wattpad as Wattpad hits 60 million users. Could Nook be next?

Posted onOctober 19, 2017Leave a comment

Back in September I ran a post here on Nook’s future, speculating on the possibility Nook could be acquired by the Chinese ebook behemoth Tencent, which was actively looking for global expansion possibilities. A sentiment shared by Jane Friedman and Porter Anderson at the Hot Sheet. Nothing yet to suggest Tencent has Nook on its Read More …

OverDrive leads the way with dyslexia-friendly ebooks

Posted onOctober 17, 2017October 18, 2017Leave a comment

What do WB Yeates, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lynda La Plante, Jules Verne, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Agatha Christie have in common? They all endured some form of what we now call “learning disabilities,” chief among them likely dyslexia, which although first recognised in the late 1890s did not become widely accepted as a learning difficulty until Read More …

A million poetry books sold in 2016

Posted onOctober 10, 2017October 10, 2017Leave a comment

It’s a funny old world. Publishing is supposedly on its knees, decimated by digital, attention spans are supposedly shortening by the day and no-one reads any more, and video streaming and other distractions are wiping out any vestige of hope that literature might still be around next weekend. Meanwhile books continue to sell, publishers continue Read More …

Parag ensures India’s children’s books are not just for English-speakers

Posted onOctober 5, 20171 Comment

Since Tata Trusts launched Parag in 2005, some twenty million children have benefited from this far-sighted initiative to make children’s books available in India’s myriad local languages. Inevitably in any former colony the colonial language is often the second language, at best, of the indigenous population, while the colonial language dominates commerce, business and, of Read More …

Instagram Poets that outsell Grisham and Atwood

Posted onOctober 4, 20171 Comment

It was never meant to be like this. In those dark and gloomy days of 2011-13 it seemed to many observers that mainstream publishing had no future and digital would not just disrupt, but destroy publishing as we knew it. Not only were upstart start-ups like Amazon’s KDP, Apple’s iBooks, Kobo, Nook, Smashwords and a Read More …