In addition to the commercial platforms, there are numerous digitization initiatives and open access publications to be found across the entire continent. Below we will present two noteworthy cases. The publishing company Human Sciences Research Council Press disseminates material on social science research in electronic format – downloadable free of charge – and printed format – at very [...]
Digital repositories
The mobile telephone, a key actor in African digital publishing
In addition to the devices and tools mentioned so far – all still in their early stages –, there is another actor that is perhaps the real protagonist of future electronic publishing in Africa: the mobile phone. In comparison to other technologies, the penetration of cell phones in the region is extremely high, not just in cities [...]
Traditional publishing and the digital age: opportunities, challenges and proposals
Vosloo insists on the need to use the technology available and not just focus on paper books, but what happens in the case of traditional publishers? Those working in the printed book sector all agree that publishing in Africa has been facing enormous challenges for decades. According to the Cameroonian publisher François Nkeme, from the [...]
Possible trends
In spite of the enormous difficulties that exist with regard to infrastructure and human resources, digital publishing in Africa shows interesting potential. Based on the cases studied we can outline a number of future trends: The mobile phone network will continue to be fertile terrain for new experiments in book publishing or promotion, given that [...]
Presentation
In the Arab world, as is the case in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Arab world digital publishing is highly incipient. The Arabic language represents a very powerful cohesive force, which may give rise to electronic platforms with transnational reach, but which at the same time – due to technical issues such as the treatment of fonts – [...]
Technical data
Countries that make up the region: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen. Population: 300,892,543 (2009) Urban population: 58% (2009) Macroeconomics: GDP: US$ 1,062,418,867,027 (2009) GDP per capita: US$ 3,597 (2009) Unemployment: 10.3% (2010) Politics: Political instability, ethnic [...]
A first approach: virtual stores
The first thing we find in the Arab world are some important online stores selling printed copies. One noteworthy example is NWF (Neelwafurat), whose very name reflects its intention to emulate Amazon, for just as the famous US brand alludes to the South American river, Neelwafurat refers to the Nile and the Euphrates. NWF was [...]
Non-profit portals
In addition to stores selling e-books, there are also private, non-commercial digital publishing projects, such as Nashiri, which launched its activities in 2003. This site, founded by Hayat Alyaqout, a young Kuwaiti woman, combines a free electronic library with a digital book publishing company. Not long after its appearance, it already offered over 120 e-books, [...]
Technical difficulties of digital publishing in Arabic: ePub and OCR
PDF or Flash formats do not present any technical complications for local publishers. But Ramy Habeeb, the co-founder of Kotobarabia, explains that even when a text in Arabic has been carefully laid out using InDesign and other similar tools, converting it to ePub proves extremely troublesome, for various reasons: 1) The flow of text goes [...]
E-readers and tablets
Like in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Arab world possession of e-readers and tablets is limited to the wealthiest stratum of the social pyramid. The sales figures for the Kindle are not known, and devices like the iPad are considered luxury products. As Ramy Habeeb observes: We are not seeing the iPad phenomenon like we see [...]
Electronic payments: between the Web and mobile phones
Another characteristic that distances the Arab world from the countries of the North is the unwillingness of Internet users to make online purchases,[1] which perhaps explains why none of the virtual stores aimed at PC users from the internal market has been particularly successful. Ramy Habeeb comes straight to the point on this topic: Unfortunately [...]
Mobile phones as a publishing platform
Here too we can mention Kotobarabia, which in an attempt to diversify and supply the internal market, has put its efforts into distributing e-books via cell phone infrastructure.[1] In order to do this, in 2009, the portal teamed up with Sarmady, the digital branch of Vodafone in Egypt. Similarly, the Austrian company Blackbetty Mobilemedia, specializing [...]
The challenges of paper publishing: inefficient distribution and censorship
Now, while all these digital experiments are being carried out, what is going on in traditional publishing? The fact is that in the Arab world, the book sector has been facing enormous challenges for decades, with its main problem being the lack of a uniform distribution system. What is worse, there is no proper database [...]
Digital technology as an opportunity
As we suggested when analyzing the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, the fundamental challenges of publishing in the Arab world – in this case, inefficient analogue distribution and censorship – can be overcome or at least mitigated thanks to the incorporation of electronic technology. With regard to distribution problems, it is obvious that digital offers a potentially unlimited [...]
Possible trends
Currently, it is possible to identify various forces that are likely to have a considerable effect on future publishing in the Arab world: The recent political events that took place in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and other locations have already brought about modifications in the power structure of those countries, something that in turn [...]
Presentation
As can be inferred from the data for the sector, since 2008 the Russian publishing industry has entered a delicate phase due to an economic downturn. However, electronic publishing projects do not appear to have suffered the same impact and although very little news about the Russian digital industry reaches Europe and the US, some [...]
Technical data
Surface area: 17,075,400 km2 Population: 141,850,000 (2009) Urban population: 72.8% (2009) Language: There are about 160 different ethnic groups that speak around 100 languages. Russian is the only official language, but the Constitution grants the republics of the Russian Federation the right to declare native languages co-official. GDP: US$ 1,230,725,856,403 (2009) GDP per capita: US$ [...]
Online stores (selling copies)
As an initial approach, it is important to recognize that within Russia there are a significant number of websites dedicated to the sale of books, in both paper and electronic format. Founded in 1998 in Saint Petersburg, the company Ozon began by selling paper books – just like Amazon. It now covers a wide selection of [...]
Subscription stores
In addition to portals selling individual copies, Russia has numerous websites that base their business models on subscriptions. First of all, we should mention Bookmate, an online reading club whose users can read e-books by paying a monthly subscription fee of 99 roubles, or just over 3 dollars. The site, which was designed by three [...]
Digital distributors
Public sales portals are supplied by the publishers themselves or by digital distributors. One of the best-known players in the field of e-book distribution in Russia is Litres. Founded in 2006 through a merger between different portals and then acquired by Eksmo, this aggregator and seller of electronic books began with just 90 titles and [...]
Free access virtual libraries
In addition to these retail stores and commercial distributors, we find numerous first-rate libraries that make their backlists available to the public in digital format. Some sources claim that there are no less than 400 official electronic libraries in Russia, without counting the privately-run portals.[1] In this regard we must highlight the efforts made by [...]
E-readers and other local devices
If, as we have seen, there is considerable activity taking place in online platforms – stores, distributors and libraries –, then we must acknowledge that the hardware industry displays even greater vigour. In addition to the aforementioned Ozon Galaxy or iChitalka, dozens of e-readers are manufactured in Russia and sold in both the domestic market and abroad, [...]
Print on demand
In comparison with the progress made by electronic platforms and hardware companies, a technology like POD is still very much in the background. Nevertheless, some firms in the sector have begun to back this new modality. In October 2010, the third annual “On Demand Russia” exhibition was held in Moscow and the event enabled dozens [...]
Publishers in the face of the digital revolution
So, given the profusion of software, hardware and digital business models, what is happening in the case of Russian publishers? According to Prohorenkov, the relative scarcity of content for new mediums is a bad sign: We are not having much success with digital content. Publishers are afraid of illegal copies and don’t target the market [...]
The advantages of digital, in spite of everything
Technology and the Web are advancing at such a speed in Russia that they appear to exceed the possibilities of traditional publishers. However, it is clear that digital could represent a significant qualitative leap in this country with regard to the distribution of written content. Russian publishing has always faced an obvious obstacle: the problem [...]