MAVERICK LIFE OP-ED: Of outliers, wild cards and till point ka-chings: A look at the South African book business during the pandemic

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How badly has Covid-19 dented book sales? Will publishers and booksellers recover soon? Ben Williams considers the prospects for the SA books industry in the months ahead.

The coronavirus has torn across the books world like a tornado: that is to say, it’s been selectively destructive. Where the tornado has hit, the landscape is a portrait of devastation; where it has missed, the bruising and cratering of the surrounding infrastructure has taken its toll, but the core businesses survive. So far.

The answer, dear readers, is blowing through the sales figures of our major book retailers. But before we get to the hard numbers, a word about our market’s outliers and wild cards. By contrast, if you’re a mid-sized independent publisher with a predominantly South African list and are reliant on print sales for viability, you’re going to struggle. That’s the case with Jacana Media, a courageous outlier publisher for almost two decades, which has launched a crowdfunding campaign to stay in business.

 

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